Non-Profit Community Advocacy and Housing Services Organization Chooses
e/pop for Affordable Collaboration Throughout 31 Offices

NACA’s (The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) mission is to help make the American dream come true for potential homeowners who don’t have excellent credit or have low or moderate income which may not qualify them for a home loan. The non-profit organization, founded in 1988, is a community advocacy and housing services’ organization that fights predatory and discriminatory lending practices. With 31 offices throughout the U.S., NACA is the largest and most effective organization of its kind in the country.

Unlike many high profile, non-profit organization, NACA strategically invests heavily in IT infrastructure products and services. The organization’s founder and CEO, Bruce Marks, firmly believes that using the latest and most innovative technologies will help its employees provide better service to its Members and partners.

Mark Epstein, NACA’s Director of IT, is responsible for the evaluation, purchase and deployment of all IT-related software, hardware and telecom equipment in all 31 offices.

According to Epstein, he had absolutely no doubt that web conferencing would provide real-time collaboration benefits to more than 200 NACA employees as well as lenders and other potential business partners they deal with on a daily basis.

“We had tried Webex, but the cost was way out of range for us,” said Mark Epstein. “I knew that web conferencing software, deployed and managed by our IT staff, would be the most cost-efficient way for us to reap the benefits of web conferencing and not worry about racking up overcharges which would force us to limit employee usage.”

Epstein found WiredRed Software while researching web conferencing software alternatives on the Internet. WiredRed’s e/pop Web Conferencing software offers a comprehensive set of features which includes multi-party audio and synchronous video conferencing, remote control, plus complete desktop, application/document sharing and dynamic PowerPoint™ presentation sharing. In addition, the latest version of e/pop Web Conferencing offers Secure Socket Layer (SSL3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) as standard security features. The new security features prevent common security breaches such as spoofing and eavesdropping that could potentially expose highly confidential corporate financial, personnel and customer information. More importantly, e/pop now includes new integration points for on-premise Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). This significantly decreases the chance that highly sensitive, confidential information is leaked or accessed by the wrong individuals.

Since deploying e/pop Web Conferencing in January 2004, NACA has used e/pop Web Conferencing in a variety of ways. Epstein launches the software’s remote control feature in order to provide technical support to employees and partners outside of the network for NACA’s proprietary application NACALynx. NACALynx is the organization’s “paperless” mortgage processing system that interfaces with various lenders and supports other associated banking applications as well. NACA Housing Consultants use the web-based NACALynx program to enter data during their member intake sessions. Since the program interfaces with all major credit bureaus, Housing Consultants can pull and analyze credit reports, and all supporting documentation is scanned into the system at the touch of a button. When finalized, the entire loan application package can be sent electronically to the lender for approval, and a decision can usually be rendered within 24 hours.

“We use e/pop Web Conferencing to provide NACALynx training to financial partners and employees,” said Epstein. “It has become an indispensable method to conduct scheduled or ad-hoc meetings, and with 200 employees scattered throughout the country, it is an excellent way for everyone to gather remotely and share our ideas interactively.”

As NACA continues its mission to stabilize neighborhoods and fight discriminatory lending practices, new technologies, like web conferencing are there on-demand to help NACA, its employees and partners to work better as a team, at less expense.

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