“Funding Friends is a leading business finance broker. We are friendly, experienced, real people who make it easy to get the business funding you need. We have great industry knowledge about products, rates, lenders and lots more. Getting you a great deal is our day job!

We needed a CRM system that was both “off the shelf” and customisable to our business” explains Jonathan Rostron, Director of Funding Friends.

The Solution

“Funding Friends contacted us with a request for a CRM system. They had a good idea of what they needed having had experience with other systems in the past. After our initial scoping conversations, it was apparent they needed a bespoke CRM system”, explains Jack, Technical Director of Creative Analysis.

“Through our conversations we pinpointed their exact requirements, which translated into the following developments taking place.

Zoho One: Funding Friends were set up on the Zoho One platform. We provided an end to end service which included design, development, training and on-going support.

Zoho CRM: As a company bound by heavy legislation, a secure CRM was vitally important. Zoho CRM provides a highly secure system with full audit tracking. It was identified that the client needed a high level of customisation on the system to meet their niche requirements.

The following significant elements were developed within the CRM:

Blueprints: Blueprints were designed and developed to match the lead journey and the 4 different financial product offerings. Each blueprint journey allows the client to gather the highly specific information that is required from their customers at the correct stage in the process.

The blueprints that were developed for the client included automated internal notifications, to ensure every action is followed up on and the team have full visibility of the customer status. These blueprints ensure process consistency and assurance that the business complies with the necessary regulations as a financial provider.

Custom Module: The client required a solution to enable them to be able to identify suitable lenders for each of their customers based on specific criteria. As a result, we worked closely with them to create a Custom Module that holds all lenders and their products to provide an easily searchable database.

Mail Merges: Due to the nature of the documentation required for the clients customers to complete, a series of complex mail merge document templates were created. This involved adding an extensive number of merge fields to the templates to pull information held in the CRM onto the documents. This allows the client to quickly create documents to send to customers for review and e-signature using Zoho Sign.

Scripting: There were several requirements that went beyond the native functionality of Zoho. In order to deliver these requirements we developed a number of custom scripts (developing a function from scratch using Zoho’s coding language). For example, we created:

De-duplication script: Due to repeat web form submissions from the clients website, there was a need to create a custom de-duplication script. When a new Lead is created in the CRM, this script searches the CRM to see if a record with that same e-mail address already exists. If it does, the script updates a field to alert the user that they need to manually check the duplicate record and perform a merge of the new and existing records.

Lead to Deal Conversion script: Because the client required 4 different blueprints in the Deals Module, a script was required to ensure that the Deal entered the correct blueprint when the Lead was converted. The script identifies the product required using a field on the lead module and creates a deal record to match that product, thereby triggering the correct blueprint.

Additional to the CRM developments, we also implemented the following:

Analytics: Tracking key performance indicators was a crucial requirement, for compliance. A detailed set of reports and dashboards were produced to show the volume of customers going through each product pipeline journey and the value associated with these customers. Reports were scheduled to ensure key stakeholders receive information at the appropriate time each month.

Other Applications: The client required a number of other additional applications. We provided setup, delivery and training for these. This included Zoho Mail, Zoho Books (accounting package), Zoho Sign (digital e-sign), Zoho Workdrive (cloud document storage) and Zoho Cliq (instant communications).”

1. What were the benefits of the system for you and your business?

“Zoho has many different aspects – CRM, email, accounts, invoicing etc that meant we didn’t have to look outside of the platform and run several different systems.

Creative Analysis helped us navigate this plethora of modules and most importantly get us up and running practically and through the teething stages where we refine the difference between theoretical and real life implementation.”

2. What was the highlight of the whole experience?

“Definitely Creative Analysis’ help throughout. During the set up they really helped us configure the system but more importantly they looked after us when we needed to resolve something post implementation. This is really appreciated because we are dealing with live clients and when we occasionally need help we need it there and then. The teams responsiveness really helped.

I think it must be common to design a process or system etc and then when you try and put it into practice, find you need a lot of refinements. The help making this actually work was appreciated. They have the patience of saints.”

3. Did you learn anything about your business that you didn’t know?

“How our brains make the complex quite simple. It’s not so easy to replicate how a brain works in CRM!”

4. What was it like working with the team?

“It was great!”