About

Babo Finance is part of the accounting practice of Babo Group and specialises in customised financial guidance and a range of solutions, from residential mortgages to asset and commercial financing. The Babo Group, operating for over 40 years is a family-owned business that has recently became a multi-generational operation, adding new partner Elena Fensom, Financial Specialist and Director to its Babo Finance business unit.

Elena implemented Salestrekker to digitise and revolutionise the client journey as part of her remit. After implementing Salestrekker herself, Elena hired two new staff to increase residential loan applications by 200% in the coming months.

“Salestrekker is a key component of our modernisation from a paper-based environment to a secure, digital operation. Setting up automated workflows means the right people in the team are adding value in the highest possible way—not only to our clients but also to the future growth of the business,” outlined Elena Fensom, Financial Specialist and Director of Babo Finance.

Building for the future

With a stable of clients with long-term and complex financial needs, the time was right to implement an automated specialist CRM platform for mortgage lending and more. This would solve the challenges of paper application processes and their status updates, pre-populating forms, e-signing applications more easily, and automating and tracking compliance administration.

Babo Finance not only offers residential mortgage services but also supports a significant and growing base of asset commercial finance clients. It recognised that a centralised platform would give it a tailored dashboard to manage and report on its residential, asset financing, and commercial loan business separately. The end goal: a full-service firm.

“Implementing Salestrekker has allowed us to establish all of the front-end workflows, which will be managed by the most appropriate staff member. Task lists for each workflow are available, compliance and audit files are in place, and this helps us structure the team in the most cost-effective way possible,” she outlined.

During the self-managed implementation process, Salestrekker specialist Auctus Coaching helped Babo Finance recognise the processes and workflows required to build and scale their business. With the input of Director Christian Paterson, Babo Finance has embedded a series of improvements in the customer journey today. These include text alerts within the loan application process and communicating the next steps without the team's constant manual intervention. This automated function keeps clients updated, prompts them to complete any required action, and frees the team to focus on higher-value activities.

“The reality is that to run a lean operational team, we don't have the time every day to be in constant contact with each of our clients. With Salestrekker, we can automate those updates with the same outcome - very happy clients. Salestrekker helps my clients feel like they are special,” she continued.

A streamlined, secure digital journey

The broker journey has now replaced paper applications with a secure digital experience, storing client files, data, and integrated tax information in Salestrekker. One of the most appreciated outcomes of the implementation is being able to complete applications online with clients during meetings, together with the easy e-signing capabilities.

Fact finding is now a breeze, with clients now able to visualise the outcomes and watch as their data populates documents – saving them even more time. For the team, it automatically submits files, updates compliance documents and closes the loop to the auditing phase.

Anticipating future growth

Salestrekker is playing a vital role in the firm’s future growth plans. This is all part of what Elena views as a holistic journey, building key capabilities in-house for services such as conveyancing and property advocacy.

"With Salestrekker in place, I can build out the team for residential lending. Then, once we have these systems bedded down, I can move on to asset and commercial finance growth. Being able to scale means we can better transition to a referral partnership network and then leverage our database at hand," said Elena.

Results

• Creating new capabilities with scalable technology
• Vast improvements in efficiency and productivity
• Streamlining secure digital systems for audit and compliance