Wealth Management Technology Musings

Remember the Blogging Fundamentals via @denisewakeman

"When I do one on one business blog reviews, I almost always find the same problems. On Sunday I'll be doing blogging hot seat reviews at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop. Here's a list of a few things I'll be looking for when I do the reviews. Study the list and then take a look at your blog. Are you making these mistakes?"

via www.buildabetterblog.com

We all run across many top ten lists, best practices and the like - however - not all offer relevant solutions or action steps with context around them. I thought this was well done and reminded me that I need to regularly review these practices when I am writing or tweaking my sites.

Do You Have an Online Visibility Action Plan? This Sample Schedule Could Help You - Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

In my daily conversations and email exchanges with clients and potential clients, the issue of time always crops up (as I've noted in many previous posts). I'll spare you the "make time!" rant. If you want to watch the video, it's here.

via www.buildabetterblog.com

An excellent way to get started with your online marketing and communications is to build out an achievable routine. This template schedule may help!

The Cost of Social Business...Is Change

The Cost of Social Business
Originally uploaded by Intersection Consulting

This has been a discussion pre-dating social media (per se). It began with the emergence of open source and the Internet in general - exposing tools at the line level of business and away from the gatekeepers.

That is not to say that any form of anarchy is necessarily the answer in corporate environments. It is more about corporate leaders finding ways to maintain security and governance while pushing down the the execution of interacting with the marketplace to staff.

Traditional advertising and promotional activities will continue for some time - but don't sacrifice exposing your business to new mediums for communications out of FUD. The technology tools have been surfacing to accommodate the enterprise just like productivity software suites emerged in the 1980's and onward.

Evolution of CRM in 2010

A Forrester Blog post by William Band reinforces the point that a successful CRM implementation is where CRM serves as the hub of incoming and outgoing data. 

I have discussed this frequently - and recently presented on the case for embedding (site requires free trial to access slides and replay) your core business processes around a CRM solution. With integration being one of my mantras for any technology platform - CRM is a natural application to place at the center and assemble the remaining tools required to feed, in some form or fashion, around that data store.

An excellent example in financial services is Redtail Technology. Built on a SaaS (software as a service) model, Redtail has engineered a CRM solution catering to wealth management. Additionally, based on the flexibility of a web-based framework - they also have deployed a web services model that enables them to rapidly build out integrations to critical tools wealth managers use. This has helped them establish a portfolio of partners around portfolio reporting, financial planning, forms automation, client education, document imaging and more.

In my opinion, the addition of a workflow automation tool within Redtail is the icing on the cake. This is where I focus on designing workflows to match manual business processes like:

• Handling prospective clients
• Conversion to active clients (client intake)
• Preparing for client review meetings
• Quarterly reporting
• Seminar planning and management
• Fee billing

These processes are ripe opportunities to build out the automated steps that a CRM system can automate. Thus the steps, once added to the workflow tool in Redtail, are integrated into the dashboard (home page view for all users on the team) as prompts to action on individual tasks. As a task is completed - the next workflow step is triggered. All activities are tracked as an audit trail and teams can report on workflow to look for status and potential bottlenecks.

Band's post on the Forrester blog talks about CRM becoming an "ecosystem" and as a hub for integration. Now is the time for business users to get serious about understanding and exploring how integration can benefit their processes - and for service providers to stay focused on evolving their architectures to support these needs.

Building a front office wealth management platform

These are common ground most all wealth management practices have to deal with. As the current state of hosted technology matures (better performance, function and security) we also get the benefit of lower cost of entry to build out these services.

Thus - if we start with a portal technology like (like Microsoft Sharepoint, DotNetNuke, etc.) that can support single sign on efforts to third party applications - we are on our way to assembling a platform.

Examples could be:

• Albridge Wealth Reporting
• Redtail Technology CRM and Imaging
• Money Guide Pro Financial Planning
• Morningstar Advisor Workstation Enterprise Edition
• Laser App forms

A common thread between these tools is they all support single sign on and web services integration. In this example - these specific tools are already integrating with one another. Buy this package of tools - and you have a wealth management suite to connect your portal to. If you use a third-party portal like Advisor Products - you have saved yourself additional effort - as Andrew Gluck's firm already integrates with these products as well. You have outsourced and purchased a wealth management platform that can be branded to your practice with professional client deliverables ready made.

A second example takes into consideration hybrid outfits that have a strong insurance component.

• EBIX Smart Office(CRM, workflow and carrier data)
• Paper Clip Document Management (imaging with carrier submission tools)
• Money Guide Pro Financial Planning
• Morningstar Advisor Workstation (Office Edition to download investment data replacing Albridge)
• Vital Sales Suite and Winflex Web (carrier analysis, research and illustrations)
• Quik forms

This package of tools preserves the spirit of the integrated suite but also captures the modern insurance workflow. Again, these tools integrate with one another and support a single sign on platform environment.

While assembling these products involves conversions, training and implementation - the cost of entry has gone down dramatically as these vendors have matured and enhanced the flexibility and feature sets they offer. It is a good time to invest in initiatives that provide efficiency and productivity gains in a relatively short time window - as well as adding competitive edge and client retention to your practice.

Posted via email from Blane's posterous

Phone Mobility and Wealth Management

Being in the wealth management business makes forging a mobile strategy a bit more complex due to the nature of the data we handle. Primarily this is our client information, which includes highly confidential information.

Not that any business does not focus on security, however, not every business has the layers of federal and state regulation. This can impact the type of equipment and applications chosen for mobile access and efficiency. The good news is this is accomplished every day with some protections and common sense. Some tips in this area:

• Pick a smart phone that enables start-up password protection and set it with a password
• Get a service like SmrtGuard or use MobileMe for your iPhone (backs up, finds and erases lost phones). Palm Pre and Windows smart phones also offer services (this article has some helpful information from USA Today.
• Be careful with the belt holsters - easy to lose in taxis or in airports
• Choose to work with vendors that support integration to smart phones and your computer - makes staying in sync less challenging
• In my opinion - mobile support from desktop and web applications should be included at no additional cost
• Never use your phone's WiFi in on public connections to access sensitive data. Stay on the cellular connection and insure your mobile browser is connecting securely

The key components necessary to remain effective on the road are related to your client relationships and their accounts. 

The straightforward layer is ensuring your mobile tools include your contact data and your calendar. A vast universe of public and proprietary sync tools exist to connect your smart phone to your desktop and web-based applications - be they Google Apps, Salesforce or vertical tools like Redtail CRM, Ebix CRM or Junxure (check with vendors for costs to add mobile support). This establishes the baseline of activity, contact and task information you need at your fingertips online and offline.

If you have selected a CRM solution that tracks or integrates your client accounts - the luxury here is you have the first two steps covered with one sync process. If not - you can consider CRM alternatives (not an easy task to undertake unless you are currently unsatisfied with your CRM) or look at other sources to sync or acquire online access through. These can be your custodian and/or aggregation and reporting platforms. A caveat here - if you using online access from the smart phone - take a critical look at the security details around accessing this data over your cellular connection.

The final level of broadening your mobile efficiency is leveraging tools friendly to your smart phone to automate capturing some or all of your note-taking and communications while on the run. Look at tools like:

• Evernote (with computer and mobile apps) to capture free form text, audio, images and photographs
• Copytalk or Jott - solutions like these enable you to call from your phone and dictate notes that can integrate or be copied into CRM (messages are transcribed voice to text and emailed)

Posted via email from Blane's posterous

Interesting View of Computer Usage

Wakoopa.com is an interesting way to monitor your computer usage. While it is constructed as a social tool for networking with other users based on your platform and applications - I find myself using it to track how and what I use on my machines. Additionally - I am beginning to fold it into my work with clients as part of assessments on business process.

This graph is an example window of time tracking use by time on applications in categories such as Internet, Office, Utilities, Multimedia, etc.

Posted via email from Blane's posterous

Mac and Windows Syncing Saga Continued

One of the more challenging issues with all of our emerging technology is staying in sync. If you are walking around with a Blackberry or iPhone, have a laptop for travel and perhaps a desktop PC in your home office - how do you keep them all up to date?

There are numerous ways to tackle this, and unfortunately, no single definitive answer. However, there is hope as we will review a couple of approaches with the technology tools often discussed on this site (and include Mac users as well!).

Better Presentations - Clean and Simple

I was recently having a conversation with a peer who had just sat through a presentation I gave to a management team. He inquired as to why so little was on the slides yet we covered 45 minutes of ground.

While I would enjoy claiming some sort of guru capability on presenting - it is quite simple. I was fortunate to have had two CEO mentors who passed along some excellent advice on presenting. It came back to the forefront today when I read a Business Week article on Steve Jobs presentation methodology. Being a long time Apple customer - I have watched a number of his public presentations. His approach is very similar to that of my mentors.

For my own presentation method - it is a combination of tools, slide design and rehearsal. While I have used Power Point for years - recently I made the switch to Apple's Keynote and have not looked back. Aside from a very efficient interface and excellent integration into multimedia tools on the Mac - it has a phenomenal dual monitor support for the presenter.

When it comes to slide design - I approach every presentation - regardless of audience - as if I am presenting to a board of directors. Directors are extremely busy, operate at 100,000 feet and do not like being in the weeds unless they take you there. Thus:

• My slides are focused on using a graphic that can visually represent what I might type as bullets or other text
  
• If I have a text slide - no more than 5-7 bullets - the rest can be covered in speakers notes
  
• I use speakers notes extensively - important emphasis here - I very rarely repeat the words a viewer sees on the slide - instead I expand on them by voicing my speakers notes.
  
• If you have 30 slides - find a way to do it with 10 slides - or else you are covering more than any attendee can grasp in one session anyway. My longest presentation (in slide count) in the last year was 12 slides - and it filled an hour and fifteen minute discussion.
  

Finally - rehearsal is crucial. I run through my presentations about three times in advance of a presentation (even if only silently in my head while on a plane). It helps me stay on track and I speak more slowly as there is not nervousness about my content.

Just an aside - you can brand your presentations to include your logo and name - but get rid of busy backgrounds and crappy clip art. Build or buy good graphics that are targeted to your topic and keep lots of white space on each slide.

Presentation Humor

I spend enough time creating presentations that this Dilbert episode just struck the funny bone. Sometimes we just have to take ourselves less seriously! Click for the full strip