Altisource, a major vendor management company, announced that it plans to roll out its next generation of vendor and process management technologies in the second half of 2012.  One example of the new technology, mentioned by Altisourse CEO William Shepro, was an automated reverse auction system for vendors, aimed at driving down vendor charges. 

"[W]e manage a distributed network of vendors and today we are doing in many cases in I wouldn't say manual, but semi-manual process. And if you can automate the ordering of your services from vendors, you have the ability to leverage all sorts of tools to lower your cost of goods," Shepro said.  "So you can use, for example, a reverse auction to drive down what your vendor charges us for a broker price opinion for example – using better technology."

Altisource was a subsidiary of Ocwen Financial, a large mortgage servicing and asset management company until August 2009, when Ocwen split off Altisource as a separate, publicly traded company.  Altisource still has close ties to Ocwen and provides vendor management and other services to Ocwen.

Altisource is growing quickly-- third quarter revenues that were up 18% from the second quarter.  Its ties to fast-growing Ocwen were the driving factor in the growth.  In June, Ocwen purchased a major non-prime loan servicer, Litton Loan Servicing, from Goldman Sachs.  Last week, Ocwen bought Saxon Mortgage Service, another major servicer, from Morgan Stanley.  And Ocwen is apparently not done buying.  "We are looking at other transactions as we speak," Ocwen CEO told analysts the day after the Saxon purchase was announced.

Altisource is based in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg and has operations in India and Uruguay, and in locations in the United States.