May 2019CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8IN MY ViewMortgage Experience ImagineeringMATT RIDER, CIO, FRANKLIN AMERICAN MORTGAGE COMPANYhe success of Franklin American Mortgage Company was largely the result of embracing technology as an investment and not an expense. From the beginning, their vision was to leverage technology as the key ingredient needed to provide superior customer service in a notoriously bureaucratic and traditional industry.Overtime,confidence in thestrength of their brand eroded their once leading technology edge, as they slipped into a maintenance mode of operation in lieu of continuous innovation. With the convergence of higher consumer and partner expectations, advances in technologies, and infiltration of fintech companies,there was recognition that incumbents' days were numbered.New competitors did more than embrace technology. They built their companies and business models around it and were grabbing market share at an incredible pace. The secret was out. The mortgage industry is ripe for disruption.At Franklin American Mortgage, I was given the opportunity to reimagine itwas a technology company that happened to offer mortgages. I wanted our customers to see a new world, not just help them see the old world better, all while maintaining the company tradition of responsiveness and personalized services to customers. And just like Amazon upended the retail industry or how digital distribution upended the music industry, we set out to transform the mortgage experience.As forward-thinking CIOs know,alignment of business and technology is essential. Success means their respective transformationsare a collaboration and must happen in unison. Business leaders need to learn what is possible and technology leaders need to demonstrate why it matters. Only then should you cast the vision and rally everyone to execute. But how can you demonstrate why it matters and keep the business running at the same time?Enter Innovation. Innovation is less about producing something new and more about enabling something new and essential to your customers.Take small business accounting software. QuickBooks was opportunistically launched. Intuit had discovered small business customers were using their personal finance software to run their businesses. But initially looked at the discovery in the traditional sense by looking at the existing accounting software market and almost opted out. However, by digging a little deeper into their small business community, Intuit discovered that the community didn't want the complexity and overhead of accounting software but merely a way to manage cash flow. Which meant competition was anything small businesses were using to manage cash flow, not the software vendors as they originally thought. As such, the market was much more interesting and QuickBooks was launched. Intuit created and now owns that market.To lead the transformation, I made the decision to build an innovation practice and allocated ten percent of my headcount to staff it. The team would be a cross-functional representation of the technology organization with direct alignment to the executive business team. To keep them focused, it was essential to remove them from the day-to-day functions of information technology across the company. Their charge was to curate, incubate, and deliver software and experiences that challenge the status quo. They needed to answer questions like how will we stand out from the pack to become the partner that T
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