MORTGAGE LENDERS OF AMERICA: INFOR™ CRM

ORGANIZATION

Mortgage Lenders of America is a private mortgage banker headquartered near Kansas City, MO. Its retail division, with 27 loan officers, receives leads from LendingTree and works to convert those leads into new home loans. The company’s mission is to help buyers secure a place to call home.

CHALLENGE

Mortgage Lenders of America pays about $20 each for the hundred or more leads it receives daily, making it important to capitalize on as many as possible. As the leads came in from LendingTree, Philip Kneibert, President of Mortgage Lenders of America used to copy the list and distribute the leads to his team of loan officers. At any given time, hundreds or even thousands of leads might be in some stage of follow up, tracked on sheets of paper with handwritten notes in the margins. There was no visibility into the process for Kneibert and the rest of the management team, and should a loan officer leave the company, lead information might be lost entirely.

“We needed to see where we were converting well, and where we weren’t,” explains Kneibert. “We knew that once we got to the point of sending out a proposal, we had an excellent chance of closing the loan, but we literally didn’t have a way to know how many leads were getting to that step.”

“Infor CRM adapted perfectly to our business,” says Kneibert. “XTIVIA provided customization for us — and did a great job. What we have now perfectly meets the needs of our business.”PHILIP KNEIBERT,
PRESIDENT OF MORTGAGE LENDERS OF AMERICA

SOLUTION

Kneibert knew the company would benefit from a CRM system, the question was which one would make the best fit. He reviewed several packages and quickly narrowed the list to Infor™ CRM, Goldmine, and Salesforce.com. Goldmine lacked many of the customization capabilities Kneibert wanted, and salesforce.com began to look too expensive when adding up monthly charges over the long run. Infor CRM emerged the clear winner.

Kneibert’s decision was bolstered by recommendations from colleagues both for Infor CRM and for XTIVIA, a premier Infor CRM partner also based in St. Louis. “Infor CRM adapted perfectly to our business,” says Kneibert. “XTIVIA provided customization for us, and did a great job. What we have now perfectly meets the needs of our business.”

RESULTS

With XTIVIA’s Infor CRM implementation, the return on investment was rapid and enormous. Explains Kneibert, “We only had to convert an additional three to four loans a month to have the system pay for itself in less than six months.” In fact, Mortgage Lenders of America’s return was far greater than that. Close rates increased by 30 percent — more than six additional each month — adding up to an extra $118,000 a year!

Today, that untraceable, hard-copy list of leads is a thing of the past. XTIVIA developed an automatic XML transfer that brings the data from LendingTree directly into Infor CRM and assigns it to the appropriate loan officer. There’s no more paper floating around, no handwritten notes, no chance of losing a lead in an in-box.

Kneibert praises the expert assistance and advice he receives from XTIVIA, “XTIVIA has come to our rescue several times. LendingTree once changed its file format suddenly, and we weren’t able to import our lead stream. XTIVIA responded immediately and was able to get us working again within 10 minutes.”

Mortgage Lenders of America is in competition for the loans; the same information has been provided to other lenders. Timeliness is all important — Kneibert wants his loan officers to make contact with those leads immediately. Before there was simply no way to know if a particular lead had been contacted, and if they had been contacted, what the result of that contact was. Now Kneibert has full visibility into the lead process. At any time he can see how many leads each officer has and at what step in the sales cycle those leads are at. In Saleslogix, a new status is assigned to each step of the sales cycle, moving the lead through the process as each step is completed. The loan officers can record detailed notes about their conversations and schedule follow- up phone calls or emails to keep the cycle moving. Management can ensure that each lead has been contacted.

Infor CRM is an ideal sales management tool, giving Kneibert the ability to closely analyze both his personnel and his lead stream, making strategic changes when and where appropriate. “If I see that a particular loan officer has too many leads in the initial stages, I can stop the flow of leads until they’ve caught up and advanced those leads.”

Kneibert also monitors metrics such as the number of status changes made each day, noting for example that a loan officer has not sent out a new proposal in several days. “It gives me a better feel for who’s got momentum, directing more leads in their direction and working to motivate those without the momentum.”

Mortgage Lenders of America is helping buyers secure a place to call home. Thanks to Infor CRM and XTIVIA it’s helping more buyers than ever before.

SUMMARY

XTIVIA’s implementation of Infor CRM for Mortgage Lenders of America helped the software company earn a 2008 CRM Excellence Award from Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. Editors cited Infor CRM for extending and expanding Customer Relationship Management across the entire customer life-cycle, and based its award to Infor CRM, in part, on Mortgage Lenders of America’s four-month, 304 percent ROI.

KEY COMPONENTS

SOFTWARE

INFOR CRM™

Download the Case Study PDF here

XTIVIA needs the contact information you provide to us to contact you about our products and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at anytime, read our Privacy Policy here.