The closing segment of the real estate mortgage industry remains a largely manual business. The inability to automate and to share information between applications is due to the complication of the mortgage transaction itself and the number of vendors who must participate in each transaction. Automation is further complicated by the number of mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in the mortgage industry. The digital economy is fast-paced, global, and brutally competitive. The keys to success in such an environment are a customer-centric focus, a lean and efficient organizational structure, and the ability to respond rapidly to changing business conditions.
Information systems are a crucial component in the competitiveness equation.
In order to support the changing business needs of the organization, applications must be scaleable, extensible, and flexible. They also must be delivered extremely fast. This large oil company had multiple legacy applications, all requiring substantial effort to maintain. Following a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission mandate imposing a June 2000 deadline for implementation of an Internet-based pipeline capacity auction system for Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America, NGPL began the effort to automate its current manual processes.