Think You Had A Tough Monday?

November 9, 2009

You gotta love a Monday like the one we just had.

We teed up today’s events with a huge change to our networking gear over the weekend. It involved new DNS routing as well as gobs of new equipment to increase speed, redundancies and security. Solid planning by Brian Gardner, our CTO made the whole thing happen in a lot less time than we anticipated. On Saturday night I got a call that all was good – and I enjoyed a stress free weekend.

Cogent Road’s main application, Funding Suite is a very complex application that connects to a multitude of third party mortgage systems. Unfortunately, our new Cisco firewalls had a firmware update that caused unanticipated issues when these systems tried to access Funding Suite. I’m not making excuses, maybe we could have tried simulating these connections in production – you know, hindsight and all the rest – but regardless our system was not operating fully.

What followed was a blur of texting, cell phone ringtones and cars pulling into the office all at the same time. Brian was already on the phone with Cisco hounding them for an explanation when I got in. I did what any good CEO would do – I set a Costco sized bottle of Excedrin on his desk and left.

The entire situation lasted about an hour…which seemed like two weeks. Seeing an engineer poke a smiling face and exaggerated thumbs up in your office door brings with it a special kind of relief only software folks can understand.

Then all hell broke loose.

Lights Out!

No phones & no power. So how do we inform our clients?

I had just begun a joint interview (I could not make this up) about Avail with our industry’s most veteran technology editor and one of our large clients. Just as I finished an initial comment – everything went dark. And quiet. No computers, no lights, no phone. Just immediate dark silence – all at once. And it was still Monday morning.

Turns out a transformer blew in San Diego which took out a good chunk of the La Jolla area. This meant we had no power and no telephones. Every customer that called was greeted with what I would argue is the most awful greeting a customer could ever hear – a busy signal. Our software was up and running – our datacenter runs on huge back up generators. But our phones were flatlined.

It wasn’t until two hours later that the power came back up and our heart started beating again. Customers didn’t seem to mind the inconvenience – and some even shared their own similar stories. But, in the end, I’m glad to see this day end.

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Posted by Caped Crusader

Avail: Automated Mortgage Qualifying

November 1, 2009

I love the software business. Each day brings a flood of new ideas – each a possible new application. We own a magic canvas upon which we can create nearly anything we can dream up. And we’re avid dreamers.

The funny thing is though, the market (especially the banking industry), tends to favor the tried and true. Why? Inertia I suppose. Companies do what they do – and get a bit itchy if you even hint at changing things up. At Cogent Road good software means applications stuffed with innovative functionality (read “stuff that never existed before”) which helps businesses get more done with fewer resources. And quite frankly this scares the crap out of our potential clients.

Case in point: Our AVAIL software. Rewind to February 2008.

My partner and I work closely with mortgage loan originators. While our Funding Suite application was designed to help these originators legitimately improve the qualifying ability of each applicant – many applicants simply could not qualify. After receiving the bad news, the applicant had nothing left but to walk out the door – without an inkling of what to do next. So about two years ago we began wondering if we could we create an application to help originators hang on to declined applicants until they eventually qualified. It was magic canvas time.

If this application was going to work it needed to generate a clear roadmap leading declined applicants to mortgage qualifying status in the shortest time possible. If not, these applicants would continue to drift about, or waste money with nefarious credit repair firms or futilely apply to other mortgage companies. By showing them the best actions to take right now, we could focus their energy – and get them qualified fast.

After burning through boxes of “scented” (my favorite!) whiteboard markers – we fleshed out a software application ultimately called Avail. It would eventually become the industry’s only automated mortgage qualifying assistant. It worked with the applicant for an entire year – providing four status reviews and updated strategies along the way. Clients used the software (in cooperation with their mortgage originator) to discover learn new behaviors that would legitimately improve the credit scores. Avail examined their credit accounts and revealed the types of questions mortgage lenders would ask about specific accounts in their credit. The software told them how to answer and what documentation they needed ready. Avail even showed the applicant how to get out from under their current credit card debt in the shortest time with the least amount of cash. It was an amazing application.

We expected huge results when we launched Avail in July, 2008. Instead what happened was, well –nothing. Did originators get it? Nope. Did they show it to declined applicants? Nope. Avail elicited some interest during demonstrations, only to be ignored in unison by our clients.

Turns out, like most new software applications, Avail simply took a while to catch on.

Flash forward. Today as a group, our clients enroll thousands of happy applicants every month into Avail. Large percentages of these initially declined applicants qualify for their new mortgage within six to nine months. In fact, we recently received a call directly from an applicant who had tracked us down simply to say thank you for building the software. Are you kidding me?

I love the software business.

BTW: Click here if you want to see a video demo of the Avail product.

1 Comment | Entreprenuership, entrepreneurship, internet software | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Caped Crusader