Success Story
Show-and-sell in the software business
Fiserv Lending Solutions Shows Sales Prospects and Customers what It Can Do with WebEx
A leading information services provider for the financial industry worldwide, Fiserv has a staff of 20,000 that delivers a wide range of software products and financial services worldwide to more than 13,000 client organizations. Fiserv Lending Solutions, a business unit of Fiserv, offers easyLENDER® and UniFi® PRO—robust, full-featured, “end-to-end” loan origination and processing software systems that enable banks, thrifts, credit unions, and mortgage companies to originate, process, and close mortgage, consumer, home-equity, and commercial loans with unsurpassed productivity and cost efficiency.
The Lake Mary, Florida-based Fiserv business unit that develops, sells, and supports easyLENDER and UniFi PRO has discovered an effective strategy for improving sales and support productivity and cost efficiency. It’s called WebEx.
It’s so easy to show off lending software with WebEx
“We’re a big believer in WebEx and its Web-based meeting capabilities because we’ve seen it accelerate our sales cycle,” said Dan Welbaum, Fiserv Lending Solutions’ SVP of Sales and Marketing for easyLENDER Products.
Welbaum told us that functional groups throughout the easyLENDER and UniFi PRO product organizations use WebEx to support a variety of customer and internal communications. He spoke enthusiastically of how WebEx is used by his sales team—particularly when a new prospect expresses interest. “When the prospect says ‘I’m interested in your product and I’d like to see it,’ we can respond immediately with WebEx,” noted Welbaum.
“We say, ‘If you’ve got an Internet connection, we’ll show you a demonstration right now.’ So we’re a lot more responsive,” he said. “And WebEx helps reduce our travel expenses, so we’ve also become a more cost-effective operation.”
According to Welbaum, another WebEx benefit that easyLENDER sales professionals appreciate becomes evident when prospects say they’d like to actually test the software. “We’ll get them online with WebEx and hand them the steering wheel, so to speak,” Welbaum reported. He said that customers really like how WebEx’s application-sharing capabilities enable this “try-and-buy” approach; and the result has been increased sales.
Delivering training at the speed of technology
Training represents an additional WebEx application area that benefits easyLENDER Products staff. “When we send out major easyLENDER software releases, we also plan a series of corresponding WebEx training sessions,” Welbaum said.
He explained that the process is very simple: The customer is informed of the meeting time and encouraged to attend. According to Welbaum, “this facilitates our training process by making training available more quickly and making information delivery much more cost-efficient.”
Hello ... let’s get to work!
Welbaum was eager to emphasize how much Fiserv customers appreciate WebEx. “WebEx truly helps differentiate us in the eyes of our customers,” he said. “We just ask them to sign on to our meeting site and give them the URL. They join the meeting, and the presentation begins. Customers love the convenience.”
Welbaum is especially pleased with the fact that WebEx is completely Web-based. He said that a few years ago his group tried a software system that offered basic e-meeting capabilities; however, that product required users to install special software, and it proved slow and often unreliable.
Not so with WebEx, Welbaum noted. “WebEx is immediately available to anyone with Internet access. There’s nothing to install. And there’s virtually no learning curve or training required to join a meeting. It’s extremely intuitive.”
“Our sales professionals—including myself—have installed inexpensive desktop video cameras in our offices,” he continued. “At the beginning of each meeting we like to get in front of the camera and say ‘hello.’ People like that, too.”
“WebEx is the way we work”
WebEx now serves as a leading sales and training resource for Fiserv Lending Solutions. “It started with sales—we realized that we were saving thousands of dollars a month in travel expenses,” Welbaum noted. Now WebEx is being leveraged across multiple Fiserv business units and is helping the company boost productivity in many areas.
“Our easyLENDER and UniFi PRO sales and technical support staffs can now serve more prospects and customers right from their offices, as opposed to being on the road much the time. We also use WebEx for internal meetings among remotely distributed groups; and our product development staff uses WebEx to conduct focus-group sessions,” Welbaum explained.
Welbaum sees WebEx as an indispensable part of his organization’s ongoing business strategy. “As we develop new software enhancements,” he observed, “we’ll say ‘Hey, join us for a WebEx meeting on Friday at 3 o’clock—we want to show you some of the new capabilities that will be included in the next release.’ We’ll show the customers some prototypes and get their feedback.
“WebEx is the way we work now, and there’s no question that it gives us a competitive advantage.”