Standex, a Texas-based financial institution, operates with an entrepreneurial credit philosophy tailored to business and practice needs.

Recognized among the Top 200 Healthiest Banks in the U.S. in LendingTree’s 2021 annual analysis, Standex—a subsidiary of Tectonic Financial—delivers personalized service and advanced technology. It is also a leading SBA loan provider nationwide.

The SBA Paycheck Protection Program, a $699-billion U.S. government loan initiative, was launched to support businesses during the COVID-19 crisis.

The first round of funding was available for a limited time, and once the funds were exhausted, applicants had to wait for the next funding phase. During this waiting period, the loan application website remained inaccessible.

Standex aimed to help business owners secure as many loans as possible before funding ran out. To achieve this, they partnered with Destan to develop a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution.

However, the implementation posed several challenges. First, the RPA setup required the loan submission website to be active. This meant Destan had to be on standby, ready to deploy as soon as the next funding round opened and the website became available.

Another challenge involved the website’s server performance. Due to high traffic, the platform frequently crashed or froze at the final stage of application submission. As a result, users had to re-enter their information multiple times, leading to wasted time and frustration.

Given these obstacles, speed was critical. The team had to implement changes rapidly and directly on the live website to ensure a seamless application process.

As soon as the new pool of loans became available and the program’s website reopened, we got to work immediately.

To accelerate the submission process, we developed an attended robot that worked alongside a human operator, swiftly filling out the application form and replacing the tedious manual process.

Our RPA bot extracted batch customer data from a CSV file, navigated to the website, and automatically populated the loan application forms with applicant details. The final step required a human operator to simply click the ‘Submit’ button to confirm the application submission.

By optimizing the process, RPA reduced the entire submission time to just 6 seconds—compared to the previous 10–15 minutes required for manual entry.

Additionally, the solution helped mitigate server overload issues. If the website crashed, the bot would pause and resume as soon as it recovered, eliminating the need for users to re-enter their information and preventing unnecessary delays.

By leveraging automation, the Client saved over 200 hours of manual labor, enabling business owners across the USA to apply for more than 1,000 loans. This resulted in approximately $100 million in applications and $5 million in revenue for the organization.

The entire development process took just 8 hours, delivering an immediate Return on Investment the moment the robot was deployed.

Not only did we help our Client generate significant revenue, but we also did so at a fraction of the typical development cost—without requiring any involvement from the Client’s employees.

We have numerous ideas to streamline your accounting or finance processes. Consider integrating RPA into your financial operations today.