Onboarding employees onto a new tech system can be an arduous task. If the service provider isn’t willing to help directly with the process, practices may need to re-consider the relationship.
At the Professional Planner Advice Practitioner Summit, Plutosoft founder Vincent Holland said that changing business-critical software can seem daunting for practices.
“I strongly believe, having run an advice practice myself and having the opportunity to work with a lot of other advice practices, that if you aren’t happy with your software, you need to do something about it.
“Otherwise, you’re going to get the same outcome, the same result, if you keep the status quo.”
Holland said this is done by the business all the time.
“We take firms through the change management process – everything from migrating data across from one system to another [as well as] providing the training and structure to ensure the system can be implemented as seamlessly as possible,” Holland said.
Caboodle Financial Services co-founder Peita Diamantidis said she has dealt with firms that relied only on videos and written onboarding instructions.
“When you’re looking at a new system, particularly a big chunky one, it’s not your job to train the system BDMs on how to onboard people,” Diamantidis said.
She questioned the logic of providers who expect it to be the role of the adviser’s business to onboard people onto a new system.
“You want me to move data and change my advice process and I’m just going to dig in your manual?”
Getting an Edge
The onboarding process is a challenge that will also be faced by CFS amid the launch of its upcoming Edge platform.
Updating the summit on Edge’s progress, CFS executive director David Pritchard said the platform is currently in the final stages of testing.
“Quality is not negotiable in this game, so we’ll take the time that we need to ensure that quality is 100 per cent,” Pritchard said.
Pritchard said businesses work differently, so naturally, practices want more control over technology to fit their needs.
“They’re structured differently, they use different tech, and so on,” Pritchard said.
“Advisers don’t want a platform or advice tech provider telling them how a process needs to work. It just needs to fit into the business.”
Empower Business Advisory founder Recep Peker was part of the exploratory process in the development of Edge, leading the “inner circle” briefings that directed CFS’ client feedback to guide the design process of the new platform.
“Each adviser runs a very distinct business,” Peker said. “Some of them service only 30 clients; others service 500. One adviser has one support staff; others have multiple support staff.
Backing up Pritchard’s assertion, Peker said technology needs to be built to be flexible for the practices’ needs.
“A platform’s role is to essentially allow advisers to run their businesses the way they want. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the centre of their universe.”
Driving efficiency
Pritchard said that although there is work to improve technology efficiency, problems still exist.
“Data being stored across different types of platforms creates process breakdowns and inconsistencies across the whole business,” Pritchard said.
“That’s an industry problem that needs to be solved, but platforms have really got a role to play in that.”
He added that the industry has the resources and the scale to fix the problem. For example, several platforms now provide real-time data exchange rather than batch processes, which can be frustrating to work with.
“That’s going to change the nature of the way that we use those systems,” Pritchard said.
