IN BETA: GuideMark Guides National City Bank to Success

When National City Bank agreed it was time to improve sales force effectiveness within its National City Home Equity (NCHE) division, the bank called on GuideMark for assistance. A provider of banking and insurance software solutions, GuideMark recently launched its Wholesale Mortgage Broker Relationship System (WMBRS), integrating mortgage sales and marketing processes with a CRM platform. As business for National City Home Equity had been growing, so had the amount of data that sales reps were responsible for. NCHE sought an organized method with which to identify its best customers, track sales data, and communicate to a sales force spanning 46 states. Since National City--approved brokers have the option to sell products offered by competing providers, premium customer service had been a top priority in differentiating the division's products. "We needed to...provide more knowledge to our sales force and more to our brokers as to what their business was providing us, what the closing ratios were, and to help them understand how valuable our products are," says Ken Carter, vice president of NCHE. So NCHE turned to the WMBRS solution, featuring summarized and detailed broker information and delivering key management information. It includes a BRS Loan Transaction Dashboard to search and analyze application data based on any number of selection criteria (e.g., timeframe, broker, transaction type), as well as account-exec and team scorecards to provide analytics on individual and team production. Additionally, its Active Pipeline Reports feature analysis of detailed pipeline information by individual account executive, region, and enterprise. Carter recalls how on her first day of training an account exec received a call from a broker and was able to obtain the information on the transaction from the new system to answer all the broker's questions. "Because she could satisfy the broker immediately--without having to make calls that would tie up another employee to research the questions--we knew we were on the path to generating a return on our investment from the very first day of the rollout," Carter says. --Emmy Favilla