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Background
Clara Capital is a small business lender specializing in Merchant Cash Advances (MCAs). The company operates both through an internal sales team and its direct lending arm, Clara Capital Servicing. In 2023, Clara expanded into funding third-party ISO submissions to grow deal volume.
ISO partnerships opened the door to significantly higher deal flow, faster turnaround expectations, and competitive margins. For Clara, this was an exciting opportunity to scale—but it required finding a way to boost underwriting throughput efficiently, without expanding headcount or sacrificing deal quality.
Pain Points
As Clara expanded into ISO submissions, the company’s strong growth quickly put pressure on existing processes. The operations team was dedicated and detail-oriented, but their workflows were heavily manual:
- Processors carefully keyed applications into Salesforce by hand.
- Bank statements were reviewed line-by-line in Excel.
- Underwriters frequently rebuilt calculators from scratch for each deal.
These approaches worked when volume was smaller, but they weren’t built to scale. As ISO partners sent more deals, Clara saw a clear opportunity: by freeing their team from repetitive data entry, they could redirect that talent toward higher-value underwriting work.
“Since we’ve significantly increased the number of applications coming in, more hands in underwriting—even just for smaller deals—is very helpful and speeds up a lot.”
Why Clara Chose Heron
Clara explored several software solutions and even considered building custom Salesforce integrations. Many alternatives came with steep upfront costs—one proposal alone would have required a $75,000 investment—as well as long implementation cycles and added complexity. Heron, by contrast, offered a cost-effective, fast-to-deploy solution. With seamless Salesforce integration and immediate automation gains, Heron delivered value from day one and gave Clara a scalable foundation for growth.
Heron’s Solution
Clara Capital built Heron into the backbone of their ISO intake process, replacing manual application prep with an automated system that delivers decision-ready files directly into Salesforce.
Heron Product Suite in use:
- Heron Parsers for:
- Application and Bank statements: Automatically extracts structured data from incoming submissions and multi-month bank statements.
- → This ensured every submission was captured with complete accuracy and consistent formatting—reducing errors and giving underwriters cleaner files to work from.
- Heron Enrichers for:
- Funding Calculators: Auto-generates deal calculators directly inside Salesforce for every submission.
- → Underwriters no longer rebuild models from scratch—every file arrives ready for review and decisioning.
- Heron Relay for:
- Salesforce Integration: Pushes parsed applications, analyzed statements, and calculators straight into Clara’s existing workflow.
- → This integration ensured underwriters receive complete, lender-ready packages without delays or copy/paste work.
This end-to-end automation gave Clara the foundation to scale ISO volume while redeploying staff into more strategic roles.
Outcomes
1. Junior Underwriting Talent Grown from Within
Heron freed processors from manual intake and enabled Clara to retrain them as junior underwriters. These team members now handle small-ticket deals (<$50K), increasing throughput and supporting senior underwriters.
“Since we’ve significantly increased the number of applications coming in, more hands in underwriting—even just for smaller deals—is very helpful and speeds up a lot.”
This internal talent pipeline allowed Clara to expand underwriting capacity without hiring externally—achieving growth sustainably.
2. 6–7x More Volume, Same Headcount
With Heron handling ISO submissions end-to-end, Clara scaled intake from ~30 to over 200+ applications per day.
“We’ve probably 6 or 7x’d the number of applications we’re getting on a daily and monthly basis. Without Heron, we’d have needed another five or six people.”
What would have required a 5x increase in staff now happens automatically—keeping operations lean and margins strong.
3. Faster Decisions, Higher Throughput
Underwriters now receive fully prepped packages with parsed applications, analyzed statements, and calculators ready-to-use. This cut cycle times per deal and let each underwriter handle more submissions daily.
“Now, when it gets to an underwriter, the calculator is built, information is pulled—it’s just ready to go.”
The result: faster responses to ISO partners, more offers issued, and higher conversion rates.
4. Cost-Effectiveness Without Compromise
Unlike other costly solutions, Heron delivered enterprise-grade automation at a fraction of the price. Clara avoided expensive Salesforce customization and instead reinvested savings into underwriting talent and further automation.
“I looked into other software like this… just to get them working in Salesforce was tens of thousands—$75K in one case. Heron’s cost and setup were a big win.”
This financial efficiency positioned Heron not just as a tech vendor, but as a long-term strategic partner for scaling.
Clara Capital transformed its operations by shifting from manual data entry to high-impact underwriting with Heron. What began as a solution to ISO intake challenges has evolved into a scalable, cost-effective foundation for long-term growth.
Heron’s mission is to automate a lifetime of white-collar work and free people to focus on higher-value decisions. Clara’s journey illustrates how that mission becomes reality: redeploying staff, scaling throughput, and unlocking profitable growth—without growing overhead.
From data entry to dealmakers ->
Book a demo to talk about how Heron can help you scale smarter, grow faster, and unlock the full potential of your people.
