A Fast Growing MCA Financing Provider Funds Hundreds More Deals Each Month — Without Adding Staff with Heron

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Background

The MCA financing provider specializes in merchant cash advance (MCA) financing, providing $5K–$100K revenue-based funding to small and mid-sized merchants. The company operates primarily through broker (ISO) partnerships, processing high volumes of applications via Salesforce CRM.

As a young company in a relationship-driven industry, their goal was to scale deal flow while maintaining service quality. However, the manual process of uploading applications from email into Salesforce was slowing them down and creating operational risk.

Pain Points

Before Heron, they relied on a full-time employee to upload incoming ISO applications from the inbox to Salesforce. This led to:

• Operational bottlenecks — delays in processing risked losing deals to faster competitors.
• Volume limitations — underwriters were sometimes pulled away from underwriting just to upload documents, slowing time to funding.
• Manual declines — underwriters spent hours rejecting ineligible deals, wasting time that could have been spent on fundable opportunities.

“Sometimes I had to take an underwriter out of underwriting just to upload apps. That’s not where their time should go.”

Why Heron

The company evaluated multiple vendors but found many were too slow to adapt to their needs or required long implementation timelines. They needed a partner who could deliver quickly, integrate seamlessly with Salesforce — their core system of record — and keep up with rising application volumes.

Their key decision drivers included:

• OCR excellence — Heron’s parsing was faster and more accurate than alternatives.
• Speed to implement — live in less than a week for initial OCR; new parsing workflows ready in two weeks.

“Everybody else said it would take months. Heron did it in days.”

• Flexible integration — works smoothly with their Salesforce workflows

Heron’s Solution

Heron deployed an application intake and parsing automation tailored to their custom workflows — eliminating manual uploads, instantly parsing financial documents, and ensuring only fundable deals reach underwriting.

• Heron Intake —
  • Email-to-CRM automation: Incoming ISO applications automatically uploaded to Salesforce without manual handling.
    • → Eliminated the need for a full-time manual upload role, allowing staff to focus on funding and closing deals.
• Heron Parsers —
  • OCR parsing: high-accuracy extraction of key financial data from bank statements.
    • → Removed manual data entry and ensured clean, structured outputs every time.
• Heron Checks —
  • Automated eligibility checks: instant declines for deals outside target states or industries
    • → Underwriters now spend 100% of their time on fundable opportunities.
• Heron Relay —
  • Salesforce integration: delivers parsed and reviewed data directly into their Salesforce environment.
    • → Applications that once took 15 minutes to process are ready in seconds.

Outcomes

1. Faster Processing by 98%, Higher Volume

Heron automates the entire intake process, cutting processing time by ~98% — from 15 minutes to just seconds — while increasing application volume by 39% (over 700 additional applications per month) without adding headcount.

“We went from just keeping up to actually getting ahead — all without hiring more people.”

This means the financ can process more deals in less time, respond to ISOs faster, and win more business in a competitive MCA market.

2. Focusing Underwriters on Fundable Opportunities

Before Heron, underwriters spent valuable hours reviewing deals that would never fundHeron’s automated eligibility checks now filter out non-fundable deals before they reach underwriting, ensuring that every file underwriters touch has real potential. This sharper focus has directly increased funded deal volume and improved turnaround time for ISO partners, strengthening their reputation in the market.

“Now our underwriters only spend time on deals with real potential.”

This sharper focus has directly increased funded deal volume and improved turnaround time for ISO partners.

3. Redeployed Talent to Revenue-Producing Roles

Before Heron, a full-time employee spent their entire day manually uploading applications from email into Salesforce — and the workload was so heavy that underwriters were occasionally pulled away from underwriting.

“The person who used to upload apps is closing deals and generating income.”

With Heron automating intake and parsing, that staff member is now fully focused on closing and funding deals, directly contributing to the company’s bottom line. This role shift has freed underwriting capacity, improved speed to funding, and increased the number of deals they can finalize each month.

Looking Ahead

With Heron embedded in its critical operational path, they can scale confidently, knowing application intake will keep pace with growth.

Heron’s mission is to save customers from manual, repetitive work so they can focus on high-value, revenue-generating activities. The financier’s experience shows that automation isn’t just about saving time — it’s about unlocking capacity for growth