What Is an Independent Sales Organization?
An independent sales organization is a broker or brokerage that acts as an intermediary between small businesses seeking financing and the funders providing capital.
In MCA and small business lending, ISOs build relationships with merchants, package their applications, and submit them to one or more funders for consideration.
ISOs are critical to the MCA ecosystem because they drive most new deal flow. But their submissions vary widely in format and completeness. Operators use automation to normalize ISO packets so they can move quickly into underwriting.
How Does an Independent Sales Organization Work?
ISOs play a central role in funding pipelines by originating and forwarding applications.
- Merchant outreach: ISOs prospect and sign up merchants in need of working capital.
- Application packaging: They collect bank statements, IDs, and supporting docs into a packet.
- Submission forwarding: ISO packets are sent to funders, often via shared inboxes such as underwriting@ or subs@.
- Deal shopping: In many cases, the same packet is sent to multiple funders to maximize chances of approval.
In Heron, ISO submissions are handled seamlessly.
- Inbox triage: Heron ingests submissions forwarded from ISO shared inboxes.
- File classification: Documents are identified by type (e.g., bank statement vs ID).
- Scrubbing: Packets are checked for completeness, fraud signals, and appetite fit.
- Write-back: Structured fields are mapped into CRM records for fast underwriting.
- Next action: Missing-info requests are triggered automatically when packets are incomplete.
This makes sure that ISO-driven volume is processed quickly and consistently.
Why Is an Independent Sales Organization Important?
For brokers and funders, ISOs are important because they supply the bulk of deal flow. Without them, pipelines dry up. At the same time, ISO variability creates operational pain—manual rekeying, missing documents, and duplicate submissions slow deals.
Heron improves the ISO-funder relationship by automating intake and scrubbing. This keeps pipelines clean and allows funders to focus on underwriting rather than paperwork.
Common Use Cases
Independent sales organizations are at the heart of MCA and small business funding.
- ISOs prospecting merchants and forwarding applications to funders.
- Brokers relying on ISO submissions to expand deal flow.
- Funders normalizing inconsistent ISO packets into underwriting-ready data.
- Automation triaging ISO emails in shared mailboxes to reduce manual review.
- Missing-info automation helping ISOs complete packets faster.
FAQs About Independent Sales Organization
How does Heron handle ISO submissions?
Heron ingests ISO packets directly from shared inboxes, classifies documents, scrubs for completeness, and writes structured data into CRM systems automatically.
Why are ISOs valuable for MCA brokers and funders?
They generate high-volume deal flow. By automating intake, funders can scale ISO-driven submissions without scaling staff.
What outputs should teams expect from ISO automation in Heron?
Teams gain clean CRM records, fewer missing items, and faster turnaround times on ISO-submitted deals.