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Canon Professional Services and Stargate Technologies integrate faxed application forms into a fully electronic mortgage system services
At a glance
The Innovation
From "go!" to "whoa!"
At a glance
STARGATE
Industry
Software solutions provider to the mortgage industry
Geographies
Melbourne
Canon Products Used
Teleform Enterprise software
RightFax Business Server software
Canon imageREAL software
forms design and scripting, integration, customisation, installation, training, maintenance.
"At Stargate we specialise in making software for the mortgage industry. We don't specialise in making fax software or OCR software, so we wanted to outsource that component to a company that could provide us with an end-to-end solution on a fixed budget. Canon was the only company that could actually provide us with an end-to-end solution that suited our requirements."
? Simon Bednar, Programme Manager, Stargate Technologies
When an Australian buys a home, there's a fair chance that the mortgage industry will manage some component, pre or post settlement of the application using a software solution that was developed, hosted and supported by Stargate Technologies.
Stargate builds systems that gather all the information related to an application and then review that data according to the particular mortgage funder's lending rules. These systems then either accept the application and process it through to the point where funds are released, or they decline the application and provide clear reasons for doing so ? feedback that the aspiring home owner could use to build a stronger case in the future.
"We make applications for mortgage brokers, mortgage originators, funders, banks, non-bank funders, valuers? and no other company in Australia can provide all of the things that we do," said Simon Bednar, Stargate Technologies' Programme Manager.
The Innovation
It's hard to imagine any business software developer not wanting a piece of Stargate's unique position at the centre of the mortgage industry, so an important part of Stargate's business strategy is to continually enhance its solutions in ways that no rival can hope to match. For example, it has forged unique agreements with mortgage insurance and credit reporting providers that allow it to integrate processes such as applying for mortgage insurance or checking the applicant's credit rating into Stargate's solutions. Another example of this strategy would be the SMS support that Stargate is adding to its mortgage processing solutions, so home hunters can receive updates about their application instantly.
This sort of "differentiation through innovation" strategy would be risky for many companies, but Stargate Technologies has a secret weapon ? Starworks, a mortgage processing company that is Stargate Technologies' "internal customer". This means that Stargate can trial its solutions with Starworks, recouping the investment and refining every feature before offering them to its external customers.
So when Simon Bednar, Programme Manager, Stargate Technologies, saw that Starworks was sending and receiving thousands of faxes every day, it was immediately obvious to him that using a single, centralised, electronic fax server would be much cheaper and simpler than maintaining a bank of traditional fax machines. But why stop there? In partnership with Canon, Stargate has completely integrated Starworks' new electronic fax server into its mortgage processing solution via a new optical character recognition (OCR) system and a document management solution. Today, applications move automatically from one system to the other ? with no paper, and little or no manual data entry.
With this solution, everyone wins. Starworks can continue to grow rapidly without incurring massive labour or consumable costs. Starworks' employees are able to refocus on rewarding, customer-facing activities, rather than manually typing in applications that arrive by fax. Home hunters and their mortgage brokers are free to continue filling out paper forms by hand and sending them in by fax if they so choose. And Stargate Technologies can extend its competitive advantage in the mortgage industry by offering all these benefits to its customers ? starting with the mortgage underwriting system that Stargate has built for RAMS Home Loans.
From "go!" to "whoa!"
Technology projects always involve the risk of complexity, but Canon Australia and Stargate Technologies worked closely together to ensure this endeavour lived up to Canon's vision of simplifying how organisations work.
The solution consists of three main components: Captaris's RightFax Business Server, for receiving faxes electronically; Verity's Teleform Enterprise OCR software, for converting them to data; and Canon's imageREAL document management system, for managing the storage and transmission of documents.
"We deliberately chose a premium vendor and we certainly got that with Canon. They provided a very high level of service. They've gone beyond" said Mr Bednar. "The whole system was installed and deployed by Canon. We've had three or four staff from the Canon Professional Services team working on site at Stargate, customising and configuring the software to make it work with existing systems."
"I've been with Stargate since November 2003, and I think within the first two or three months we identified that we could do away with traditional fax machines and go to some sort of electronic fax server," said Mr Bednar. "From there we approached several vendors in the Australian marketplace and Canon was the only one that could actually provide us with an end-to-end solution that suited our requirements."
"At Stargate we specialise in making software for the mortgage industry. We don't specialise in making fax software or OCR software, so we wanted to outsource that component to a company that could provide us with an end-to-end solution on a fixed budget," said Mr Bednar. "We agreed to the fee for the project in advance. It wasn't head-hours and costs. It was one fixed cost. There was some scope creep but Canon worked with us on that," he said, emphasising the flexibility and strength of the partnership.
With the technical aspects of the project completed, neither Stargate nor Canon treated it like a "set and forget" situation. Stargate conducted extensive user testing while running parallel systems, for example ? one reason why Mr Bednar says he has "a high level of confidence in the new system". Meanwhile, Canon applied its expertise to ensuring Stargate's staff were fully trained ? either directly, or through the services of Canon's valued partners such as Captaris.
Mr Bednar estimated the payback period for this investment was six months, including just three months of actual implementation. As the internal Starworks business finds that it can continue its rapid growth without facing labour shortages, while Stargate Technologies can continue to offer the mortgage industry solutions that are without parallel.
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