PHH Leverages Borland Technology for Off-Shoring.(Cendant Mortgage Corp.)(Borland ALM (application life-cycle management) )

MOUNT LAUREL, NJ -- When a new regulation came down from HUD or the FHA, PHH Mortgage used to have to stop new development projects to go back and work the regulation into its software releases. No longer. Today PHH leverages the Borland ALM (application life-cycle management) solution for parallel development, knowing the 320 staffers on its development teams can merge their individual work into a new release with 85%-90% efficiency.

PHH Mortgage said Cupertino, Calif.-based Borland gives it the weapons for successfully harnessing offshoring to provide the high level of efficiency necessary to support multiple new client initiatives - and thereby defend its claim to being the mortgage industry's leading provider of private-label mortgage services. PHH Mortgage also leverages Borland to help automate and streamline mortgage services to its four brands: phone-based originations through PHH Mortgage, and purchase loans through ERA Mortgage, Century 21 Mortgage and Coldwell Banker Mortgage.

To provide outsource services on the scale it does means PHH Mortgage has to operate 15 different internal business units. The single task of incorporating new mortgage regulations requires software releases every six or seven weeks from distributed internal and outsourced development teams in Jacksonville, Fla.; Mount Laurel; Bangalore, India; and Calcutta, India.

Before PHH implemented Borland systems, business analysts from several teams had to pass around and approve Microsoft Word documents, sometimes 300 pages long, that captured the business and technical requirements for a particular release, according to PHH technical lead Ed Briggs. Now Borland's CaliberRM electronically captures and manages requirements gathered from around the world and synchronizes them as development tasks via Borland's StarTeam. Functional requirements are published using custom triggers Mr. Briggs developed.

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