If your Encompass LOS environment is not optimized, it will cost you. A little back of the napkin math says that 20-30 seconds of delays while opening and saving loans, across 30 loans accessed in a day, will cost you about 6 days of productivity per employee each year. Put differently, you may be losing $2k per employee yearly for not optimizing your environment.

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Slowdowns in the Encompass Smart Client can be traced to several root causes. Some are fairly straightforward to fix, while others can take some work and may require adjusting your processes and customizations. Below are a few key areas to focus on to ensure your Encompass Smart Client runs as efficiently as possible.

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Unused Forms

Unused forms in the Encompass LOS contribute directly to slower loan load times. Every time you load a loan the system has to process the available forms and each extra form costs time. Custom forms that are no longer in use, should be evaluated and removed. Standard forms and tools should be limited per Persona to only give users the minimum required set to perform their job.

Streamlining the forms within Encompass not only enhances the system's performance but also reduces the cognitive load on users, making them more efficient as they navigate within a loan. Encompass administrators can utilize the Form Builder tool to audit, remove, or deactivate these unused forms, ensuring that only relevant and necessary forms are accessible to users.

Plugin Performance

Plugins extend the functionality of the Encompass LOS and, like forms, too many of them will impact its performance.  Monitoring and evaluating the number and performance of installed plugins is crucial. 

Plugins that are poorly designed, or no longer necessary can significantly slow down system operations. Whenever possible, alternative solutions or customizations should be used with similar functionality with a lesser impact on performance.

Bugs In Custom Code

Custom code can tailor the Encompass LOS to your specific business needs but can also introduce bugs that affect system performance and stability. It is not uncommon to have an environment where custom code will throw an error on every file. This frustrates users and costs precious time while they wait for the error to display, and then clear the error and return to their normal activities. Regular code reviews and performance testing are essential to identify and rectify these issues promptly. 

If you are using custom code anywhere in Encompass, you should follow a formal software development lifecycle (SDLC) that includes formal testing and acceptance. Then, if you do encounter bugs in production they should be addressed immediately. Addressing bugs in custom code not only improves performance but also enhances the overall reliability of the system.

Too Many Load and Save Activities

It is convenient to attach business rules to the Loan Open and Loan Save events. However, issues arise when you overuse these events and you run too much code when opening and saving the loan. This will also lead to excessive delays that will impact employee productivity and morale.

You should reevaluate your workflow triggers and optimize custom scripts and plugins that interact with these events. Adjusting these activities will ensure a balance between operational efficiency and system performance.

Not Archiving Old Loans

An often-overlooked aspect of maintaining an efficient Encompass LOS environment is the archiving of old loans. Excessive numbers of active loans will slow the loading, filtering and searching of your pipeline views. If your default view is the pipeline, it will also cause delays every time you launch the Smart Client.

Regularly archiving these loans not only frees up resources, but also simplifies the loan search and retrieval process for users.

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