Taking on the "Establishment" using IV&V's -- July 11, 2006

At the conclusion of the 2006 MBA’s National Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference & Expo, I was shocked at the lack of clarity and actionable advice for lenders struggling with the grandiose statements regarding offshore services, VoIP, and general product rankings made by software vendors, offshore providers, and consultants.

Lenders were confused by the seemingly endless and contradictory statements made from mortgage vendors, servicers, and outsourcers. Furthermore, we have large outsourcing firms based nationally and offshore who are developing competencies and marketing collateral that quantifies their adoption benefits. However, how has these claims been validated? With new services surrounding VoIP, rules-based configurations, evolving standards, and the increased adoption of BPM/BPO and APEX , where is a lender to turn for objective, fact-driven information, and performance statistics? The challenge and subsequent market opportunity is for an established organization to fill the validation and research void demanded by lenders From my perspective, as a prior buyer of several hundred million dollars of technology and outsourcing solutions, the rudimentary questions that need to be answered include:

1. “How can I initially evaluate the vendor’s claims without allocating large numbers of my staff to canvas the trade journals and non-industry research organizations (e.g., Gartner, Tower Group, Forrester) to determine exactly what their offering entails?
2. “Where can I locate a published, objective ranking and evaluation of the products and services within the mortgage industry? Are these surveys, site visits, or benchmarked performance?”
3. “What level of commitment will be required operationally and who already has succeeded or failed? What are the operating costs and budgets that are directly correlated to the adoption of this mortgage solution set (i.e., system, application, service, or outsourcing)?”
4. For vendors, the issues are equally complex and daunting. Within the crowded mortgage technology space, how are their solutions objectively compared by customers against their competitors? The common solution resides with an independent validation and verification process or IV&V. As the industry transforms itself from point-based solutions to highly collaborative, integrated, and compartmentalized processes, the information needed for comparison and evaluations must also be improved.

Mortgage individuals, who are evaluating and recommending product and service solutions, are seeking an established and recognized content provider who can make available measured comparisons. The use of these comparisons will provide the impetus for industry comprehension, acceptance, and affordability. Furthermore, the use of an independent validation and verification process will create a level playing field serving notice to the industry that claims and results will be tested, measured, tracked, and benchmarked. The encapsulation of these benefits and needs dictates an objective mortgage competency repository that is valuable to vendors, lenders, and media sources. Until we move towards objective IV&V rankings, the industry will continue to struggle with outmoded processes and poor operational performance.

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