As mortgage rates sank to an all-time low last year, 11-year-old Accredited Home Lenders Inc., which services an aggregate customer base of about 40,000 mortgage brokers, found itself a victim of its own success. The unprecedented expansion the company was experiencing revealed a rickety technical foundation—one riddled with unreliable point-to-point interfaces, a heavy reliance on paper, multiple instances of data re-entry and no automated process management.

Compounding the situation was the gaggle of homegrown systems the company had patched together that allowed for little communication internally or externally with brokers, investors and borrowers.

To fix the problem, San Diego-based AHL drafted a blueprint for a technology reconstruction that would improve communications with suppliers and provide more efficient services to customers.

AHL—which sold $1.6 billion in loans during the third quarter of last year, an 89 percent increase over the same quarter in 2002—wanted to dramatically streamline its workflows and simplify access to information, including automating its pipeline reporting, prequalification, application submission, underwriting decisions, loan funding and loan servicing.

After doing preliminary research to determine what kind of technology and services it might consider, AHL turned to WellFound Technology Inc., an Atlanta-based systems integrator that specializes in insurance-industry implementations.

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