Historically, loan origination workflow was paper focused and labor intensive. Measuring the efficiency and quality of work was difficult to achieve. The height of piles or folders on desks helped you know whether or not your employees were overwhelmed or had capacity. It was seemingly impossible to understand where bottlenecks existed in the system and what impact those bottlenecks were having on a customer experience.  

Finger pointing between siloed departments created friction in the process and obscured the root cause of poor customer service, especially with lending experiences. Employees had to build complicated manual processes and workarounds to compensate for department and technology limitations. It was easier to create a band-aid solution than read through hundreds of emails to discover the real cause of a systemic problem. 

When offices physically closed in the wake of the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, many lenders confronted the limitations of this approach for the first time. Outdated processes and reliance on paper created new challenges in a remote work environment. 

Managers were often left wondering who was working on what, creating confusion in assignments resulting in double work. For the first time, financial institutions had the necessary incentive to modernize, which looked very different based on existing technology:

• Lenders with antiquated paper processes or legacy corporate systems were forced to cobble together makeshift solutions. 
• Companies with existing Salesforce implementations were amazed to find that the platform supported the type of rapid, flexible development that allowed them to respond to the constantly evolving needs of the new world.  

Which one do you want to be? 

Managing a loan origination workforce in a post-COVID-19 world 

As financial institutions begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, they find that the world has changed forever. 

Working from home may no longer be a necessity, but it is rapidly becoming the norm. Companies recognize the cost savings and other benefits of a mobile workforce. Projects that used to take years to approve are now greenlit in weeks. Financial institutions must capitalize on this groundswell of support for digital transformation.    

There is no better time to champion a robust technology roadmap. Here’s why Salesforce is the solution for teams looking to manage loan origination in the post-COVID-19 world:

How Salesforce is a unique tool to support work-from-anywhere

Much has already been written on the ability of technology to transform the customer experience, introducing consumer lending portals and other tools for communication with lenders.

But the truth is, consumer expectations are at an all time high. You need to build a better lending experience or risk losing business.

A poor lending experience results from inefficiencies with process. Customer-centricity starts with the right technology. Create a digital workflow for the loan application process, whether through the automation of credit card pulls, interest rate reporting, or e-signature to make closing seamless.

But have you considered what it would mean if your management team could have total transparency into your workforce capacity and productivity? 

In a Salesforce environment, loan origination managers can standardize processes and measure performance in ways previously impossible to quantify:

• With configurable automation solutions capturing pipeline data and historical performance, managers can spot trends, load-level work allocation, and measure throughput. 
• They can predict areas of peak demand and ensure staffing to support the volume. 
• They can manage existing relationships with customers to see what upsell/cross-sell opportunities exist.
• Workers who go above and beyond are easily identified and rewarded for their significant contributions. 

Salesforce tools like Tableau CRM provide executives with high level visibility into the effectiveness of every aspect of their organization. Robust dashboards and reports allow managers to see at any time and from anywhere just what their staff is working on. With minimal customization, organizations can identify who is working on a specific aspect of the loan process. Departments can see what is coming down the pipeline, anticipate bottlenecks, and rapidly reallocate resources. 

Building a better lending experience for your customers

What about the customer experience?  With tracking of stage duration as an out-of-the-box feature of Salesforce, organizations can rapidly assess where inefficiencies and opportunities for process improvement exist. Even members of lines of business can easily create reports to assess how long it takes from the first customer touchpoint to the final successful closing of a loan. They can then review data to determine how those metrics compare to the customer’s expectations, allowing lenders to make rapid changes to meet and even exceed those expectations. 

Salesforce provides a user-friendly, mobile-ready interface to house a single source of truth about a customer and their interactions with lenders. With robust call logging, task management, email integration, and other collaborative tools, all members of a team and their managers can see progress for a given transaction. Increased transparency in the process means managers no longer need to peer over a cubicle wall to see what is happening with their staff.  

Transform the lending experience with Salesforce and Silverline

As we evolve into a truly modern workforce, financial institutions and their management staff need truly modern tools to keep pace. Salesforce’s cloud-based platform provides a uniquely flexible environment. With Salesforce, you’ll be ready for the challenges of today and the opportunities of tomorrow. 

As a Salesforce Partner since 2009, we leverage best practices acquired through more than a thousand implementations for financial services. Our core financial services team that possesses industry knowledge across all lines of business. 

We know Financial Services Cloud, and we’re ready to combine your needs with the power of the platform. Ready to discuss how you can use Salesforce to improve the lending experience?