I know, I know… I’m always talking about how it’s the age of the customer and how everything revolves around the customer. Guess what? I don’t just talk about it, I live by it too. Last week, it was my privilege to host our 2017 Client Day here in Toronto. We were joined by senior business and IT leaders from many of our customers from across the globe, across the country, and down the street. 

I’m a consistent conference goer. I go to learn about and discuss all things wealthTech, and every year we see the bandwagon steer towards the same trends. This year especially – though certainly true of the last few years – we seem to have latched on to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). I see demos of some really cool technology. 

For a person to use something, they almost always have to believe they have something to gain. For a CRM system, that means that a person should get more information out than they put in. After all, if all you have access to is the information you entered, what’s the point?

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere all of a sudden. It’s on our phones, in our homes (I’m looking at you, Alexa) and peppered throughout our online experiences. It’s the hot topic from the water cooler to analysts to the media to the major industry players. (I think we all know where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg stand on AI by now.)

Will they run the markets and become our new overlords? Pushing science fiction aside, I think there are some key realistic expectations we can all start to consider as achievable with today’s technology.

Let’s talk about your desk for a minute. Yes, that’s right. Your desk. That indispensable piece of furniture that provides a home to your computer, cup of coffee, print outs, pens, tchotchkes, and what have you.

So when a system stops receiving support or development, it affects the health of the entire company. It can become expensive to maintain, difficult to upgrade, or so obsolete it risks pulling the company behind the competition. When people can't or aren't using the system, or when the system isn't able to provide the functionality that's needed, the organization must replace it.

In any industry, like financial services, that relies on maintaining deep relationships with their clients, it’s critical to understand and service the client across their entire journey. Successful client experience solutions focus on features across what we call the “The Customer Lifecycle.” 

Today, we’re going to take a quick look at scheduling, a fundamental feature of a financial services CRM solution. It’s a necessity, however, many companies only give a few cursory questions about it in most RFPs we see. It’s a mistake to assume that all scheduling is alike. 

Like every other interaction with business these days, customers expect client onboarding and new account opening to be fast, efficient, and easy. Traditionally, onboarding in financial services has been a paper-based process not known for its efficiency. We’ve all had an experience that went something like this: “I need to ask you some questions … 

As part of my job, I review a lot of articles about advisor desktops, platforms, and strategies. Rarely do I get to say that someone truly understands the reality of delivering and executing on them. I work with top wealth management firms regularly on their front-office solution road-maps and implementations, and I can tell you that it’s not easy. How do you cater for so much functionality in a usable but cost-effective way? Financial planning, CRM, portfolio and account management, order management, trade execution, statements and reporting, fee management, social media, etc. – it’s a lot. You cannot build all this in-house – you’re not a technology company, software is not your core competency, and it’s not economically viable to sustain. And as much as there will be a clamoring of vendors to tell you otherwise, the truth is that no “one vendor” can provide the right functional coverage to cater for all these needs.