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KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
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- Brokers' business relies on relationships cultivated by ACT!
- Integration with e-mail, fax, telephone systems boost efficiency
- Correspondence a snap with automatically filled in customer info
- Ability to transfer data to PDAs makes life on the road easier, more productive
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CUSTOMER SUMMARY
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- Industry: Real estate investment services
- 225 employees in 18 offices
- 27% increase in total corporate revenues over the past four years
- Typical ACT! database: 1,000-3,000 records; 2-4 GB
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LEGG MASON REAL ESTATE SERVICES RELATE WITH ACT!™
Their business involves complex negotiations and multi-million
dollar deals, and the mortgage brokers of this leading real estate investment
services firm rely on ACT! to help them nurture the relationships the company
depends on.
When it comes down to it, mortgage banking is definitely a back-to-basics
business. Mortgage brokers deal with insurance companies, Wall Street firms, and
banks, arranging mortgages for commercial property owners. But, at its core, mortgage
banking is all about relationships. Pure and simple.
Legg Mason Real Estate Services, Inc. (LMRES), is one mortgage banking firm that
recognizes this fact well. In fact, the company's motto is "Building successful
relationships through excellent service and knowledgeable professionals."
"Our brokers' contact lists are their lifeblood," said Paul Johnson, regional
MIS manager for LMRES. "It's their relationships that make them successful. That
means they need to have at their fingertips the critical customer information
that keeps those relationships growing along with our business."
REVIEW OF CONTACT MANAGERS LEADS TO ACT!
In years past, LMRES brokers used a variety of solutions to manage their customer
information. But a few years ago, the company performed an extensive review of
the available products and chose ACT! as the contact manager it would encourage
its brokers to use. When ACT! was released, LMRES took a careful look at it and
decided its overall improvements, along with enhanced Palm™ handheld synchronization
and the availability of an interface to their GroupWise® e-mail system, made upgrading
a good idea, too.
"This is a very good product. It does what we need," Johnson notes. LMRES now
has 178 ACT! licenses in use at 18 offices along the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.
In most of those offices, the mortgage brokers work as individual users, without
the need to synchronize their information to a centralized database. But in a
few offices, several users share a single database.
Because most of the company's brokers were already familiar with the intuitive,
easy-to-use ACT! interface, only 10 to 20 percent of them needed training on ACT!.
Standardizing on ACT! has also reduced the amount of support Regional MIS Manager
Johnson is asked to provide. "It makes my life a whole lot easier!" he says.
With a contact on-screen, selecting Letter from the Write menu
starts
ACT!'s built-in word processor, displaying a standard business
letter format with the contact's information already filled in
ACT! MAKES ADMIN TASKS MORE EFFICIENT
In addition to providing quick access to the details that build business relationships,
ACT! helps brokers and their assistants work more effectively. "Everyone wants
to be as efficient as possible with their time," Johnson says, and ACT! enables
them to achieve that.
Take Raquel Hall for example. She's an administrative assistant at the LMRES
loan production office in Miami Lakes, FL. Her work involves a mix of secretarial
and analytical duties and she uses four separate ACT! databases on a regular basis.
"We use ACT! a lot for correspondence," she says. "It's really great; very
helpful for letters, fax cover sheets, and things like that. For example, when
I have a contact record open in ACT!, I can very easily open one of our standard
letters and that contact's name and address are automatically inserted. I create
a fax cover sheet the same way.
"We also have a basic letter setup that contains everything but the body of
the letter," she continues. "I just flip to our word processor and the client's
name and address are already filled in. All I have to do is type the body." The
interface between ACT! and the office's GroupWise e-mail system works very much
the same. The brokers and their assistants can keep all their client information
in one place and every contact with clients is recorded in ACT!, too!
Hall says she particularly likes all the keyboard shortcuts available in ACT!.
She can often avoid shifting her hand to the mouse, keeping both hands on her
keyboard, which she finds helps her work more quickly and efficiently.
"ACT! is really easy to use. I didn't need much training at all and I haven't
opened the manual even once!" Hall says. Brokers also make extensive use of a
tie-in with the LMRES telephone system. They select a contact, click an on-screen
button, and the contact's phone number is dialed.
Johnson says there's no question that efficiency has improved. "It's very convenient.
Anytime people can accomplish something by simply clicking a button, they like
that."
"WE CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT ACT!"
They like the improved ability that ACT! offers to access their data while out
of the office, too. Johnson reports that more and more of the brokers he works
with are loading their client data into PDAs. "Everyone lives on the road nowadays,
so it's very handy to take that data with them," he says. "The software for transferring
the data is written into ACT! itself, so we didn't have to go to a third party."
Hall says she recommends ACT! to anyone who needs to keep track of vital relationship
information. "It helps me every day," she concludes. Judging from the reaction
Johnson receives from the brokers he works with, they feel even more strongly
about ACT!: "Our salespeople tell us 'We can't live without ACT!. It's something
we have to have!'"
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