A growing financial software organization seeks proper protection for its customers and their critical financial information.
Iron Mountain® SaaSProtect Continuity™ Services
Founded in 2004 and designed to meet an increased need for the tracking and maintenance of factor accounts, FactorFox develops software to help companies keep factoring information at their fingertips. Factoring allows a business to sell its accounts receivable (or its invoices) to a third-party commercial financial company, also known as a “factor.” Using a SaaS model application before such business tools became popularly accepted, founders Robert Vasquez, a programmer with financial expertise, and Jeff Callender, a factor with extensive business experience, cornered a unique market by becoming the first organization to allow small factor businesses and factor firms access to account information via the web. FactorFox’s software therefore allows factors to streamline their business operations in new and efficient ways.
At first, interest in FactorFox was limited due to a general mistrust of the cloud and of accompanying cloud software. However, as SaaS applications became more common and businesses became more confident in cloud services, FactorFox garnered more attention. Yet as FactorFox witnessed an influx of potential clients, a problem arose for the company. Their initial, standard offsite backup plans did very little to protect their customers, and clients were harder to secure as a result. When one prospective customer with the ability to drive significant revenue posed the question, “What happens if and when FactorFox isn’t in business anymore?”, FactorFox was at a crossroads.
FactorFox realized that, in the event of its unforeseen disappearance from the market, customers could experience a disruption of operations. A new solution was needed to keep specialized software applications running for clients in the face of catastrophe. “Without their software, customers can’t run their histories and… their financial transactions. When you’re keeping track of these invoices, it’s important to have your software available to you. With that in mind, we realized we had to do something different,” Vasquez observed. “For us, the most important thing was to be able to escrow the source code,” he added.
In order to leverage what Vasquez called a “competitive advantage,” FactorFox set out to partner with a company that could offer safe, reliable escrow solutions for its customers. “We needed to find someone that we could work with, team up with and that people trust… a name that people know,” he said. When Iron Mountain SaaSProtect Continuity services were suggested as a possibility, FactorFox’s search for a trusted escrow vendor was over. Now, FactorFox can protect their intellectual property while safeguarding their customers’ access to that intellectual property in the SaaS application.
An agreement was reached, and FactorFox can now offer its clients the added assurance that, should the unthinkable happen, their software source code will remain in good hands. In addition, as new customers sign on with FactorFox, they can choose from a range of protection options for their SaaS application and data, depending on their risk and recovery time requirements. FactorFox is likewise offering Iron Mountain’s verification testing services to verify the technology escrow deposit. What’s more, SaaSProtect Continuity services enable FactorFox to comply with industry legal requirements governing information redundancies.
Since engaging with Iron Mountain, FactorFox has seen a marked increase in business and is able to attract larger factor firms based in part, Vasquez believes, on the strength of Iron Mountain’s name. In a short time, FactorFox has seen an approximate $50,000 increase in revenue thanks to a newfound confidence due to escrow protection. “Since we signed with Iron Mountain several months ago, we‘ve already begun to get new large factors on board,” Vasquez noted. “I’m pretty sure the escrow agreement is a big part of it. They know that they’re going to be protected.”
NCC Group Software Resilience has acquired Iron Mountain’s Intellectual Property Management (IPM) business. For more information on the acquisition, please visit our dedicated information hub, or contact Iron Mountain IPM.
