Getting Information Into The Field:

How 4D and the iPhone are making a difference for Summit Leasing Inc.

Founded in 1986, Summit Leasing is one of the most experienced equipment leasing companies in the Pacific Northwest. They specialize in equipment lease financing for small to medium size corporations, focusing their practice on sub-$500,000 transactions in eight western US states.

One unique aspect of Summit Leasing’s business is their focus on building solid, long-term customer relationships, and to do it, the CEO and his team of leasing officers spends time each week out on the road, meeting with customers in their own offices, factories, and facilities. In addition, they use a team approach for evaluating applications and granting lease approvals, which means that more members of the team need access to customer data.

Summit Leasing has just completed a major transition from using multiple separate off-the-shelf database systems that required significant amounts of double entry to maintain, to implementing a single, custom 4D end-to-end solution provided by Mark Schaake of Schaake Consulting for managing their lease portfolio. With the transition complete, Summit Leasing has finally been able to turn its attention to improving work done on the road.

The current system’s limits are an issue when team members go into the field. To resolve this, Schaake set up a series of dashboard applications, customized for the CEO and for the credit team. The CEO can check on overall company health at any time, while the lease team is able to view a range of reports broken down by the various industries that Summit Leasing focuses on.

Having access to dashboard data at any time helps the leasing team rapidly adjust to changes in their lease portfolio, or in the general economy, and helps the team make better decisions faster.

Because leasing officers spend so much of their time out on the road, access to not just high-level reports, but also in-depth customer information is another critical need. The existing client-server system worked great in the office, but remote access was an ongoing problem. Laptops are bulky and expensive. An iPhone, however, is lightweight and much less costly.

Now, field staff can access customer data from inside the 4D database through their iPhones, saving time and money. Contact information is pushed right into the iPhone Maps and Phone applications, making it easier to call clients and find their offices.

“This was my first client project using the 4D Web 2.0 Pack, and it has been fantastic,” explains Schaake. “The 4D Ajax Framework interface works really well and was easy to understand. It’s been a lot of fun to use, and I’m really excited about extending the project into even more areas of the business. Business leasing is a more difficult field than straight-out business financing, so anything that gives the company an edge in getting their job done makes a difference on the bottom line,” Schaake concludes.

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