Mettle says that it can now process huge volumes of finance applications within seconds, and that it has the ability to compete on equal terms with the major vehicle finance houses owned by SA's four major banks.

This solution was developed and implemented within three months. Previously, Mettle's entire finance application process was manual- and paper-based, and was not conducive to processing large volumes of applications fast and effectively.

The initial requirement was for the solution to handle a throughput of approximately 500 applications per day, growing to three thousand per day over an 18-month period.

Gavin Jones, CEO of the Mettle vehicle finance initiative, says that large volumes of vehicle finance applications are received from origination partners on a daily basis. "In order to comply with our various Service Level Agreements, we need to respond with an approved, declined, or referred application within 15 minutes. I am please to report that we are in fact now giving such responses within seconds. The automation of the application process is critical to meet this requirement."

Jones points out that Mettle required a solution that allowed specific business rules to be defined and applied to the application process. "The solution had to be highly adaptable - we needed to update the criteria that applications were measured on in a very flexible and dynamic way," he says.

"There was no way that Mettle could process large volumes of applications without automating the process. The critical requirement was that the solution had to be flexible enough to 'grow' with the business unit, as new procedures and policies were defined," says 3fifteen account manager, Leanne Oeschger.

3fifteen's Business Process Automation solution comprises a Web application using a Microsoft SQL data store to maintain and view business information about applications for motor vehicle financing. Additionally, Microsoft BizTalk Server provides integration technology that links Mettle and its trading partners and information providers such as the credit bureaus.