To pull off a successful and smooth transition from one technological solution to another, not only do team members need adequate training but so do clients, a panel has heard.
At the Ignite conference, hosted by HUB24-owned SMSF administration provider Class, BBB Partners director David McRae explained how his firm jumps ship from one technological system to another with as little resistance as possible from both the team and clients.
McRae said that technology changes require effective training for the team. When his firm switched to different client portal, they were unprepared and ran into issues.
“A polite word was a riot in our admin team because we hadn’t done the training yet,” McRae said.
“It was absolute chaos for about three weeks until we got everyone back on the same page. Obviously, we learned from that. It is explaining what we’re trying to do, because [the client portal] is really easy.”
He gave examples of what the firm does to ensure that the team is on the same page and successfully adapting to the new system. These include regular “huddles” and “collectives”.
“Huddles are just like team meetings or whole of business team meetings. We have them every fortnight.”
Collectives are longer and more detailed where the discussion revolves around what’s changing and why.
McRae emphasised the purpose of these meetings are to “bring people up and explain the benefits”.
“It’s just trying to be inclusive and explain why as much as possible.”
An example McRae provided involves data processing. “We’re not using bank feeds to get rid of the data processor,” he said. “We’re trying to actually allow you not to be a data processor.”
He explained the firm changes technological systems in order to provide “a proper, efficient quality of service”.
A firm should expect the introduction of major changes to take time as people need to adapt to the new system.
“When we moved from MYOB to Xero, that wasn’t something that happened overnight, that was a very long process,” McRae said.
Other changes take less time and effort, such as transitioning from electronic contract and signature services. McRae described this as a “two-minute conversation”.
The time it takes a firm to switch technologies is dependent on the effect it will have on the business and its clients.
“The size of the technology and the rollout, the implications and all those types of things is a lot more complicated,” McRae said.
The firm should be prepared for the worst as it is difficult to predict how well the team and clients will adapt to the new system.
McRae said the firm expects resistance from clients because it is expected as many clients are of an older generation who may not be as open to change.
“A lot of our financial planning clients are older and there was a little bit of pushback,” McRae said.
The firm handles this by slowly educating clients on the new system and “trying to bring them along on the journey”.
“Newsletters went out with videos showing the difference in how it works.”
McRae described this as an effective way to provide guidance on the new system to clients and help them through the process of adapting to new technology.
