MyLoanBiz Builds Mortgage Application on the Force.com Platform, Fills Industry Gap
Once upon a time there was a gap in the mortgage industry, one that customer relationship management (CRM) applications didn’t fill. Cookie-cutting software aimed at sales organizations didn’t provide the flexibility to bend to the nuances of the mortgage industry. Mortgage companies struggled with static programs that only partially filled their needs or poured untold hours and resources into building custom programs that still failed to offer a complete solution.
Enter MyLoanBiz.
Force.com as Business Blueprint
MyLoanBiz provides a preconfigured version of Salesforce applications for the mortgage industry. As a Force.com ISV partner, the company built a fully functional application on top of salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. The world’s first platform as a service, Force.com lets developers create and deliver any kind of business application entirely on demand, without software.
“Everything we needed to build an on-demand application and sell it came with the Force.com platform,” said George Kenessey, CEO of MyLoanBiz. “It’s given us a blueprint for building a business—complete with technology, marketing, and new releases—which we’ve applied to our little corner of the world. Force.com has been a huge advantage, and we couldn’t have built MyLoanBiz without it.”
With MyLoanBiz, individual mortgage
professionals or an entire mortgage company can manage all critical client information—from contact
details to activity history—in a single place. Mortgage professionals who want to use Salesforce no
longer need to spend time and money customizing it. Already customized with standard industry
functions, the app can be further configured to meet the needs of each company or user.
“We built the general mortgage application with more than 450 custom fields, 4 custom objects, and 15–20 S-controls, along with up to 70 custom emails,” says Kenessey. “But every user has his or her unique way of doing business so if, for example, a loan officer wants to create a new page or add new fields, we can do that. None of our competitors offer that kind of flexibility.”
Forget the Venture Capital
Since its inception, MyLoanBiz has rapidly acquired customers and expects to double its revenue in the next year. Reflecting on this stratospheric growth, Kenessey notes, “It takes years to grow a business to the point where it is mature enough to build a customer base. Our company was mature from day one. Force.com has put us right into the race, and we’ve been growing ever since.”
What drives this rapid growth is the company’s freedom to focus on its core business because the technology infrastructure is completely managed by salesforce.com. “Salesforce.com is the best on-demand systems provider bar none,” adds Kenessey. “They have teams of developers constantly tuning and perfecting their platform, so we’re free to perfect the mortgage aspect.”
The company actually likens salesforce.com to an angel investor: “They bootstrapped our entire operation,” says Kenessey. “As a Force.com partner, we didn’t have to build the infrastructure or purchase servers and software. Our support needs were taken care of, and they even helped us deliver and market the app on the AppExchange.”
MyLoanBiz initially built its product using ColdFusion. The company then looked at several other options for building the app before deciding that Salesforce was the only route it could take.
“At the end of the day, it became clear that partnering with salesforce.com and building on Force.com gave us everything we needed,” Kenessey says. “We built in weeks what would have taken months in Java or .NET. Force.com is not just a development platform. It’s a platform on which we’v e built an entire company.”
Partnering with Salesforce.com: Built-In Savings, Built-In Brand
In terms of cost savings, MyLoanBiz deflects the costs of building a standalone app by running on Force.com. The five-person company, which calls on a small pool of developers on an as-needed basis, runs a tight shop that maximizes the strengths of each employee.
Kenessey has previously started a company that required $6 million in venture capital to ramp up. “We had to buy all the hardware, all the software, and then hire a bunch of developers. The costs just kept adding up. I couldn’t imagine starting a business that way now.”
The cost-effective benefits of the Force.com platform don’t stop at the infrastructure savings. It may take years for a company to establish a brand, spending thousands on marketing campaigns and advertising. In this case, the salesforce.com brand is built into MyLoanBiz’s application and leveraged as a means of fostering trust to attract customers.
“People trust the salesforce.com brand,” says Kenessey. “Many of our customers initially wanted to go with Salesforce, but didn’t have the time to build and customize their own app, so we capitalize on that. Everything we do now in terms of packaging reflects the Salesforce brand, even our logo.”
When MyLoanBiz was getting off the ground, salesforce.com also helped the company generate public relations. “The joint press releases salesforce.com created for us gave us free PR. It was just unbelievable,” he adds.
Keeps Getting Better
As salesforce.com continues to evolve its award-winning software-as-a-service solution, companies like MyLoanBiz reap the benefits. Whenever there is a new release, the company updates that release in the Force.com platform and propagates those upgrades through all its customers. The ever-evolving releases help the company apply individual functionality to specific customers as needed.
For instance, MyLoanBiz will apply Visualforce to streamline one of its client’s call center environments with pre-populated scripts that save call information in one place. Advanced functionality like this positions the company to go after and win larger, more upscale customers.
“Salesforce.com constantly pushes the envelope when it comes to innovation,” Kenessey concludes. “It just keeps getting better, which means our product keeps getting better, and that translates to continued success for our business.”
How do I get Started?
The best way to get started is to follow the Force.com Quick Start steps.
