Venture Encoding Complements Paper Products with Electronic Technology.

Kenny Hargis, president of Venture Encoding Service Inc. here, is bringing to the Mortgage Bankers Association servicing conference his company's most important showcase: technology. What he is looking forward to the most though, is direct contact with other participants and grass-root level networking.

He sees networking at the conference site as a business advantage.

"We are very vertical oriented. In other words we focus on the mortgage industry only and in order to do that we have to use every opportunity to create new contacts," he said. "This is the biggest gathering of the servicing crowd."

In his view, as Venture's Internet-based system is constantly going through process enhancement changes, the MBA servicing conference is by far the most important industry event and the best place to introduce new product development features to clients.

"Servicing conferences are a great gathering place for us, because usually servicing managers are there, as well as other front-line servicing people, differently from the other national MBA conferences where you usually meet the most senior executives, who are a little aloof from the specific servicing issues," he said.

So, as usual, there will be a Venture booth to showcase company products and at least a half dozen Venture representatives.

"You see customers you normally do not get to meet, so it's a chance to meet them once a year," he noted. "Most importantly what we try to do is get new prospects, folks that we can get interested in our products. Conferences are a good place to do that."