Company: MindBox, Greenbrae, CA
Company Description: MindBox™ helps mortgage lenders and other organizations improve their bottom line by automating knowledge-intensive processes. They provide services that leverage best practices to deliver multi- channel applications and optimize client interactions. Their technology integrates internet interface and other client contact channels with back-end operations in one streamlined system.
Nomination Category: Company, Office & Product Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best New Product or Service

Nomination Title: MindBox's Power Editor--Business Rules For Business People

   1. Tell the story of this nominated product or service (up to 500 words): its function, its features and benefits, and how it differs from competitive offerings. Include in your description the date in 2004 on which this product or service was introduced to the U.S. marketplace:

Business rules technology is gaining in popularity in the complex world of
business operations and processes. Behind these rules is an intelligent decision
engine that analyzes the properties and offers a decision. One of the most
challenging aspects of sucsessfully implementing an intelligent decision engine in
any business is finding a way to make the maintenance and extension of that
system simple and flexible. As part of this strategy, it is also critical that
business users have the ability to make these changes and additions, without having to wait for IT availability or expertise.

Power Editor and their core rules-based decisioning technology has now
been used in industries as diverse as farming (to optimize crop yields) and
maritime (to calculate water currents and optimize vessel traffic). However,
MindBox remains focused on the financial services industry where the business
opportunity for their technology is all decision processes in the banking,
brokerage, insurance, lending or account management (e.g. pricing, product
selection, debt reparation, cross sell, line increase or decrease, etc.).

HomeBanc, a mortgage lender, and other MindBox clients First
Preference and Aegis Lending needs were the driving force behind the
creation of the Power Editor.  Over the past decade, lenders have invested in
various automation technologies to speed up and reduce costs in a paper-driven
environment. In order for lenders to keep up with internal and external daily
changes, many automated systems operated by a set of rules or policies were
created. Until now, all of these systems were managed by IT departments.

MindBox’s Power Editor, introduced April 2004, allows non-technical line-of-
business managers to maintain and modify the rules engines and business
policies to respond more quickly to market condition and free IT department
burdens.

Customers (which include companies like Fannie Mae, Countrywide, GMAC, Ford Motor Credit and hundreds others) usually see complete ROI within six months.
HomeBanc estimated that they will save $150,000 in IT costs the first year and
they are now far more competitive as they are able to change their products, price
points, and eligibility parameters etc…faster. Imagine for example, HomeBanc’s
labor-intensive task of having to update and maintain the different rules engines
driving thousand of rules that cover over 200 loan products, supporting more than
500 users in branches throughout the Southern states. First Preference now has
two people maintaining the thousands of rules as opposed to four, and they have
decreased the amount of time it takes to accomplish the task from 2 hours to 15
minutes. Aegis Lending loan approvals used to take days or even sometime
weeks, now approval is immediate---at the first customer point of contact. 

Using MindBox's Power Editor is different than other products because the Power
Editor:  1) Is a revolutionary editing tool that allows users to maintain and
organize rules independently; 2) Employs case based reasoning (CBR) -- a patented technology that allows fuzzy logic and matching; 3) Uses Domain-specific
decisioning components – MindBox has built templates to address decision
processes within a given industry.

   2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. You may include links to product photos, service logos, etc. IMPORTANT: List each link on a separate line, begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.website.com]:

Press Release:
http://softdist.mindbox.com/pressreleases/AE10Expanded23FEB2004.doc

National Mortgage News Article:
http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/mindbox/

Product description, and screen shot:
http://www.mindbox.com/solutions/power_editor.shtml

HomeBanc Cusotmer Case Study:
http://www.mindbox.com/clientlist/customerStories/MB%20CS%20HomeBanc%20F.pdf

First Preference Customer Case Study:
http://www.mindbox.com/clientlist/customerStories/MB%20CS%20FirstPref%20F.pdf

Aegis Customer Case Study:
http://www.mindbox.com/clientlist/customerStories/MB%20CS%20Aegis%20F.pdf

   3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that development this nominated product or service:

Dr. Brian Sauk is Vice President of Engineering for MindBox™, responsible for
product development and support including the Power Editor. Dr. Sauk, an
Artificial Intelligence (AI) expert, has also delivered knowledge-based
applications to support complex decision making processes for customer interactions in call centers, at help desks, and via the web. AI application have been used to do such things as launch the space shuttle, deploy troops in Desert Storm, cut costs and manpower at American Express as well as crop planning for Frito Lay's cheetos!

He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in
Electrical Engineering, both from Carnegie Mellon.