NetOxygen: Loan Processing
Software for the Real World

NetOxygen Technologies

Innovative n-Tier Technology

N-tier technology defines a multi-tier architecture where the core functionality resides between the client interface and the database. This middle tier, called the "smart data layer," contains the business logic and complex processing of objects and controls. This separation allows for unlimited network flexibility, easier system maintenance, and centralized application updates because the Web browser, Visual Basic, or any other XML/SOAP-based application that provides the client interface does not contain the functionality of the application.

Through a true n-tier architecture, the lender can implement the system through a browser, both in-house and on the Web. A browser environment dramatically reduces your hardware costs.

With NetOxygen, your organization scales fifty times higher than a client/server implementation and at least fifteen times higher than a thin-client deployment realized through a third-party application. In terms of the servers required, it's the difference between one server supporting fifty users and one server supporting hundreds using NetOxygen.

Yet, what makes the n-tier structure of NetOxygen unique is the logic incorporated in the smart data layer. NetOxygen uses low-level components that map directly to the columns in the database, thereby separating the functionality from the user interface. These components dynamically address the lending scenario by doing the work on the server, not on the user machine.

NetOxygen is a revolutionary technology that can adapt to any business environment and any new advances that the industry develops.

New Technology Integration

Gallagher's NetOxygen architecture provides the lender with more versatility now and in the future, both from the operations perspective as well as the technology sector.

This growth is possible because NetOxygen thins the application to a mere user interface by using a component-based structure in an n-tier core. Using this layered architecture allows the lender to modify elements without impacting the whole system—meaning modifications to the components can be made without forcing the system off-line.

In the past, adopting new and emerging technologies required add-ons or modifications to the core to provide capabilities that the original system did not support. As new technology emerged, the lender had to invest substantial time and money adding new functionality within their existing structure. With NetOxygen, lenders no longer have to adapt their technology to the change, but instead add the change to the system as a component—a NetOxygen component designed to inherit the capabilities and contribute to the core application.

NetOxygen provides independent, reusable components that include a set of controls and script libraries for use on your custom interface. NetOxygen's controls react with other components and minimize the number of round trips from the client to the server. This functionality allows dynamic screen updates and ensures constant performance from the system, regardless of the number of users who access it. The libraries handle requests and responses for NetOxygen, which gives each client the flexibility to use many Web development tools without imposing any restrictions on the look and feel of the front end.

Through NetOxygen, lenders spend their resources developing and offering new services for their customers, not reinventing their origination system each time an innovation enters the market.

Expert System

At the heart of NetOxygen is the Expert System, a decisioning engine based on artificial intelligence (AI) and designed to enable business analysts, not programmers, to define the rules that determine the system's behavior. Using your current best practices, business rules provide the conditions that drive the Expert System and your user processes. Through the Expert System, rules can be associated with any field, including custom fields, to evaluate the conditions and determine the result. The result automatically specifies screen or field visibility, product availability, fee schedules, credit grades, security levels, document generation, or any other aspect of the system.

The Expert System's business rules are stored in the smart data layer as a decisioning component. As relevant loan parameters change, the appropriate rules are evaluated and new conditions are applied. The Expert System compares only values that have changed, allowing system performance to remain constant, regardless of the number of rules that are evaluated.

While other products may provide some degree of decisioning, it is commonly accomplished with procedural code. Therefore, lenders must rely on a developer or the vendor to make changes. NetOxygen uses business rules and a configuration layer to automate decision-making. The result is that the Expert System distributes your behaviors throughout the system without requiring code changes by technology departments. Because code-based systems must insert changes for every behavior instance, they reduce the lender's ability to adapt to business changes quickly and cost efficiently.

Business analysts that use NetOxygen directly control the behavior of the system, allowing the company to adapt to changes in its business model at any time. This means that NetOxygen systems automate corporate knowledge and successfully maintain that asset indefinitely.

Automated Lending Components

With the benefits of a versatile development environment and a responsive architecture, NetOxygen provides the financial services industry with a new standard in technology. NetOxygen's Web-enabled engine automates the mortgage lending aspects of your system, providing seamlessly integrated field services, such as default values, data validation, audit tracking, security settings, custom scripting, and automated decisioning.

For example, the Product and Pricing engine accesses the loan products that your organization offers based on the criteria and business rules that you define. Along with predefined standard products, virtually any product or pricing matrix can be defined or imported. This engine includes stream definition tools for payments, mortgage insurance, and buydowns and allows you to create custom options validated against your underwriting guidelines.

Other engines are provided along with Product and Pricing. The Loan Selection engine groups all aspects of a selected loan together for use throughout the system. The Fees engine dynamically calculates all formulas, factors, and accounting adjustments for a particular fee. Our Contact Management engine manages your company's vendor and third-party information, including the formulas or setups associated with each. You may also define your own branches and hierarchy within this engine to streamline and automate branch-specific pricing, fees, workflow paths, or other loan-processing components.

With the automated lending components included in NetOxygen, you can develop an end-to-end e-commerce solution or enhance the application you already have to improve your current approach.

Component-Based Architecture

Many loan applications today are not part of an integrated, seamless system. What you see is only one facet of the lending environment. Often, behind the scenes is a clumsy and expensive client/server system with a coarse patchwork of added functionality that the original system did not support.

In contrast, NetOxygen offers a component-based architecture designed to support a multi-company, branch-based environment. NetOxygen's out-of-the-box system can handle the mortgage lending process from prequalification or registration to shipping and delivery. With NetOxygen, any lender can deploy an end-to-end loan origination system that is sustainable and scalable to the highest volumes long into the future. And NetOxygen's versatility can easily handle all facets of consumer lending, call center operations, commercial lending, or virtually any other compatible business.

Yet, because of the component-oriented structure of the system, NetOxygen may also be implemented piece by piece. Along with the script and control libraries, NetOxygen gives developers and clients flexible components that may be plugged into a Gallagher system or easily customized for use in another system. The mortgage origination functionality of NetOxygen is provided in language-independent components that may be customized using common development languages and accessed using any Internet-enabled package that communicates using XML and SOAP, including Visual Basic or the Web.

Practically speaking, this means that NetOxygen brings standard mortgage-lending functionality to any Internet-based, thin-client environment and also allows you to deliver Gallagher technology to anyone with a client application and an Internet connection.

With NetOxygen, you have the components to enhance an existing e-commerce system or to tailor one to make your current operation more efficient and less costly.

Seamless Web Presence

With the advent of the Internet, most lenders created a Web presence that brought the lender's name and products to borrower desktops everywhere. Most e-commerce systems available today require the lender to abandon their existing presence and implement a new one designed by a software developer.

In contrast, NetOxygen places the functionality and power between the client interface and the database, leaving the lender to determine the look and feel of the interface. A NetOxygen implementation can revolutionize the speed and processing of your employees, while providing an invisible but positive impact to your borrowers and potential business partners.

Furthermore, NetOxygen includes a library of powerful components that may be placed on your Web page and run from a browser. NetOxygen's versatility puts the designing for your organization where it belongs—in your hands.

Dynamic Workflow Architecture

Whether you're looking for an out-of-the-box origination system, automated interfaces, or a suite of Web-enabled components, NetOxygen provides the most powerful and versatile lending solution available—a solution that lets you maximize your best practices and process loans faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Our dynamic workflow architecture uses load-balancing and automated rules-based routing to give lenders increased operational control over work queues and user progression. The Gallagher workflow is made up of a sequence of tasks that are conditionally available based on events and the loan's stage in the mortgage-lending process. This structure allows the lender to control the flow of work, with each task proceeding logically to the next based on priority. Integrated management tools and the Expert System ensure that all necessary data is entered and tracked at every stage, allowing the workflow to be efficiently managed by business analysts.

The out-of-the-box system includes predefined workflow processes for retail, wholesale, and correspondent lending in an e-commerce package. You can use these activities right out of the box, or you can modify them—instantly and without writing code—to define your particular needs.

Along with dynamic workflow processing, we've put the power of creating screens and fields in the hands of business analysts with our drag-and-drop interface design tool, NetOxygen Studio. Creating a new screen, adding a field to an existing one, or creating database tables is a snap using Dialog Helper's point-and-click design that automates the development. At the click of a button, your changes are ready to be added to your workflow.

Whether you opt to process over the Web or over your network, our tools allow you to modify the behavior of your system to respond to market changes or to meet your specific needs, without relying on programmers. Gallagher's NetOxygen allows you to adapt your system to match the way you do business, rather than adapting your business to match our system.