The Back to Front Office
Technology can improve every element of the advice process, enhancing client onboarding, speeding up client reviews and helping reassure clients when the market moves in the wrong direction.
The holy grail for many firms is to have a single supplier for all elements of their technology requirements. The theory is that if every element of the system is from the same supplier then each element will talk to the other and provide a more efficient solution than separate systems from best-of-breed suppliers.
In practise, this leads to an inefficient back-office and a poor experience and low adoption from your clients.
There are lots of elements that an adviser firm needs to get right from a technology perspective:
- Workflow & CRM
- Income reconciliation
- Compliance/ Management Reporting
- The Client Experience
- Cashflow planning
- Factfind, ATR & AML
- Portfolio Management
Not unsurprisingly, the area that will have the biggest impact on your business is the client experience.
Your clients are your most important asset, without them you do not have a business. Your clients want a great experience and any technology you deliver them needs to be complementary to your service.
Clients are using all kinds of technology to help make their everyday lives easier. Shopping on Amazon, communicating with their friends and family via Facebook and WhatsApp down to the SatNav in their cars. When you deliver your branded app, it needs to meet and ideally exceed their expectations.
Back to Front.
All firms need two basic building blocks to their technology infrastructure and then they can use other technologies to fill in the gaps to create the most efficient process for that firm. There is not a one-size fits all solution because every firm will have differing requirements.
One building block is an efficient back-office to ensure that all work is captured, monitored and measured. Correctly configured it’s an efficient to-do-list which allows you to monitor that everything that needs doing, is done.
However, your back-office efficiency will be seriously hampered if you can’t bring your clients into the loop with an app to access your services.
If you can get your clients using your app it provides a secure delivery mechanism between you and your client to instantly deliver your letters, meeting notes & reports.
Better than special delivery.
It provides better than special delivery of all your communications. It’s instant, secure and tracks delivery, receipt, opening, acceptance and signing. Both you and your client get a complete record of all correspondence so there’s never any doubt what was said.
Driving Adoption.
None of this will benefit you - if you can’t get clients to use it and the secret to adoption is effective communication. Let your clients know why you are moving all their future correspondence through your app. No more email, no more post, no exception. They will appreciate that you are making the investment to protect their client data.
Think of it like auto-enrolment.
Turn apathy on its head by forcing clients to opt-out rather than opt-in. Almost all workers are auto-enrolled in a workplace pension through auto-enrolment. Be brave and go the same way with your client experience.
Don’t make the mistake of asking your clients if they want your app. Give it to them, complete with their managed investments and paperwork and if, and only if, they have a genuine reason not to use it, allow them to opt-out.
Always means always.
For the app to get used by your client, it must be the way you always communicate i.e. you can’t sometimes email, sometimes use post and sometimes deliver stuff via your portal.
If you must use the post for a wet signature, then ensure a notification goes to your client’s app to tell them to expect written paperwork. When they return it, scan a copy for their records back to their app.
Start at the beginning.
Introduce your portal right from the start of the client journey. By giving a copy to prospects you can use it throughout the onboarding process to make it a great client experience from the beginning and ensuring your new clients work the way you want them too.
Your portal provides the all-important audit trail of what you’ve said to your client and what instructions they’ve accepted. The back-office ensures you don’t miss things that need to be done. Together they will enable you to take advantage of all the technologies which are available – e-signatures, cashflow planning, ATR, AML, factfinds - they all fit within the back to front office framework but to be the best for your business they are unlikely to all come from the same supplier.
For flexibility, data management & the best client experience, the most important consideration is to have a portal that is not tied to your back-office.
“My previous portal from my CRM supplier logically made sense but in practice you soon find out the limitations. I was finding that I was apologising in advance of giving clients access to it. The client experience simply wasn’t strong enough and it made me nervous putting my brand on it.”
Andrew Platt, CEO, Callisto Wealth
Why a CRM supplier is the wrong choice for your client portal.
Your business should be engineered around your client, not your back-office.
Getting the client experience right will provide far greater benefits to your business than a change to your back-office system.
Our portals are designed to complement your existing back-office investment improving its efficiency without spending time and money replacing one back-office system with another as your new back-office will still be inefficient if you can’t connect to your client.
Get the client experience right and the back-office will follow.
For more information on how a moneyinfo client portal can help supercharge your business and complement your existing investment in technology please click here to organise a personal demo.
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