BillCheck |
Fortis LLC
Saint Clair Shores, MI USA
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Fortis LLC provides computer database services in the specialized area of residential mortgage foreclosure. With proven experience in advanced database and reporting systems, Fortis provides its clients with a unique global understanding of the foreclosure process. Further, Fortis database systems feature interfaces to taxation and title searches, and the ability to create lender and audit reports. The firm is also experienced at database “mining” to uncover borrower default patterns or other trends, as well as database “sampling” used in quality assurance checks.
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Last year, George Verras, Fortis founder, recognized a big problem he thought he could solve. Based upon years of experience in the industry, he saw an opportunity to streamline a complex business process. The existing process is initiated whenever a bank decides to foreclose. Upon that decision, the bank sends paperwork to a clearinghouse. The clearinghouse transfers the work order to a law firm in their network that’s local to the relevant property. When the law firm accepts the referral, it owes the clearinghouse a finder’s fee for the resulting project. While the law firm bills the bank for its services, the clearinghouse bills the law firm for the referral.
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Like so many other situations, this is a “noisy” process. Properties move in and out of the foreclosure status based on a variety of circumstances. Sometimes, multiple requests are sent to the clearinghouse for the same property. Miscommunication and mistakes can ultimately result in the law firm overpaying for referrals from the clearinghouse.
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George conceived an application to help solve these problems for the law firm involved: BillCheck
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Previously these invoices had to be manually reconciled. The manual inspection process took many hours to complete, and was prone to mistakes. BillCheck makes everything much more manageable.
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Application Size and Scope |
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Created with Iron Speed Designer, BillCheck contains thousands of lines of code. The application accesses sixty database tables, uses several hundred stored procedures, over thirty views, and table triggers. The size and scope of the application reflect the complex nature of the process, and the nature of the problem BillCheck solves.
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While George used Iron Speed Designer to build the application, he also wrote custom extensions to accommodate specific BillCheck requirements. For example, he’s written DTS (Data Transformation Services) extensions for the file import facilities, and is planning to use Crystal Reports, or perhaps Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services, for improved reporting.
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Working closely with the CFO of a major law firm in Texas, George has been building the system for about nine months. As a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD), George brought many years of programming experience to the project. Even so, Iron Speed Designer has been central to the effort.
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George anticipated he would be able to complete the BillCheck project in 300-500 hours, and is still on target with that estimate. While the project has yet to be fully deployed, BillCheck recently entered its “Alpha” phase, and a “Beta” is planned for March of 2004.
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What's Next? |
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Once complete, the system will be rolled out to a number of law firms around the country. “BillCheck will be deployed to ten law firms around the country. They all have IT departments of different sizes, and their systems interface to a variety of legacy case management platforms,” explains George. Once in place, each of these firms will have an application that streamlines a noisy business process, and makes the accounting operations associated with the business much easier to manage.
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About the Developer |
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George Verras is the founder of Fortis LLC. His company specializes in the area of residential
mortgage foreclosure, providing its clients with a unique global understanding of the foreclosure
process. George has been using Iron Speed Designer since 2003.
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