Business Loan Express

 Smart applications of technology

Business Loan Express (BLX) is a model of efficiency. With far fewer employees and a fraction

of the operating budget of large banks, BLX successfully competes against financial industry

leaders. Currently, the company has provided more than $4 billion in customized financing

packages to companies in over 350 industries nationwide.“Advanced technologies are integral to our success,” says Timothy McGoff, vice president of channel sales at BLX. “We want to match the service and loan dollar volumes of the big lenders,but do so with much smaller IT and administrative budgets. Innovative solutions like Adobe LiveCycle software are helping us achieve those goals.” BLX specializes in long-term loans for commercial purposes, including small businesses looking to acquire or refinance real estate, as well as to finance their operations. Many of its programs are designed for business borrowers with financing needs in the range of $25,000 to $5,000,000. BLX is one of only a handful of non-bank lenders approved by the Small Business Association. Outstanding service builds loyalty Small businesses looking for loans typically work through brokers who seek out the best options for clients. With so many financial companies offering loans, the competition for brokers’ attention is intense. At the same time, more technology savvy business owners are beginning to use the web to identify and apply for loans on their own. “Almost 85% of our business comes from referral and repeat clients, so there is tremendous loyalty if customers are treated well,” says McGoff. “Using Adobe LiveCycle solutions, we can automate processes and better engage our customers with more responsive, personalized services.” For example, BLX uses Adobe solutions for an online service that enables brokers to automatically generate customized product data sheets on eight BLX products. The data sheets not only contain the latest details on BLX loan pricing, interest rates, and special programs, but also include a broker’s company information and logo. “We always look for ways to offer brokers services that they cannot get elsewhere,” says Allen Levine, BLX webmaster. “With our system built around Adobe LiveCycle, brokers can instantly generate quality, branded product sheets. This strengthens our broker relationships and improves how clients perceive broker services.” Custom documents on demand To participate in the service, brokers register online with BLX and upload company logos and descriptors. Once they identify loan products for their clients, they can select an on-screen option that automatically assembles the loan data and broker content into a formatted Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The file is emailed to the broker to forward to his client or to print for delivery on paper. BLX worked with SmartDoc Technologies, a leading integrator of dynamic document solutions, to rollout the more automated services. Adobe LiveCycle Designer and Adobe LiveCycle Forms are used to create templates and automatically pull and populate database information into those templates. An application developed in Adobe’s Macromedia® ColdFusion® helps manage broker requests, seamlessly delivering content between front-end interfaces and backend systems. One solution, multiple uses For BLX, the success of automating data sheet production demonstrated that other document-intensive processes could easily be automated as well. In particular, the company handles a large volume of Community Express loans that are often for dollar amounts of $50,000 or less. “Processing a loan requires a considerable investment in employee time,” says McGoff. “The more we automate our processes the better we can serve our customers, while keeping our costs in check.” Applications for Community Express loans come directly from borrowers, who currently complete paper forms and return them for processing. The manual workflows can cause errors, with borrowers failing to submit all required information or entering the wrong information into form fields. As a

result, BLX staff has to spend extra time following up with applicants to get the needed information. Integrating front- and back-end processes no address this problem, BLX is using Adobe LiveCycle Forms and Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extensions to generate Community Express application forms in Adobe PDF. Applicants can download the platform- and application-independent PDF forms from www.blxonline.com and complete them online or offline using free Adobe Reader® software. Built-in intelligence in the forms improves the accuracy of submitted data by handling required calculations and verifying that applicants enter the proper type of information into each field. Completed forms can be sent electronically to BLX, where data is captured as XML files into an APPRO loan origination system. The data is distributed instantly to staff for review and processing. “Streamlined workflows using Adobe PDF forms can eliminate days of delays and save staff and borrowers hours of valuable time,” says McGoff. Real returns on investments The faster, more efficient document processes benefit BLX, brokers, and borrowers. “We’ve found that growing our business and improving services do not have to drain budgets and staff resources,” says Levine. “Instead, we have to stay focused on making smart technology choices and applying the right solutions to the right problems.”