If people won't do what they should do voluntarily, sometimes, what they should do must be built into the tools they use. That's why things I think things like BPM and business knowledge management (BKM) have to be woven into the IT infrastructures supporting business users – invisibly to those users wherever possible.
Well, apparently, so does Jeff Lazerson, a mortgage broker in Orange County, CA, according to an article at the San Jose Mercury News' SiliconValley.com (located here, at least as of this writing). Lazerson has launched an online mortgage application processing service that eliminates the possibility of that most onerous of business processes – redlining. That's willful discrimination against financially sound applicants by mortgage brokers, for whatever reasons, none of this historically positive or pleasant. (OK, OK – class, gender, and race, predominantly. But I bet you knew or suspected that.)
Anyway, Lazerson's MortgageGrader.com strips away the personal information that makes redlining possible before submitting applications to participating lenders. Those lenders – currently about 15, including "marquee" names Chase and Washington Mutual – only see borrowers' personal information after pricing the prospective loan. Borrowers are pointed at the least expensive loan that fits their situations. Lenders are motivated to offer competitive rates to all qualified borrowers, and can't easily refuse sound borrowers for unsound reasons. Lenders also can't attempt to push borrowers who qualify for less expensive, so-called "prime" loans into more expensive "sub-prime" loans to make more money.
This is a "prime" example of how innovative IT can unobtrusively enforce consistent adherence to business processes and policies, and deliver significant business benefit as a result. What savvy lender wouldn't like the obvious PR boost that would come with anything that let them demonstrate that their commitment to being "equal housing lenders" was more than lip service?
This is also a great example of how innovative thinking can result in approaches to process enablement of IT-powered business tools that deliver more than consistency and greater operational efficiency. When it's done right, the combination of IT and human-centric thinking can actually help a business – or perhaps any number of businesses, or markets – do measurably better at doing well, by doing good.
If you're involved in or considering any IT-empowered BPM initiatives at your company or for your clients, keep this example in mind. You might come up with some things at least as innovative and beneficial to business success as Jeff Lazerson has. And even if you don't, the effort is almost guaranteed to improve your ability to generate support for your efforts among those likely to be affected – and to affect your own abilities to succeed. And if you come up with, consider, or hear about any other innovative combinations of IT and BPM or BKM, do please let me know. And I'll try to do the same.
Michael Dortch has been an analyst, 'information entrepreneur,' speaker, and writer about IT and 'the real world" for the past 30 years. After almost 10 years at the Robert Frances Group (RFG), Michael begins a new position with Aberdeen Group in September.
Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.
