DOE Empowers their Loan Programs Office (LPO) 

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) fully implemented their Loan Portfolio Monitoring System and is used by more than 100 users and handles over 5000 daily business transactions.   

The solution features credit rate monitoring, disbursement tracking, project performance metric entry and reporting, communication logging, and seamless integration with their document management system. The solution also orchestrates tasks with workflows among multiple departments, both in the home office and in the field.  

• 508 Compliance 
• Fully normalized database structure 
• Automated workflows
• Auditable tracking of all user activity
• Significant performance improvements  

Modernizing Legacy Operations 

The U.S. Department of Energy needed to redesign its current loan portfolio application within an accelerated development time frame. The loans referenced are highly-sensitive and require an intricate workflow to meet compliance.   

An existing system was in place but did not adequately meet the agency's needs, and low-performance speed was hindering employee productivity.  

• Highly complex business workflow  
• Sensitive financial information needed to be stored properly 
• Full adherence to compliance standards 
• Software development required to be efficient, agile and clean 
• Solution needed to be scalable  

How the DOE upgraded its Loan Management System Using Graphite Studio™  

The system LPO manages $40 billion in renewable energy and green technologies loans and loan guarantees.  

The solution is composed of credit rate monitoring, disbursement tracking, project performance metric entry and reporting, communication logging, and seamless integration with the LPO's document management system. The solution also orchestrates tasks with workflows among multiple departments, both in the home office and in the field. Connections were made possible by visually incorporating pre-built web services in workflows. With a composable architecture, future changes are more easily adapted for efficiency.

The result is less time dedicated to simple tasks and more time focused on critical business functions.

— Senior Federal Representative

The system takes the borrower through the entire life cycle, from loan application all the way through to maintenance and closing of the loan. 

Working better together 

The entire project, including conversion, took eight months to complete, less than one-third of the original project, and with half the resources. The Graphite Studio™

team has provided 400+ feature updates since Phase One went into production. What started as a single application has evolved into an enterprise-wide system that provides transparency, increased productivity and inter-departmental communication across the Loan Programs Office. 

• 90% reduction in database size
• 30x faster average loan summary page load
• 7.5x faster system-wide page load
• Fully responsive web-based solution
• Less operational system resources required for a greener, more sustainable architecture itself 

Future Plans  

The reduced time to implement and deploy new features puts the LPO Loan management system in an agile position to become the backbone of a clean lending bank to enable the rapid funding and deployment of innovations such as green energy production and storage technology.