How Forma Cut Lead Response Time From Hours to Minutes

Highlights

• Automated lead routing across direct and broker-led sales channels
• Eliminated manual lead assignment as volume increased
• Improved speed to lead, enabling faster follow-up
• Replaced manual deduplication with automated proactive and reactive data cleaning 
• Enabled SLA tracking and visibility for marketing and sales

Overview

Forma is a wellness and lifestyle benefits platform that provides flexible benefits to mid-market and enterprise companies. Their solution includes both pre-tax and post-tax benefits, along with a unified card and storefront experience for employees.

Forma operates a hybrid go-to-market motion that includes both direct sales and broker-led partnerships. As a result, leads come in from multiple channels and need to be routed based on ownership, broker alignment, and account relationships.

As the company grew and marketing efforts increased, managing this process manually became difficult to sustain.

The Challenge

Broker and direct channels needed different routing logic

Forma’s lead routing process needed to support multiple paths and sources. 

Leads could come from direct inbound, broker referrals, or existing accounts tied to broker relationships. Each scenario requires different assignment logic, making it challenging to maintain consistency and accuracy. 

As a result, lead assignment was handled manually, which became increasingly difficult and time-consuming as volume grew. What once worked at a smaller scale quickly became a bottleneck, creating delays between when a lead came in and when it was assigned to a rep. 

We had a lot more volume coming in… it was just not possible to handle the volume in a manual manner.

Aman Rastogi, Lead Salesforce & Systems Administrator

These delays directly impacted response time, making it harder for reps to follow up quickly. 

One-at-a-time deduplication added to the backlog

At the same time, duplicate records also required ongoing manual cleanup. Each duplicate had to be identified and merged individually, adding to the operational workload and further slowing down the process. 

To improve response times, Forma needed a way to assign leads faster and maintain clean, accurate data without adding manual work.

Solution

Traction Complete empowered Forma by automating both lead routing and data quality within Salesforce to handle increasing lead volume without adding manual effort. 

They implemented Complete Leads to manage routing and Complete Clean to tackle deduplication, creating a system that processes leads quickly, accurately and consistently upon entry. 

Automated routing across broker and direct channels

Leads are first enriched through HubSpot before being pushed into Salesforce, where routing logic takes over. Based on broker alignment, account ownership, and lead source, each lead is automatically assigned to the correct owner.

This includes more complex scenarios, such as routing broker-submitted leads to aligned account executives, assigning leads tied to broker-managed accounts, and using round robin distribution when no ownership exists. The team also built in timing rules to account for prior ownership.

With this in place, lead assignment happens quickly and without manual involvement, enabling faster follow-up.

Our speed to lead has gone from multiple working hours to a few minutes.

Aman Rastogi, Lead Salesforce & Systems Administrator

Replaced manual merges with proactive and reactive dedupe

On the data quality side, Forma replaced manual deduplication with automated processes that handle both proactive and reactive cleanup. Instead of relying on users to identify duplicates, records are now continuously monitored and managed in the background.

This significantly reduced duplicate-related issues and the need for manual intervention.

Gave marketing and sales SLA visibility at the record level

Forma also introduced SLA tracking, giving marketing and sales teams visibility into response times and follow-up activity at the record level. This allows teams to monitor performance and ensure leads are followed up within expected timeframes.

The Final Word

With automation in place, Forma no longer has to manage lead assignment and data cleanup manually. Leads are routed quickly, duplicates are handled in the background, and teams have visibility into response times through SLA tracking.

As volume continues to grow, the system can keep up without adding additional overhead.

As Forma grows, I definitely see Traction growing with us. I don’t see any reason we wouldn’t continue using it for lead assignment and dedupe.

Aman Rastogi, Lead Salesforce & Systems Administrator