It is a truth universally acknowledged that no one cares how your holiday went, and you certainly do not care how mine went. So on the assumption that you are back at work with a mild sense of resentment and half a stone extra to shift (or is that just me?), let’s divert you with some old school, back-to-basics thinking. We’ll do it with a quick tale of two clients.
Client one
We are working with a planning firm at the moment, which is reviewing its technology ‘stack’: all of the different stuff it uses and how it all fits together. It is a dream client – really well organised, all the basics in place, but open to change and suggestions of how to do things better.
If that means ending current business relationships for the good of the firm and clients, then that is what will happen.
This started life as a platform due diligence exercise, but quickly widened into a look at integrations between platforms and customer relationship management (CRM)/back-office systems.
Then it widened again into how the firm uses those systems, which then brought in the fact that the practice is a little fragmented across the advisers and could maybe do with a spot of light sharpening.
From there it is a short jump into how data is entered, what devices the guys on the road have to use with clients, how client reporting works pre- and post-sale, what advice looks like. and whether it can be delivered remotely.
Before we know it we are at a full review of everything and full of existential dread. We can scale that back, but what started with one element of a firm’s service proposition has ended up a long way from there.
Client two
Client two also started life as a platform due diligence case, but quickly morphed into an in-depth discussion about the firm’s investment proposition, which varies considerably from adviser to adviser. There is no centralised investment proposition (CIP) or central agreement on asset allocation, although there is a bought-in buy list of funds, which is more guidance than rule, if you know what I mean.
No one is dissatisfied with how it is working and clients do not complain, but it is a situation that has come about by omission rather than commission – it just ended up like this.
In this case, we suggested the firm put our work and our invoice on hold – damn it, I still haven’t got this consultancy thing cracked – while it works out what it is the client wants to do in terms of its investment proposition.
We cannot sort out the technology that will best serve the firm and its clients until we know what it will be used for.
Brother from another mother
Both firms have worked out in real time that there is no such thing as a standalone piece of technology in adviser businesses – or if there is, that it is a potential troublemaker. The nature of businesses is now incredibly interconnected, and because of the crucial and sensitive type of work you do, the potential for things not to work well and for genuine client detriment to result is huge.
It is testament to the superhuman efforts of adviser administrators, office managers and paraplanners behind the scenes in firms up and down the land that more bad experiences do not happen.
There are two ways you can go with this. The first is to shrug and moan that things do not work as well as you would like, then niggle at your providers that they should be better at integrating. The other is to do something about it and change. The second path is much harder than the first and can result in a huge range of potential outcomes from simply swapping one system for another to selling your practice and going restricted with 1825, Old Mutual Wealth, Succession or one of the other consolidators.
It is hard to work out which path to go down without having a bit of an idea of whatis involved in pulling together your technology estate or stack. So here is a crib sheet, which I hope might help a little bit. It is broken up into sections, because I’m good like that. You can add more lines to your own table if you want, or take away the ones that do not apply.
You may find that one piece of software fulfils several functions; that is fine. Now stand back and have a look at all the various bits of software you use to run your business. If you are anything like most firms, the sheer number of technological dependencies you have will knock you sideways.
When you’ve got it all laid out, you can have some fun. Games you can play include “How Much?!”, which is where you add up all the money you spend on software every month and then go and kick something. Or, perhaps more usefully, put the name of each package you use on a separate piece of paper on your biggest meeting table.
Then get a load of bits of coloured string and create a cat’s cradle by linking every package that integrates with another on your list together. Any antisocial packages that do not talk to others are immediately worth a second look.
Whatever you do with the information, it is a vital first step to working out how far you want to go in making sure the technology you use is coherent across your business – that is not to say you have to use an all-in-one solution, but rather that you know everything you use is marching in lockstep.
In my business we decided to go down the Office 365 route for our core office needs, and that has driven our CRM decision. For example, several good CRM products we looked at did not have Office 365 integration and that killed them for us.
Our event admin package, Eventbrite, does not do much integrating with Office, but talks to our CRM nicely. And everything has to talk to Dropbox, which is our cloud storage.
It is all too common for small businesses in any industry to gird their loins, make a ‘hero’ decision on a crucial bit of software (probably back office systems for advisers) and then find life does not get any easier once it is in.
If the summer break has got you thinking that you should be addressing some of the more grungy bits of your practice, then try to think of your technology requirements in the round, not piecemeal. You might find you come out with quite different decisions.
Mark Polson is principal of platform and specialist consultancy, the lang cat
