Advisor Technology is an Enabler
So much upstream stand-alone technology imposed without an advisor voice! You have heard the complaints that many of your peers may have dismissed as having no substance.
Just because advisors cannot verbalize the "better way" does not mean the frustration is not legitimate. It takes specialized skills and insight to improve process and technology through the eyes of the advisor.
Integration is the rallying cry for advisor technology for beyond 2010. But automating a mess only relying on integration of silo systems can create an even bigger mess from an advisor perspective. Most technology platforms that are being integrated, usually through data feeds, have been designed from a product-driven standpoint in an earlier era when most advisors were captive and worked within a single firm's business processes and technology. The blend of manual processes, spreadsheets, and single purpose functional systems was difficult enough to master even then.
Beyond Data Aggregation
Today, independent advisors must work with a myriad of such previous generation approaches every day without any common approaches. Integration strategies remain as one advisor to many proprietary systems.
The silver bullet proposed is to link in the advisor CRM at the core of the advisor practice with integration and data aggregation facilitated through uploads and downloads of data is an over simplification of the underlying pain felt by advisors. Advisors are not the end of a download but are the originator of the data that drives all financial processes and transactions that moves up through the value chain through interactive processes. Each of the many sub-processes have their own overlapping systems. Streamlining process and workflows beginning with the advisor perspective is the only viable approach and is how you as their support firms will win their loyalty. This does start with CRM as a key component tied to business process automation capabilities. This needs a fresh look on a holistic basis at our industry's value chain automation.
OPUGEN has worked diligently to understand the advisor practice management processes and how they can be enhanced and streamlined for independent distribution firms. Often the key is to simply look at the redundant processes and treat those as the quick wins to be addressed. Before you make major technology decisions that may tie your hands even more for the future, please give us a call.