Six Sigma = Continuous Improvement... Last week I spoke with Kathleen Carey, SVP, E-Business & Quality, and Hank Zupnick, CIO, at GE Capital Real Estate (soon to be GE Real Estate) about ReSource, GE Capital's online processing system introduced at the beginning of 2002 and now used by 600 professionals worldwide. GE Capital Real Estate's portfolio exceeds $24 billion through its structured finance, equity and capital markets products.

The ReSource system was developed in just seven months and incorporates both CapitalThinking's software and applications built in-house. So how did GE Capital develop its new system? Naturally, Carey and Zupnick pointed me to GE's Six Sigma program. I'm not an expert on Six Sigma, and many words have been written on the subject. (Amazon lists 89 books with Six Sigma in the title.)

But listening to Carey and Zupnick describe the exercise, one element struck me as critically important -- the dedication of full-time team leaders held accountable for continuous process improvement. These so-called "Black Belts" take responsibility for "measuring, analyzing, improving, and controlling key processes that influence customer satisfaction and productivity growth."

By automating deal flow and underwriting -- AFTER standardizing the process -- ReSource puts everybody "on the same page." So questions like "What's the status of the appraisal?" can be quickly answered. And loan approvals don't rely upon stacks of documents sent from office to office. The next step, according to Carey, is to bring third parties into the online process -- architects, lawyers, and environmental professionals. But the biggest long-term challenge is to demonstrate the benefits of online processing to the "front end" mortgage professional. That's when the finance industry will achieve real transparency.

--Peter Pike