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Virtualization, Mobilization, and Automation

Editorial
April 5, 2016

How a mortgage field services provider transformed their IT operations to support growth, quality, and a rapidly changing business model. “Change is the Law of Life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy

“With constantly changing client requirements, a never ending quest to improve productivity through business process automation, and ever increasing information security requirements”

Safeguard Properties is the nation’s leading mortgage field services company providing an array of property inspections and maintenance services to the largest financial institutions in the U.S. These services are supported by a network of thousands of mobile field workers utilizing smartphones that are equipped with Safeguard’s own custom built apps. These apps enable Safeguard’s network to transmit millions of images and hundreds of gigabytes of data daily. This continuous stream of data is fed into Safeguard’s IT infrastructure, which is then connected to more than 100 mortgage banking clients. 

In 2012, as a result of a major acquisition and business growth, Safeguard embarked on a plan to revolutionize their IT infrastructure, operations and application portfolio to optimize the speed of delivery, quality, and technological advances. Safeguard’s strategy was to invest in technology that would solve the needs of the present, while also creating a foundation for the future of the mobile field services business.

As a mortgage field services provider, Safeguard saw a rapid organic growth in the services provided. This was a result of the housing crisis, mixed with increased regulatory requirements and compliance controls. Safeguard utilized this opportunity to revamp their aging IT infrastructure into a state-of-the-art, automated environment, located in multiple new data center facilities. This transformation leveraged virtualization to optimize server hardware resources and capital spend, while giving the organization high availability and system movement flexibility for support and maintenance activities. “With the latest virtualization technologies, we were able to increase performance, while better utilizing our physical server infrastructure, and lowering our total costs,” states Adam Piechocinski, Virtualization and DevOps Manager, Safeguard.

Automation is another cornerstone of the Safeguard IT business transformation. Using automation tools, tightly integrated with virtualization environments, Safeguard was able to build thousands of servers to support the new data center environments in just a few days. Safeguard’s traditional build, patch, and deploy cycle previously consumed a minimum of five days where work would get passed back and forth between server admins, data center ops, network, storage and application build teams. Taking a virtualization and automation-only approach to new server builds, allowed Safeguard to build complete application environments in minutes. This automation approach also saw a significant decrease in errors, inconsistent builds, and variance between server classifications, which additionally led to a decrease in outages for Safeguard’s user population.

The fusion of Safeguard’s automation and virtualization is also leveraged during patching cycles to patch and move systems throughout the data center environments, increasing availability and lowering patching windows from days to minutes. System agility in movements of applications with no user impact, has increased system availability to Safeguards clients, as well as to their network, all while giving Safeguard’s virtualization engineers the ability to service and patch hardware during the work day.

This automation and virtualization combination is also carried forward with software deployments. With constantly changing client requirements, a never ending quest to improve productivity through business process automation, and ever increasing information security requirements, Safeguard has been able to transform its deployment process for mobile and client applications from an eight hour deployment to a five minute process. As mobile development is completed and passes through multiple layers of quality checks, the software is packaged and auto-deployed to multiple data center environments simultaneously. This formerly labor intense and manual process is now completed with just a few mouse clicks. Safeguard’s mobile users are able to obtain patches, upgrades, and OS fixes for their Android and iOS applications much quicker and from multiple data centers around the country. This agility is the corner stone of Safeguard’s IT operations strategy. Leveraging automation, packaging, and DevOPs concepts, the company has been able to transform to a rapid response and near real-time change engine that supports many different application platforms. 

“To remain relevant and support the real-time business change, IT organizations must adopt an ‘automation first’ and virtualization mindset. We live in a ‘speed of thought’ society, where real-time agility to address issues, deploy systems and transform business processes are what separates growing businesses from businesses that react,” stated Scott Anderson, Assistant Vice President of Infrastructure, Safeguard.

As IT leaders, we cannot rely on monolithic servers, processes or workflows as a standard business practice anymore. With cost containment pressures, leaders must drive to virtualized, hybrid cloud-based environments which optimize their capital spend versus utilization. Automation of these environments must be drilled into the organizational DNA to speed processes, reduce human errors, increase system uptime and lower operational staffing needs. Business leaders of tomorrow understand business transformation and are leveraging all of today’s hardware and software tools to transform and optimize their organization into a change at the ‘speed of thought’ engine.

Source: CIO Review

Additional Resource:
Virtualization, Mobilization and Automation [pdf]

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CEO

Alan Jaffa

Alan Jaffa is the Chief Executive Officer for Safeguard Properties, steering the company as the mortgage field services industry leader. He also serves on the board of advisors for SCG Partners, a middle-market private equity fund focused on diversifying and expanding Safeguard Properties’ business model into complimentary markets.

Alan joined Safeguard in 1995, learning the business from the ground up. He was promoted to Chief Operating Officer in 2002, and was named CEO in May 2010. His hands-on experience has given him unique insights as a leader to innovate, improve and strengthen Safeguard’s processes to assure that the company adheres to the highest standards of quality and customer service.

Under Alan’s leadership, Safeguard has grown significantly with strategies that have included new and expanded services, technology investments that deliver higher quality and greater efficiency to clients, and strategic acquisitions. He takes a team approach to process improvement, involving staff at all levels of the organization to address issues, brainstorm solutions, and identify new and better ways to serve clients.

In 2008, Alan was recognized by Crain’s Cleveland Business in its annual “40-Under-40” profile of young leaders. He also was named a NEO Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Award finalist in 2013.

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Esq., General Counsel and EVP

Linda Erkkila

Linda Erkkila is the General Counsel and Executive Vice President for Safeguard Properties, with oversight of legal, human resources, training, and compliance. Linda’s broad scope of oversight covers regulatory issues that impact Safeguard’s operations, risk mitigation, strategic planning, human resources and training initiatives, compliance, insurance, litigation and claims management, and counsel related to mergers, acquisition and joint ventures.

Linda assures that Safeguard’s strategic initiatives align with its resources, leverage opportunities across the company, and contemplate compliance mandates. She has practiced law for 25 years and her experience, both as outside and in-house counsel, covers a wide range of corporate matters, including regulatory disclosure, corporate governance compliance, risk assessment, compensation and benefits, litigation management, and mergers and acquisitions.

Linda earned her JD at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She holds a degree in economics from Miami University and an MBA. Linda was previously named as both a “Woman of Influence” by HousingWire and as a “Leading Lady” by MReport.

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COO

Michael Greenbaum

Michael Greenbaum is the Chief Operating Officer of Safeguard Properties, where he has played a pivotal role since joining the company in July 2010. Initially brought on as Vice President of REO, Mike’s exceptional leadership and strategic vision quickly propelled him to Vice President of Operations in 2013, and ultimately to COO in 2015. Over his 14-year tenure at Safeguard, Mike has been instrumental in driving change and fostering innovation within the Property Preservation sector, consistently delivering excellence and becoming a trusted partner to clients and investors.

A distinguished graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Mike earned a degree in Quantitative Economics. Following his graduation, he served in the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Branch, where he specialized in supply chain management. Before his tenure at Safeguard, Mike honed his expertise by managing global supply chains for 13 years, leveraging his military and civilian experience to lead with precision and efficacy.

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CFO

Joe Iafigliola

Joe Iafigliola is the Chief Financial Officer for Safeguard Properties. Joe is responsible for the Control, Quality Assurance, Business Development, Marketing, Accounting, and Information Security departments. At the core of his responsibilities is the drive to ensure that Safeguard’s focus remains rooted in Customer Service = Resolution. Through his executive leadership role, he actively supports SGPNOW.com, an on-demand service geared towards real estate and property management professionals as well as individual home owners in need of inspection and property preservation services. Joe is also an integral force behind Compliance Connections, a branch of Safeguard Properties that allows code enforcement professionals to report violations at properties that can then be addressed by the Safeguard vendor network. Compliance Connections also researches and shares vacant property ordinance information with Safeguard clients.

Joe has an MBA from The Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), and holds a bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University’s Honors Accounting program.

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Business Development

Carrie Tackett

Business Development Safeguard Properties