Recent Interview with Dean Haritos, CEO of PushMX Software of Silicon Valley, California

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1 Recent Interview with Dean Haritos, CEO of PushMX Software of Silicon Valley, California Q: Please tell us about PushMX Software. What is the background story? A: The team that developed the PushMX suite of software applications comprises a senior group of business operations, software architecture development and workflow process experts. Automating workflow is our core technical competency. We have a significant amount of expertise in creating workflow process software for a number of industries. These are usually sophisticated processes that incorporate a lot of repetitive tasks that must be managed and tracked across several departments. For example, we ve created workflow software for complex shipping and receiving processes, special applications for professional services firms, software for hotel reservation systems and supply chain management solutions for some of the world s largest computer manufacturers. Q: So your expertise is in creating custom software to manage complex processes that involve a lot of workflow and repetitious tasks? A: That s right. We re very good at streamlining complex processes and making them more efficient. This can be any process from manufacturing complex products to workflow exercises such as the many steps involved with processing and closing a business loan or a residential mortgage. Q: How did you make the transition from software for manufacturers to productivity solutions for mortgage companies? A: We were actually creating custom workflow software for several different industries and it was brought to our attention that the mortgage industry was highly task and workflow oriented. There were two or three software companies offering loan origin software with all of the right forms and features, and we believed that we could offer some additional value by helping their users manage tasks and become more efficient in processing and closing loans. Q: How are you different from the companies that sell loan origination software? A: I really think that we bring perspective from having created similar workflow software products in other industries, some of which are more complex than mortgage processing. This breadth of experience helps us design solutions that are much more powerful than another software developer who has worked in only one industry. We bring a different perspective to loan processing workflow, perhaps a broader, more high-level perspective.

2 Q: This sounds like the proverbial forest and trees scenario. A: It might very well be. We ve had an opportunity to survey and study the entire forest of workflow applications across different industries. There are some similarities between these industries that we try to use to our advantage when we look at workflow. We have proven that that our software can do an excellent job of automating workflow for many different business enterprises. At the same time, we try not to be vain about our knowledge of the mortgage industry, and therefore we have collaborated with folks who are experts in loan origination and perform this work on a day-to-day basis. Q: And have those people helped you design your software to fit their industry? A: Yes. Our job is to understand what their problems are and translate that into excellent solutions executed in software. Some companies might claim they know more about how the industry works than their customers. We don t feel that way. We believe that our customers know their business best and we strive to understand them and ultimately be flexible enough to accommodate all the disparate needs of a wide base of customers. Q: So you re customer driven, not technology driven? A: Absolutely. When we design software, we start by working side by side with our customers and analyzing what they do day-to-day. When we understand what works and does not work, we can determine how software would help them operate in a more efficient manner. The technologies we choose to employ are in direct response to specific customer needs. Q: Why did you choose the mortgage broker industry to offer your workflow software? A: We introduced PushMX to this industry because we identified that there was a real need here for process improvement and workflow efficiencies. We were developing some custom software for a couple of the larger brokerage firms and we discovered that there were endemic challenges across the industry. While there were a few vendors of loan origination software that did a great job of handling the forms-based processing needs of the industry, we identified a real need for workflow functionality that was simply not available. So instead of writing something specific just for one client, we decided we could bring a lot of value to the entire industry by creating software that was flexible enough to accommodate the needs of everyone. Q: What are your core products for mortgage brokers and what do they do? A: Over the past year, PushMX has evolved into a suite of applications that enables mortgage originators to optimize their bottom line, improve the minute-by-minute productivity of their origination teams, increase profitability and deliver better customer satisfaction to generate a continuous stream of new customer referrals. Our Core Module manages the communications within a mortgage brokerage firm, streamlining the interaction to make sure that people get the information they need in a timely manner without delay. And making sure it s rich information they can actually use to accomplish the task that they are focused on.

3 Our second module, which is called Web/CRM, helps originators to communicate with their customers over the Internet and allow them to amaze their clients with unexpectedly good service. This includes an interface that helps secure those all-important relationships with realtors as well. This industry runs so much on referral business, it really does matter how well your customer service is perceived and executed. Our third software module, Business Optimization, allows people to understand where the bottlenecks are in their business to improve processing efficiency. This affects the bottom line in terms of headcount, numbers of employees and lost time or lost revenue because of mistakes and misunderstandings. It also allows them to mine their database of existing customers, so they can realize recurring revenue in refinance opportunities.

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5 Q: Does PushMX provide a rich set of management reports? A: PushMX provides a number of reports, which are really interesting for the manager or owner of a company, because for the first time they can actually see how their company is performing down to each individual employee s work abilities, efficiency, accuracy and on-time performance. Q: And does that improve visibility into what is happening inside the firm on a daily basis? A: Fundamentally, PushMX is a workflow visibility tool. It provides visibility to the people in the trenches on the things that need to get done on each particular loan. It provides visibility to the manager in terms of business metrics, and it provides visibility to sales people in the form of new opportunities with previous customers that are just waiting to be mined from the data that they already have stored in their systems. Q: Who are your primary target customers? Are they large or small companies? A: PushMX is designed for brokerage firms of all sizes, from a three-person office to a 100-person office. We have some customers with several hundred users. We can help any broker who needs to manage communications better, including those who are seeing money and business slip through their fingers because they are unable to stay on top of all the business that is coming in. This is actually a more common problem than you might think. Q: Who benefits most from using PushMX? A: That would probably be a brokerage office where a lot of things are done manually, with a lot of backbreaking work taking place to get these things done. An office where the end of the month is controlled chaos, where people don t have time to answer the phones or eat lunch. These kinds of offices will benefit immediately and dramatically from the visibility and increased efficiency provided by PushMX. It changes their entire work style and really helps them get ahead of the curve. Q: Do the large, nationwide firms and their branches benefit less than the smaller ones? A: Not always, it depends on how they re organized. A lot of large mortgage brokers have a number of branches that run almost as an independent small office. PushMX is great for this type of business because our database architecture immediately allows the main office or the headquarters to see how business is progressing at all the satellite offices. This is something that our larger brokerage customers really need and want. Q How is PushMX sold and licensed? Does it come in different sizes? A: PushMX is delivered based on the number of individuals that will be interacting with the software within an organization, all in one office or in several remote locations. We start with a five-user network license and we can go up to 10, , 200 or as many users as you need, all connected together. In theory, a brokerage firm could have 5,000 people in 50 different locations, and they could all be interconnected using PushMX. Q: How will your products and your company change over time?

6 A: On a daily basis we re learning more about our customers needs, and as you bring up a large customer base, you get all kinds of feedback. We re the kind of company that actually feeds off that feedback. We expect that as time goes by, our products will become more compelling and more useful and more valuable to mortgage brokers until PushMX becomes a part of their business infrastructure that they cannot live without. We will continuously bring fresh ideas to our customers on how to manage their businesses more effectively. Q: And how does that look in terms of new products from PushMX Software? A: I can t say a lot about that for competitive reasons, but the natural progression in all software development is in understanding how the needs of your key customers are evolving. I think we ve done that very well in the way we have created PushMX and made it so useful to mortgage brokers. As we learn more and more about how our customers work and we help them grow their businesses, we ll learn more about their critical issues. We have the experience and software architecture expertise to create many more solutions for them. Today, we have our Core Module, our Web/CRM Module and our Business Optimization Module. We are in daily contact with our customers including major national mortgage companies and we will introduce additional new products to fulfill the market needs of our customers as we and they progress within this industry. Q: How has the mortgage software business has evolved in the past year or two? A: The landscape has definitely advanced when it comes to the software choices available to mortgage brokers. Up until about a year ago, all of the software for brokers was very focused on loan processing activities and fill-in-the-blank standard forms. PushMX is providing a whole new layer of business management software that brings sophisticated but easy-to-use business software and process management capabilities to the small and medium brokerages. Q: As an experienced software architect, do you think that this industry is successfully keeping up with technology as well as other financial industries have done? A: The mortgage brokerage industry has long been neglected by technology. Other financial services sectors have made great leaps and bounds over the last two or three decades by intelligently applying technology to their most critical problems. In the mortgage broker industry that transition has not been as strong or as fast. So, we like to think that PushMX is kick-starting a new technology revolution for mortgage brokers. There are tremendous business management opportunities for gains in efficiency, productivity, accuracy, workflow and task integration all across the board. The technology options for mortgage brokers are changing quickly, and we intend that PushMX will be the vanguard in a very rapid evolution. * * * * *