I can imagine it being a grueling effort! Part of what has kept me away from using a classifier or any kind of 'neural network'-type solution is that the initial configuration always seems to be something of a shot in the dark, and tweaking the weights is a non-trivial process with, as you said, a lot of wait time. When it works, though, it has that wow factor that clients love. I give you all props for taking that risk and having it pay off!