Daniel Plummer, vice president of origination platforms at NewLane Finance, has spent years stripping friction out of high-volume operational processes. Document generation, payoff quote processing and application submission workflows that once took 25 to 30 minutes can now often be completed in five minutes or less, allowing NewLane to continue scaling without adding operational headcount at the same pace.

“The real impact isn’t just automation,” Plummer says. “It’s empowering people to be more effective.”

Plummer treats digital transformation as a business and culture initiative first and a technology initiative second. He spends time with leaders across the organization and frontline associates to understand recurring pain points, believing the best ideas rarely come from technology teams alone and working to ensure new tools strengthen relationships rather than replace them.