New management takes the helm at a la mode
January 05, 2012 – Oklahoma City, OK — a la mode announced today that its founder and sole shareholder, Dave Biggers, is retiring from the company’s day-to-day management, and that a new CEO and Executive Chairman team will be running the company.
Scott Kinnaird, formerly the company’s CEO, has moved up to Chairman of the Executive Committee. Jay Shafer, the company’s previous CIO, has been promoted to the CEO position. Mr. Biggers will remain as the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
“For the better part of the past decade, I’ve gradually removed myself from the day-to-day management of the company and turned it over to my extremely talented management team,” noted Mr. Biggers. “With Scott’s business development expertise and Jay’s technical acumen, they’re perfectly suited to lead this company moving forward.”
In the 26 years since a la mode’s founding, the company has dominated the appraisal technology scene, with more than half the appraisers in the United States utilizing the company’s products. The company also securely vaults tens of millions of appraisals in its hosted cloud storage facilities. It’s parlayed that central role in the appraisal technology space into conclusive leadership in multiple other industries as well.
Outside of appraisal, a la mode operates a broad, innovative product line in the real estate agent and broker market. The company hosts Broker Reciprocity (IDX) listings data from MLSs serving more than 650,000 agents and brokers in the U.S., and its multi-lingual Agent XSites websites, mobile tools, and XSellerate marketing systems are in use by real estate agents around the world.
In the post-HVCC mortgage origination and servicing environment, the company’s cloud-based Mercury Network vendor management software platform became the compliance, workflow, and MISMO XML SaaS/PaaS provider of choice for the nation’s largest appraisal management companies, servicers, and lenders, handling the technical underpinning for many millions of appraisals, inspections, and BPOs a year.
Its loan originator offerings, including Mortgage XSites websites and mortgage-centric SureDocs e-signing and disclosure systems, are likewise considered best-in-class among mortgage brokers and lenders, with many millions of secure online loan applications and document signing events under their belts.
Across all its markets, the company has developed multiple ground-breaking applications for the iPad, iPhone, Android™, and Windows Mobile platforms. Their apps have been installed on more than 160,000 Apple devices worldwide, with particularly significant penetration in Europe and Asia. The newly released Android versions are growing rapidly, and the company expects worldwide demand and monetization to increase even further as it rolls out its cloud-synchronized service with user-managed customization of data-gathering screens and extensive localization features.
Perhaps most importantly, the company has achieved all of these milestones without ever resorting to capital injections or stock dilutions. The company remains debt free and Mr. Biggers is still the sole shareholder.
“Obviously, I’m proud of our track record over the past 26 years. But I’m even more excited about the company’s future”, Biggers continued. “Jay is young and driven, and he’s a consummate techno-geek, which in my opinion is needed at the helm to keep a company on the leading edge as it matures. Scott of course is an industry veteran with a network deep and wide. The two of them, along with the rest of the highly experienced officer team, will continue the pattern of excellence which they’ve designed, managed, and engineered over the past decade.”
~ Source a la mode
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Thankfully Alamode had the insight to peddle software to everyone including your local plumber & grave digger. Appraisers for the most part have been following Dave’s lead and removing themselves from the day to day operation of losing their butts in the appraisal profession.
Hopefully Dave is as happy as a retired CEO as we are as retired appraisers.