Client management software is the foundation of every advice practice and understanding how to transition to a new system when the need arises is crucial for business continuity.
Latitude Private Wealth began looking for a new service provider during the first half of last year, shortlisting two providers by around September. Director and financial adviser Wesley Russell tells Professional Planner the firm ran full trials of the shortlisted providers, so all staff had time to test out the software.
“We tried not to sway people one way or another, it was more about giving them the opportunity to see what they like and didn’t like about both programs,” Russell says.
The firm’s practice manager, Jodi Bindig, says both systems that were tested had positive features, and the firm ultimately picked intelliflo.
“The two that we selected had a client portal which is something that was important to us,” Bindig says.
“We’re really looking at the security of our client documents when we’re sending documents back and forth to clients, especially now with emails being compromised.”
Kofkin Bond & Co CEO Jamie Ardern says the catalyst for change was after trying a suite of different products, tools and features from various fintechs, everything was becoming cumbersome and expensive to manage.
“What we’re finding was that there’s some really cool tools that we could use but the limitations were that we were that had to re-enter data all the time,” Ardern says.
“You were trying to create efficiencies but at the same time were creating inefficiencies. It started to really frustrate me.”
Furthermore, the costs of the customer management software he was using continued to rise as the firm added more staff.
“It’s just a substantial cost to keep having and what I found was that not all staff members needed full access to all the functionalities.”
Kofkin Bond & Co transitioned to Dash as its primary CRM around three years ago towards the end of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.
“During Covid it was a good time to reflect for us, we were all working remotely,” Ardern says.
Data migration
The biggest risk with transitioning systems is the potential to lose or otherwise compromise client data, but Ardern says his firm’s transition was fortunately a smooth process.
“For me it was good to do that because it helped us clean up data through excel files before importing instead of going through individual client files and that can take a long time,” Ardern says.
“I look at it as a positive. Some people look at that as a large task, onerous and stressful. But if you put a positive spin on it, it gives you time to fix the mistakes that you’ve made in the past, if any.”
Ardern says the system transition presented an opportunity re-assess internal processes as well.
“Sometimes everyone looks at [a transition] as such a stressful job but sometimes it’s a good time to reflect,” Ardern says.
“By changing our systems it helped us change our processes and roles and created a lot of efficiencies in that way.”
Russell says the data migration was straightforward, having received assistance from the provider.
“Could we have done it ourselves? Probably” Russell says. “We would have hated each other by the time we would have finished it.”
Advice for advisers
Russell says his advice to other practices looking for a switch is not to rush into it.
“Take your time and give everyone in the office the opportunity to use it,” Russell says.
“Be prepared to negotiate with the providers. I’m not sure I’d change anything in terms of what we’ve done.”
Bindig adds that firms should make sure there is enough time to set it up properly so that all facets of the system can be tested.
“With this system there’s a lot to it and you want to be able to use all of it, but you need to allow the time to set it up properly,” Bindig says.
“Put someone dedicated onto it who can set it up properly before you start using it, and [make sure] everybody gets trained properly onto it.”
Ardern says it’s important to know functionalities of all the software features beforehand. “Get a good picture of the system you’re going to and what it provides,” Ardern says.
“For me, it’s speaking to advice practices that have done it before. People don’t want to just hear it from the product [makers] themselves.”
Arden adds he’s also made “rash decisions” in the past which led him to do more due diligence to really understand the breadth of the offering this time around.
“We all get excited by technology, so when I say rash decisions – this looks good on the surface but finding out the really nitty, gritty application it really has,” he says.
