Industry: Financial Services
Company Profile: As the largest Small Business Administration (SBA) 504 loan processor in the United States, TMC Financing relies heavily on their technical systems to fund growth transformation across the country. Their hard-working teams combine cutting edge technology with decades of underwriting experience to fund over 60,000 jobs and tens of millions of dollars in revenue for small-businesses and the communities they operate in.
Tools Utilized: Formstack for Salesforce, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Box Content Cloud
Business Challenge: The Covid-19 pandemic fueled more demand for loan processing than at any other time in the SBA’s history. From the earliest days of the crisis, TMC played an important role in expediting loan funding for those with the greatest need. To meet demand, the firm more than doubled employee headcount and invested heavily in expansion activities.
Despite this, their technology systems were not optimized to support such high volume; the old manual processes were far too slow to keep up with the incoming customers. Specifically, the solicitation and collection of loan application information, ranging from confidential financial data to dozens of individual documents, was both labor-intensive and inefficient, often resulting in delays ranging from a few weeks to a few months.
The Carabiner Connection: In consultation with TMC leadership, Carabiner Group diagnosed several key choke-points across the loan application process and designed a unique operating system to replace the manual process. Utilizing several industry-leading technology solutions, Carabiner designed, built, and implemented a system that unified the disparate company divisions into one optimized, technology-enabled customer journey.
Formstack for Salesforce was deployed to digitize the collection of sensitive financial information and the associated documents necessary to fund a loan. Formstack Forms are used to manage the loan process and collect the information, while Formstack Documents is used to automatically route that information directly into pre-filled templates.
To easily locate and centralize the information for further processing, Carabiner Group deployed the cloud-based file storage system Box. Implementing a bespoke integration between the Box interface and Salesforce Sales Cloud via custom API, information now flowed seamlessly between a data repository and the operating interface of the firm.
A strong foundation for the entire process was constructed via the Salesforce Sales Cloud platform. Advanced reporting, workflows, and automation were embraced to provide insight into the loan administration process and accelerate the pace of funding. As a single source-of-truth, the platform became the go-to operating portal for firm leadership and operating associates alike.
Resulting Effects: The revamped SBA 504 loan application management system demonstrates significant time savings, estimated at levels of 75-90% across divisions. The new solution saves 2 hours on every loan application. Given last year’s volume, this is over 2,000 hours or 83.3 days a year of increase efficiency, and millions of dollars of additional funding dispensed to small businesses across the United States.
This project is a great example of the cross functional work the Carabiner team excels at. From day-to-day administration to high-level strategy work, the firm is excellently positioned to identify opportunities for operational efficiency and then execute the solution necessary to capitalize on that efficiency.
– Seamus Ruiz-Earle, CEO of Carabiner Group
