As an IFA, personal interaction is probably a key part of your business.
You probably enjoy building relationships with clients and carefully assessing their needs, at various stages in their lives.
Of course, the part the client doesn’t see is just as important to the success of your business. All that complicated number crunching and admin that goes on behind the scenes. However, while your clients don’t witness the nuts and bolts of your operation, they certainly feel the effects.
The advantage of going with a customised tech stack as opposed to an all-in-one solution means that you can take advantage of the best-of-breed solutions to deliver an exceptional experience to your clients, rather than a diluted, mediocre experience.
Ultimately, the quality of your workflow is going to determine how well you are able to manage your clients’ needs over the long term and how effectively you can grow your business.
What’s a tech stack, anyway?
Choosing the right tools is key to optimising workflow. That’s obvious enough.
Unfortunately, not enough business owners seriously consider how the technology they use interacts and whether they have a coherent, integrated digital workflow.
Even the most advanced digital tools won’t necessarily ensure optimal workflow if they are not used in an integrated way or aren’t suitable for your particular needs.
That’s why we talk of a tech ‘stack’ – an integrated suite of technologies that work together to help your team achieve maximum productivity and exceptional results.
Goodbye remote working, hello flexible workflow
If 2020 was the year of the remote office, 2021 will be … well it can be whatever you need it to be.
Cloud-based software means that we are no longer chained to any particular office space.
It’s not just about remote access to software. Cloud-based workflow tools enable team members to effectively coordinate workflow without any need to be in the same location.
Cloud financial software such as Xero or QuickBooks have transformed the way businesses manage their finances.
The upshot is that even if you’re looking forward to getting back into the office and away from the distractions of home, you still have the flexibility to incorporate staff based in other locations, or to address urgent administrative matters when you’re away from the office.
Of course, to successfully coordinate workflow, you need to ensure all your cloud-based systems integrate with each other, and function seamlessly together.
Your clients don’t have home printers!
Are you making your clients print out documents and then sign them and then scan them and then email them back? Just writing that sentence was a drag.
Paperless systems that allow for an electronic signature aren’t just infinitely more convenient – they save time, are more secure and reduce the chance that important documents will get lost in the mail.
Simple tools like QuicklySign and DocuSign will save you and your clients a lot of hassle, and provide a more secure and efficient way to get the signature on the dotted line.
A good CRM is a game changer.
A well-designed CRM is that rare thing: technology that’s easier to use and gives better results.
Instead of going through a dense list of leads and clients, or getting lost in the thicket of a clunky spreadsheet, modern CRMs have easy-to-understand dashboards that give you the information you need at a glance.
As it’s so simple to track the sales journey from lead to client, a CRM makes it much easier to effectively nurture new clients and give your existing clients the personalised service they expect.
Popular general-purpose CRMs include Salesforce, Hubspot, Zoho and CapsuleCRM. There are also CRMs designed especially for IFAs, such as Wealthbox (a promising US-based offering), along with the homegrown staples like Atwork, Elite Wealth, Workpool, FSPHub and Avalon. New financial planning tools like Asset-Map are also powerful solutions that enable IFAs to have interactive financial planning discussions with clients through their “single-picture-on-a-page” approach.
Get revenue management software – especially designed for IFAs
Commspace designed revenue management software to simplify the process of managing all your revenue streams, ranging from provider commission to direct fee-for-advice invoicing.
With automatic data population and classification, along with built-in rules to handle even the most complex splits, our flexible cloud-based technology makes it easy to access and manage the information you need from anywhere.
Designed to seamlessly integrate with your CRM, Commspace makes the admin of running a business simpler and faster.
Become an instant data scientist
Commspace DataFlow turns obtaining provider commission data from a time-consuming, chasing-down-commission-statements activity to an efficient, automated process.
The system also provides another important layer to your tech stack: actionable analytics. Commspace Analytics offers a set of intuitive, visual dashboards, which helps you segment revenue data into usable information.
The system allows you to instantly discover insights like which products produce the most revenue for your business or the average revenue generated by each client over a given period.
You can segment your clients in any number of ways, to take out the guesswork and help you make data-driven strategic decisions.
It’s super easy to use and allows anyone to discern trends in the data without requiring a PhD in statistics.
