Archive for the ‘Orchestration’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Six “C’s” of Generating Success

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Success = Components + Collection + Consolidation + Cohesion + Capability + Conclusion

By Mark P. Dangelo

www.Innovative-Relevance.com

Also published at the National Mortgage Bankers Association

With all the media sound bites and dire messages, sometimes you just want to hide in your cubicle and do nothing new. It is understandable. However, pragmatically we must move forward ensuring that people, processes, and technologies are once again relevant for the decade facing us, and our vastly different operating ecosystems (see, “Peering Forward into the Next Decade”).

So, where should we invest? What technologies or infrastructures should we use? How could we outsource more business and knowledge processes? Should we hire FTE’s or layoff? How do we measure success, and more to the point, is it merely about profits, government conformance, risk mitigation, or social responsibility?

After two brutal years where finance and mortgage groups (FMG’s) have shed hundreds of thousands of quality jobs, will the recovery be a “V,” a “U,” a “L,” or a “W?” Additionally, what will your competitors do? Who are the “desired” consumers? What are your organizational social and community responsibilities?

Indeed, there are many questions all encased by considerable economic uncertainty. Yet, the time for action is now. The time for pervasive technological and process transformations is past due.

So, what is the formula for success as we close out 2009 and peer into 2010? Whereas, no one formula or idea can capture all aspects of viability and the technology needed to deliver quality profits, the following simple framework is able to create desired organizational action.

Success = Components + Collection + Consolidation + Cohesion + Capability + Conclusion

I know, it sounds like a lot. However, let’s briefly explore the six “C’s” of success, and what you might be able to do to capitalize on the operating environment and constraints, which are poised to completely redefine FMG players, processes, and BAU (i.e., competition and intent).

Components, the Sum of the Parts is Greater

Historically, process and technology solutions were frequently viewed as one-offs left to astute and charismatic divisional heads. Technology investments, and the business lines / products they supported, were made against segmented silos of functionality and compartmentalized budgets. As the current decade draws to an undesirable conclusion, the idiosyncratic nature of these sunken ROI projections becomes all too apparent measured against new markets and upstart competitors.

In general, future technologies and co-dependent processes appear to be taking on increased importance outside of the once hallowed walls of IT – that is, “not invented here” personnel have been translated into “no longer work here.” Technology and the capital investments needed for their realization are being created in foreign cities with little geographical familiarity for domestic personnel.

Although, as the component technology pieces are being created elsewhere, the heralded death of internal IT (i.e., the “IT Killer”) by the Cloud, by SaaS, by virtualization, or even by outsourcers, are mere pipedreams.

To be sure, the IT roles of the next decade and dogmatic desires to “control from within” a corporate center are no longer a critical success factor. The roles of CIO’s and CTO’s will increasingly disappear – to be redefined in a new technology world ripe with continuous transformations and multi-faceted governance. With a historical FMG tenure of 5 years and an average salary exceeding $300K, IT leaders will have a lot to justify this next decade.

For internal IT, the ability to rapidly integrate and adapt externally developed and defined components will be greater than traditional technology provisioning. The sum of the parts is rapidly the greatest enabler for the next decade spurred by changing consumer behavior, fast cycle product demands, and competitive reactions requiring collection and cohesion of widely dispersed data sources.

Collection, It is No Longer Just About Money

Collection activities for bankers today have taken on a huge importance. Yet, collection today and tomorrow is frequently more about data than it is mere money. Not just data within a given set of delinquency or workout processes, but data that spans the over 60 distinct functional processes throughout the comprehensive mortgage cycles.

Data collection is just the first aspect of a new decade of new requirements for corporate governance and compliance. The ability to transcend the interlinked processes, both forward and backward, can no longer rely on any manual item, faxed document, or singular “swim lanes.” To achieve proper consolidation and cohesion of increasingly specialized data sources, collection must first accept the challenges of interconnectivity, while preparing for aggregation of compartmentalized data spread throughout siloed applications.

Or more simply, if garbage (inaccessible and non-searchable data sources) is allowed into the value chain of data, it pollutes the entire downstream series of demands needed for risk, decision making, and compliance.

I have to wonder, if we had electronically stored, catalogued, and managed the entire master sources of data for the millions of loans in distress during the last five, would the modifications, legal fees, and political backlash be this pronounced?

Consolidation, the Devil is in the Data

Data. Data. Data. Consequently, if data is everywhere and widely available, why is it that decisions are made that prove inadequate or let’s face it, are out-and-out wrong?

Some would argue that collection challenges are the root of evil when it comes to success driven by sound data (e.g., KPI’s) and decisioning analytics. However, FMG CEO’s ask an important question of why nearly $2 billion annually is spent on power for data center computer equipment? With a compounded yearly increase of data storage now, by some estimates, exceeding 50% annually, what should be contained or consolidated on this equipment that isn’t already there? Where’s the value?

Consolidation of data sources for future success resides with disciplines and technologies that are still not widely in use within the mortgage industry (e.g., master data management, data deduplication, aggregation, augmentation, scrubbing, federations, structured, non-structured, et al). Some of this is cost related and others are more about skill sets and perceived need by executives for investment or action.

Consolidation, within the success formula, is also about the growing third-party portals and data providers along the segmented mortgage processes – fraud, reporting, servicing, investments, hedge funds, FOREX, systems of record, and the list grows with each passing week, and sorry to say, new government program introduced (or withdrawn). Without the first three “C’s” internalized and properly framed, the last three variables in the success formula can lead to money traps and false security.

Cohesion, Leveraging more than IT

Cohesion in this context is defined as “the ability to positively relate various sources of information to each other.” To borrow a term from the pharmaceutical industry, it is about data efficacy. Moreover, driven by new markets and required insights, integrations of the past are not the integrations of the future. In fact, the ability to efficiently and accurately integrate growing and sometimes conflicting data has recently cost many good IT professionals their career and livelihood.

The new decade dawning is already being dominated by new, virtually provisioned infrastructures (e.g., IaaS) supporting fast-cycle business functionality– e.g., Amazon, Sales Force, Microsoft, and Google. As these initial “cloud” identified offerings evolve, their robustness and business criticality takes on new importance across the enterprise. And what do these new layers of infrastructure create spanning processes and business lines? Data. Data. Data.

Therefore, the cohesion of these growing sources increases in importance. The challenge of their integration is not merely an ETL (i.e., extraction, transformation, and load), but a core shift in competencies that was once viewed only from an internal IT need. As systems are provisioned within layers of cloud infrastructures (e.g., data, voice, processes), the skill sets of cohesion and the efficacy it demands are in short supply and represents a job growth area for every IT leader and astute business person.

Capability, Fenced by Risk and Regulation

If we thought the rules of operation were cumbersome and draconian in the past, we may be severely disappointed with the future. In various speeches and interviews, the Executive and Congressional offices are all positioning for changes. Politics and lobbying being what it is, the final regulations may be some time coming – but something will change, especially if this drags into the 2010 election year.

Therefore, as more and more capabilities are delivered via cloud technologies and outsourcing relationships (just look at the numbers, acquisitions, and press releases), organization capabilities will be fenced by how quick we can react to shortened regulation cycles and risk aversion advocates (e.g., Fed, regulators, public sentiments).

Capability moving forward will be still be about systems and technology – but the time needed and patience for “failures” will be drastically shortened. Tolerance to achieve meaningful capability success will be shortened not by mere history, but by decreased CAPEX budgets, time-to-market, consumer products and their profitability, and of course, regulatory compliance.

If we are indeed confronted with a jobless recovery (the “L” or “U” scenario), how much will budgets be increased for new functional capability? What happens if a “W,” or double bottoming, is experienced in 2010? Future success requires new capabilities, but the methods and techniques of defining, provisioning, and bringing on-line will test our operations and vendor partners alike.

Conclusion, Achieving Incremental Reality from Ambiguity

With five of the six “C’s” integrated into the algorithm for success, you might be tempted to think that 83% of the equation is a passing grade. Uh, no. This last variable has proven to be the most difficult to achieve with accuracy and consistency — as it is subject to internal influences and organizational biases of beliefs. The historic methods for conclusions were often more about art than science – hubris over content

Today and more importantly tomorrow, the art of the conclusion or decision is being hurriedly replaced with analytics. Objectivity based upon vetted facts, statistics, and the other five “C’s” is ruling the discussions in the boardrooms and with investors.

In fact, spending on business intelligence tools which support robust decision making continue to increase at double-digit growth rates – an aggregated market that exceeds $60 billion. All-in-one solution sets are being deployed along the entire success equation by industry leaders IBM, Oracle, InfoSys, and SAP.

Achieving “conclusivity” is also supported by a wide range of dashboard offerings (e.g., Visual Mining), analytical and industry specific KPI firms (e.g., Intelli-Mine, Inc.), and vertical benchmarking solutions (e.g., LPS).

Linked together, the six “C’s” are a powerful formula for the changing reality of a new and ambiguous decade. Also it should be noted that the conclusions desired within FMG will no longer be reached in domestic isolation. World governing bodies, global creditors, and wealth rebalancing all will bring a stark new set of consequences for success.

Did I forget to mention the seventh “C?”

* * * * * * * *

In conclusion, successes of tomorrow cannot be redressed on the methods of the past or the behaviors of a few. Continuous vigilance will be demanded to ensure any investment in infrastructure, the cloud, or business processes are exceeding expectations and measures. “Provision and forget” cannot be a path forward for lasting success.

As we move forward, one thing is very understandable – the methods used to measure results in a virtual, highly specialized FMG ecosystem will be distinctive and non-insular. The IT approach to provisioning, integration, and maintenance will also be different. Even the standards of interoperability and exchange will be uncommon – but likely converging.

S-U-C-C-E-S-S. No matter how it is defined, spelled, or framed, success must be generated from within. Are we really prepared across people, processes, technologies, and markets to orchestrate success in an uncertain decade?

In closing, as I get ready to attend my fifth MBA Annual show in San Diego next month, I sincerely wish everyone the best of success during this industry leading event. Make sure you say “howdy!” if you see me.

Tags:
Posted in Analytics, Architecture, Cloud Computing, Continuous Organizational Innovation, Dashboards, Data, Financial Services, Innovation, Markets, Orchestration, Outsourcing, Strategy | No Comments »

Using Analytics and Creating Intelligence in “The Cloud”

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Part three of a continuing series on the changing analytical ecosystems

By Mark P. Dangelo

www.Innovative-Relevance.com

With any new “miracle” idea or innovation, history and experience has taught us to approach it with a fair amount of skepticism. Foundationally, we often retort, “So what and who cares?” However, when highly respected media icons such as the Financial Times, start to consistently publish objective articles on a topic, skepticism for many turns into potentially creating competitive differentiation (see Cloud Computing Sidebar).

Our Heads are Firmly in “The Clouds”

The terminology and capabilities of cloud computing or “The Cloud,” has exploded in the last three years. For some, the expectations will far exceed reality. However, driven by continual technical advances innovatively supported by people and processes, “The Cloud” approaches have found harmonization with profit starved investors and forward thinking strategists.

Equally, the widespread euphoria has morphed into fragmented realities for corporate decision makers seeking robust operating functionality supported by rapid implementation cycles. That is, they have found quick successes, but their larger future is still unclear. In general, the principles of cloud computing are no longer buried in trade journals, presented in an obscure standards brief, or merely debated by technologists over beers.

As a matter of fact, cloud computing, underpinned by new measurements and data integration demands, is increasingly appearing in corporate agendas with an estimated annual spend in the billions and growing at an annual compounded rate of 25% and 40%.

At a time when organizations are questioning everything and dealing with iterative cost cutting programs, these articles and growing implementation successes are beginning to establish a foundation for lasting action.

Yet, we need to ask some very fundamental questions before we redefine the 2010 budgets and open the checkbook. For example, what is the roadmap, and more importantly what does “The Cloud” pragmatically offer? How can quality, “decision intelligence” be developed? What analytical measurements, driven by cloud technology, are now important?

You see, “The Cloud” is as important operationally as it is strategically if we adopt more than a “one-off” line of attack.

A Changing Reality for Decision Making

Analogous to the aftermath of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, we can foresee lasting corporate and social strife as a result of the prior supply chain practices and decisions encompassing origination, servicing, and securitization processes.

The permanent solutions and regulatory changes will be years in the making. Nonetheless, what is becoming apparent is the fundamental root causes. Our current public flaws architecturally resided with the flawed reasoning models used to confirm co-dependent mortgage decisions.

Yet, with finance and mortgage groups (FMG’s) spending over $14 billion (out of $80 billion globally) on decision driven business intelligence, dashboards, scorecards, planning, infrastructure, and applications, what will the new costs and benefits be when using cloud computing solutions? Sometimes, when dealing with highly complex challenges, historical references can teach us how to avoid a reoccurring fate of excessive spending.

In reviewing a 2007 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, “In Search of Clarity, Unraveling the Complexities of Executive Decision Making”), we are able to witness a time capsule of priorities, methods, and challenges internalized prior to the most severe recession in nearly 80 years.

In hindsight, there are several understated findings, within the EIU assessment, which stand out:

1) “Poor data leads to poor decisions,”

2) “Challenges only increase as companies grow,”

3) “Too much art, not enough science?,” and

4) “Decision support tools need to be easier to use.”

Fast-forward two plus years, and we now see how the lack of relevant quantitative criteria fostered one of the greatest wealth destabilizations in three generations. The indicators were all “green,” but the decisioning results wound up to be very, very ”red.”

Layering and Leveraging KPI’s

It was a myopic focus on granular key performance indicators (KPI’s,) without a holistic examination of interrelationships and efficacy, which produced “false positives.” Or stated differently, the use of inelastic, static measurements and monitoring methods to predict future performance was just a disaster waiting to happen. Future decisioning cannot be defined merely by projecting forward historical indicators (i.e., backward focused gauges as a measure of future performance and consumer behaviors). It is akin to driving 65 mph while constantly being focused on the actions in the rearview mirror.

As we know, this was the preferred BAU for analytical predictions before the escalation of cloud computing, and the multi-faceted integration demands implied with the deployment of these new, virtual data sources. Moreover, we now are confronted with challenges of cascading economics and public policies that result in the demand for a series of risk adjusted analytics needed for decision making, compliance, and operational performance. So, what now?

“The Cloud” adoption, coupled with the crystal clear failures of the past, represents a waterfall opportunity to redefine and rebuild how decision making for the next decade should be done. The opportunity is with not just technology, but the integration and compartmentalization of multi-polar sources into intelligent and self correcting decision approaches.

The future of analytics begins to mirror a federated model of interconnected KPI’s that not only assesses past performance, but provides adaptability of forward-looking indicators that are properly vetted and cross-matched against multi-polar requirements. After all, analytics is more than data – it must deliver intelligence.

Sound impossible? Too Complex? Too futuristic? Think again. What I’m representing in this thumbnail began in earnest back in 2007-2008 with their seeds planted nearly a decade prior.

Analyzing and Anticipating Tomorrow

As the siloed technology discussions of SaaS, SOA, virtualization, and web services converge and confront fluid business pressures, standard operating processes and decision making breaks down and becomes dysfunctional. Business leaders struggle with innovation and consumer behaviors without sufficient analytics, intelligence, and predictability on “what’s next?”

Moreover, changing market conditions have created voids in reporting and compliance systems, internal skill sets needed for adaptation and the budgets needed to implement change. There is a need for clarity to avoid layers of cascading hazards, but uncertainty and risks have created institutionalized frustrations. In essence, we need to unwind the legacy, but be mindful of the disruptions and chaos that can be introduced.

In several of my prior 2009 articles, we examined the foundational strategies of analytics. In this article, we introduced the new variable of cloud computing and touched on the benefits and challenges it creates for severely strained IT departments and business personnel. However, what is the answer? What are others doing? What are the implications of adoption or redefinition?

To assess and begin anticipating viable solutions for the use of analytics, we invite you to participate in a brief survey. The survey can be found at www.Innovative-Relevance.com/analyticsurvey/. We anticipate releasing select findings of “Using Analytics and Creating Intelligence in ‘The Cloud’” industry report, starting in October 2009 in subsequent MBA articles.

* * * * * * * * *

In closing, there is a strange reader reaction that happens when a writer looks into the future and attempts to ascertain strategy – go figure, not everyone agrees on how to read the aggregated indictors for positive and profitable results. Earlier in 2009, when I holistically examined analytics and the likely impacts on operations and markets, there were many doubters. Now after another $5 plus billion in new M&A actions, perhaps those ideas don’t look so crazy after all?

But, whether you agree or disagree, we cannot deny our predicaments both domestically and globally. As printed in the Financial Times on August 13, 2009, “Foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, hit 360,149, an increase of 7 per cent from June and 32 per cent on the year. One in every 355 US homes received a foreclosure notice in July, according to the online marketplace for foreclosure properties.”

There is a need for change and how we responsibly and ethically define “success.” New and relevant analytics will help us determine our performance and models of operations – before others make those decisions for us.

Posted in Analytics, Architecture, Cloud Computing, Dashboards, Data, Financial Services, Measurements, Mortgage, Orchestration, Outsourcing, Strategy | No Comments »

Pause – It is Time for Reflection

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Five mortgage industry leaders offer their end-to-end insights and expertise on forthcoming CAR’s – Challenges, Actions, and Results.

By Mark P. Dangelo

www.Innovative-Relevance.com

Stating the obvious, we are not nearly finished with the 2-year consumer and industry rebalancing saga.  If anyone had cherry plum visions that this was merely a prolonged business as usual (BAU) cycle, they might want to check the consumer’s pulse and the underlying analytical facts.  Recessions, like recoveries, are played out in “fits and starts.”  Today, which ever condition you believe we are still in, our economic “patient” is suffering from rapid-cycle schizophrenia with a touch of “job-envy.”

Poor jocularities aside, there is still significant opaqueness surrounding real estate, lending, business activities, and yes, domestic financial practices and oversight.  So as we reach a bottoming of the severest recession in 80 years, it seems a good of time to reflect and listen to the domestic market challenges created as it struggles with a projected multi-year jobless recovery.

It is against these challenges, that we must ask, “What actions should be undertaken?”  Furthermore, can we assess the implications or results from political, industry, and organizational actions?  How can we avoid the BAU trap?

Therefore, in an effort to gain unique insights within the entire end-to-end mortgage process, I have asked six industry leaders their CAR’s (Challenges, Actions, and Results) to secure a new focus across the persistently difficult operating environment.

·         Cheryl Lang, CEO, Integrated Mortgage Solutions

·         Anil Suri, CEO, Intelli-Mine

·         Bill Cary, Director, Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS)

·         Lester Dominick, President, MortgageFlex Systems, Inc.

·         Judy Margrett, President, The Turning Point

* * * * * * * *

Cheryl Lang, CEO, Integrated Mortgage Solutions (www.imstoday.com).

 

Ø  Challenge:  Loan modifications will continue to pose the largest risk and opportunity for servicers dealing with delinquencies, consumer loan viability, and consequences of workouts.  However, the rising demand is creating unintended costs and burdens for consumers, lenders, investors, and servicers. 

o   Action:  With rising unemployment and overburdened staffs, servicers are being forced to find and internalize new operating procedures faster.  The rejection of BAU coupled with the complexity and volumes of workout demands, cannot hinder the primary goal of keeping consumers in their homes in an effort to reduce property loses, while ensuring community prosperity and reducing REO losses.  As part of a comprehensive loan modification approach, predictive and causality driven analytics must be utilized not just at a macro level, but also on a granular basis to ensure that actions foot to results.  Quantities of modifications are not a substitute for quality of results – today the linkages are too generalized and implications of actions not well understood. 

§  Result:  By clearly understanding the linkages of what constituents a “viable” modification, servicers and investors stand to reach long-term profitability with the borrower and property.  Additionally, the use of teams in dealing with workouts aids the servicer with a faster response to the borrower, greater transparency of the efforts, and conformance to vastly expanded government oversight.  By keeping viable borrowers in their homes, communities benefit and crime is reduced.  Furthermore, using an adaptable end-to-end roadmap for discrete borrower profiles, servicers are able to be responsible to their stakeholders, create a viable exit strategy from the crisis at-hand, and reduce current herculean efforts to a manageable subset of what they are experiencing.  By addressing the problem holistically, we now understand that what we are dealing with cannot be fixed overnight – we are only now building the skills needed to deal with a persistent and growing set of interconnected servicing challenges. 

Anil Suri, CEO, Intelli-Mine (www.intelli-mine.com).

 

Ø  Challenge:  During the current recessionary markets, tight credit and vanishing consumers, companies are increasingly faced with the challenge of re-examining their historical decision making processes in order to remain profitable.  Mangers need a clear visibility into their operations, while gaining clear insight into the performance of loan, programs, and channels.  The nagging challenge is the ability to pinpoint the leading and lagging indicators of the business, while realizing a single, consistent 360 degree ROI analysis of the organization across multiple departments.

o   Action:  Products and solutions enable organizations to meet this challenge by harnessing the power of interrelated data to increase performance, reduce risks and drive competitive advantage.  Through the deployment of dashboards, scorecards, pre-defined Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), analytics and reporting functionality, organizations must act on the three main questions facing executives daily.

•        Where is my organization today?  Deployment of customizable dashboards which displays and aggregates KPI’s providing executives a snapshot on where they are and the predictive trends. 

•        What is the true picture?  Adopting a BPM framework standardizes the measures, metrics, and KPI’s used throughout the organization by combining all the business data into a common data warehouse.  This inculcates the discipline of using data from a single source resulting in one version of the truth.

•        Where are we going?  An adaptable BPM framework provides executives with an early warning system and triggers alerts based on business rules, competitive actions, and third-party intelligence.

§  Result:  The status-quo of designing, developing, and deploying a BPM solution is expensive, time-consuming, and results in an inflexible solution.  What we recognized is that for organizations to prosper, a dynamic and sustainable BPM framework was needed to properly assess rapidly shifting market conditions.  Using a vetted framework generates a solution set which is adaptable to the rapidly changing business, systems, data sources, and user profiles.  A leveraging and integration of multiple vendor offerings is no longer optional.  Proactive organizations are using integrated, mortgage-centric analytical specialty firms to deliver performance and risk management solutions for their operations.  Our team has spent years saving clients millions of dollars with the use of pre-defined templates, indicators, and maps for all aspects of the varied mortgage processes.  It is with these experiences that we learned the bottom-line value delivered from a comprehensive approach, roadmaps, and technology – not just one-off applications.  In conclusion, it is this superior organizational performance, risk, and objective analytical framework which yields unsurpassed ROI, market power, and operational versatility over the growing cloud of data assets and “wandering” warehouses.

Bill Cary, Director of Origination Solutions, Strategic Consulting Services, Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) (www.lpsvcs.com).

Ø  Challenge:  In the early part of this decade, financial institutions were very focused on making the mortgage origination process more efficient and streamlined.  There was a great deal of re-tooling to incorporate automated workflow tools and automated decisioning models to make the mortgage process easier for more people.  Then, the buildup of the housing bubble occurred, followed by the ultimate crash of the real estate market.  Understandably, many financial institutions ‘overcorrected’ by assuming that everything they had relied upon in the past was ultimately proved to be wrong.  They lost confidence in many of their automated tools - in particular automated underwriting engines - as well as in their risk assumptions.  Unfortunately, the resulting credit tightening that has occurred and impacted both high risk and low risk consumers.

o   Action:  What is needed is an approach that allows lenders to avoid high risk transactions, while still making the mortgage process simple and streamlined for people who are good credit risks.  Risk segmentation is the answer. The use of automated tools and streamlined processes for people with good credit histories, are appropriate for the large segment of the borrowing population that has continued to stay current on their mortgage obligations.  It was not a mistake to use automated tools and decisioning in years past – but rather, the problems facing many servicers today stem from the large number of high risk loans that were made.  By using the comprehensive, robust analytical modeling that LPS offers, and accessing the company’s database of over 40 million loan level records, servicers can make lending more streamlined for low risk customers.

§  Result:  88 to 90% of mortgage loans are being paid on time. If servicers segment their customers and prospects into tranches, and utilize a mortgage process and decisioning model that is appropriate to the level of risk, they will make it much easier for credit-worthy customers to do more business with them.  The industry must get beyond its fear of losses and move forward to attract profitable new business.  By using the advanced workflow tools, sophisticated risk analytics and industry leading data offered by LPS, financial institutions can streamline lending for their lowest risk customers and earn more profitable business.

Lester Dominick, President, MortgageFlex Systems, Inc. (www.mortgageflex.com).

 

Ø  Challenge:  With rapidly accelerating regulatory compliance guidance for FHA loans, how can originating technology and automation of processes be utilized to increase end-to-end efficiency, auditability, and adherence during times of industry uncertainty and reduced budgets?

o   Action: On-going research, assessment, and development of conforming loan originating technology must be diligently performed by both the software provider and the lender in anticipation of the final rulings from Congress and the Regulator (e.g., GFE).  The use of iterative, agile techniques must also be adopted to ensure not only accuracy, but also adaptation as future clarifications are issued.  Active, cross-team collaboration (between lender and software vendor) must be utilized as part of a rigorous discipline to address stringent product and consumer oversight demands.

§  Result:  The use of a collaborative vendor to lender iterative approach improves not only the quality of the end result, but also addresses the lenders internal challenges – education, training, communication, conformance, and cost to execute.  Moreover, while most assume reporting and adherence as a non-differentiator, hidden benefits may be realized in data accuracy and integrity, automated conformance to policies and procedures, and consistency and repeatability (using rules and decision engines).  With this tight integration and preparation for oversight, the security of the transaction is also improved, thereby providing the lender and the customer with much needed trust and risk mitigation.

Judy Margrett, President, The Turning Point (www.turningpoint.com).

 

Ø  Challenge:  The continually missed opportunity for many organizations resides with their inability to profitably leverage multi-faceted customer approaches, which satisfy four interconnected responsibilities: a) pervasive government mandated consumer regulations, b) the need to manage, maintain and foster the relationship with not only customers but all sources of new business, both direct and indirect, c) comprehensive, rule-driven accountabilities, and d) organizationally aware intelligent marketing solutions.  Organizations can collect, analyze, and manipulate data intelligently, but if they can’t build relationships and a social networking framework in a way that guarantees returning customers and house holding, then they are just another company offering the same or similar products.

o   Action:  Overwhelmingly more important than point-driven contact or sales solutions, this “next generation” software will cohesively knit together the organizational marketing strategy, performance tracking, automated execution, and even regulatory compliance.  Organizations that deploy non-intrusive technology (e.g., SaaS), which supports extensive industry business application services, will be able to achieve results faster and with less organizational turmoil and cross-department demands.  Intelligent marketing is not just about contact management and analytics, but real people speaking to real people about the products and services of a given company.  Moreover, it is those discrete actions to control the customer content messaging, without losing the personal touch, which drives social networking to deliver viral marketing so they attend, join, or buy.  By examining the end-to-end implications of disjointed technologies, business functionality, marketing frameworks, consumer compliance, and operational strategy, organizations may be able to achieve greater returns in a market that will be very difficult well into 2010.

§  Result:  By accepting that technology and data are facilitators to marketing intelligence, the integration of independent organizational actions (and technologies) will succeed at driving revenue growth, while at the same time enhancing operational efficiency and managing risk.  We have personally witnessed that through the integration of pre-defined business services enhanced with superior technology (e.g., data collection, database management, activity design and copy, campaign execution, production and fulfillment, compliance capable, results tracking and performance analysis), organizations may achieve outstanding returns without traditional capital expenditures.  The results of intelligent marketing are not singularly about customer relationship management, but achieving vastly tailored and positive relationship management with B2B’s, partners,  prospects, employees, and others that are needed to keep, foster, and maintain interactions across an ever shrinking timeframe.  By deploying an expanding array of services (and technologies), key players across the organization and its processes are held accountable for results, actions, and plans – all delivering much needed end-to-end marketing intelligence solutions that provide results today and tomorrow.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Compliance, Financial Services, Innovation, Mortgage, Orchestration, Regulations | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »