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Case Study: A-10 Capital
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries
- Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
With primary headquarters in Boise, Idaho and secondary headquarters located in Dallas, Texas, A10 Capital’s recent hiring efforts produced a large and growing sales force with divergence across locales, as well as corporate aisles. Keeping everyone on the same page with new opportunities required staying on top of data management practices. When sales personnel were brought onboard, they brought their own contact databases. The sales reps’ database, which was typically over 1,500 contacts, could contain as much as 50% duplicate records; meaning A-10 Capital had existing Lead or Contact records for up to 50% of the sales rep’s database. Maintaining the purity of A10 Capital's existing database, while marrying in as much relevant content from the contact databases, became a daunting task that would need to be done manually by Laura Penney and her team. Doing business in an agile commercial environment within a niche industry, commercial real estate lending, also has its unique challenges. In March of 2013, A10 Capital launched a form-based campaign on the web, and experienced more than the expected duplicate forms submitted by commercial real estate brokers. Integrating this front-end capture with the back-end database while ensuring data quality was of paramount importance to Laura as well as the sales team at A-10 Capital. With consultants involved in both the data management and IT processes, A10 Capital needed a platform that would serve the needs of its corporate professionals, as well as the demands of incoming data from multiple channels.
About The Customer
A-10 Capital is a commercial real estate lending company with primary headquarters in Boise, Idaho, and secondary headquarters in Dallas, Texas. The company specializes in providing financing solutions for commercial real estate projects. A-10 Capital has experienced significant growth, particularly in its sales force, which has led to challenges in managing data integrity and ensuring efficient operations. The company operates in a niche industry with unique challenges, including maintaining data quality and integrating various data sources. A-10 Capital is committed to innovation and actively engages with technology partners to improve its data management processes.
The Solution
The company's enormous influx of data was managed with the suite of RingLead applications. First and foremost was the cleanup of existing data. 'Data Cleanse helped us find and merge existing Leads, Accounts and Contacts and made things a lot easier.' A10 Capital also recognized a need to detect duplicates before they entered the system, so Unique Upload was adopted, allowing the company to become more protective of their Salesforce database while foregoing the dozens of man hours that would be required with a manual data entry (a.k.a. 'stare and compare') process. In response to web-based import, Unique Web-to-Lead was implemented to detect duplicate entries received from web forms in real time, saving the Lead Response Team from hours upon hours of unnecessary work. 'It has been instrumental in saving our people time,' stated Laura. Installed in 2012, Unique Entry and Unique Upload have been key in efficiently growing the sales team. It 'made us more aware of data integrity.' Unique Entry, in particular, served a dual purpose for A10 Capital. It not only provided notice of existing accounts, more importantly, it strengthened collaboration between teams. Instead of lengthy discussion threads regarding lead distribution, teams could immediately recognize conflicts, understand account history, distinguish ownership, and proceed (or not) with minimal involvement from sales management.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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