Abstract
Laminar consulting was contracted to create a customer relationship management system or CRM for New America.  The goal was to track their sales force from the start of a marketing effort to a funded loan.  Create an engine that allowed the marketing staff to continually improve their process, creative’s, and efficiency while lowering cost.  Using Microsoft ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Laminar Consulting Services created that vision.

Introduction
Because Laminar was focused here in Southern California and the Real Estate/Mortgage Industry was hot for the last 10 years we recently had several engagements for small to large size Mortgage companies.  In addition several of our consultants had worked with companies like First American, Fidelity, and Countrywide so we leveraged their experience by going after smaller Mortgage Brokers. 

We understood the market was highly competitive and they lacked the tools to effectively track and manage any direct marketing efforts.   We were eventually engaged by a company called New American to build an integrated Lead Tracking and custom CRM application which is currently in production today.  It was built on a Microsoft .Net Architecture using SQL Server as the Database.  

This application has gone through several iterations and is being updated as their business needs change.  The reason the client opted for a custom built CRM application instead of an off the shelf was the fact there really wasn’t anything on the market that would fit this particular company nor did they address the specific needs of the Mortgage industry.   Here are some examples of what was accomplished.

• Created technology that grew company to $10 million in revenues in 6 years.
• Developed system allowing company expansion with no staff additions.  Management was able to control and track the sales forces without adding unneeded extra management.
• Designed and built real-time analytical systems to ease organizational management.
• Created process improvements producing $50 million in loan volume in 6 years.

Short Case Study Direct Lender ($700 million mortgage lender operating in 30 states)

Laminar soon came across another opportunity to build a Custom CRM and Market Tracking system for a company by the name of Direct Lender.  This particular project was an even better opportunity to take a look at the architecture as a whole and start from new.  This time around the goal was to completely re-architect the application so that it make future development and support of the application much easier.  In essence a new completely new Framework was built.  

This architecture is in production today and it has reduced the overhead significantly while providing many more features and enhancements. Laminar Consulting  still owns this code because it can be the basis for many other applications to come.  It will significantly reduce development time and costs associated with  implementing such an application.  Here are some examples of what was accomplished

• Generated 30,000 new inbound customer mortgage leads in 2006 and 2007
• Closed loans with an average revenue of $11,000.
• Grew branch to $40 million in monthly loans from just $3 million in less than 1 year.
• Produced over $350 million in business on average per year
• Expanded branch size from 7 to 120 employees in first 12 months
• Sold more than $500 million in total loan volume in a 12-month period with design and development of complimentary sales system
• Created multi-company CRM and Marketing tracking system and developed required IT staff

Short Case Study  FSS International ($1.2 billion health and nutrition division of Herbalife International)

One of Laminar’s long standing clients projects is the development and the day to day support for an online Marketing Tracking system for the largest Distributor of Herbalife Products in America. The systems goal is to track marketing campaigns to rate the complete return on investment value for each marketing effort. We perform a complete full competitive analysis using Comperemedia, comScore and Nielsen’s NetRatings. 

The system is an online customer service applications designed to generate leads, boost profits and increase market penetration. The system is still in production and Laminar Consulting continues to host and maintain the system for FSS International. Here are some of the accomplishments

• Generated 360,000 leads from 2005 to 2007 to make division most successful sales organization in Herbalife International.
• Created thousands of internet leads for 2003 to 2005 with development of Japan’s market place.
• Developed CRM and leads system for companywide international implementation.