His firm uses Tamarac, which is preconfigured for the wealth management industry and currently serves over 1,000 RIA firms ranging in AUM from $10 million to over $10 billion.
Engelken says Tamarac is pre-integrated with Allworth’s portfolio accounting system, which makes navigating between the two applications easy. Tamarac is easy to learn and “provides quality training,” he says. However, “if you intend to customize it to meet your specific business needs, there are some limitations on the degree of customization allowed.”
Indeed, rigidity and a lack of flexibility were often mentioned as drawbacks to some CRM systems.
“The biggest limitation I’ve found with our CRM software is that it doesn’t give us enough customization options,” says Chrissy Lee, co-president and chief operating officer at Kalos Financial, a broker-dealer in Alpharetta, Ga., with an AUM of $3.2 billion. Kalos also uses Junxure. “It’s rigid, in that we aren’t able to add more phone numbers or add another line item. These added features would provide us with even more details to better connect with clients and/or prospective clients.”
However, Lee says Junxure “does a good job in keeping our advisors, staff and back office efficient. Its ability to assign tasks to various people helps everyone stay focused, and the alerts ensure we’re meeting deadlines. The different folders we create for clients establish a sense of organization that benefits the entire firm.”
Before choosing a CRM system, Engelken and others advise meeting with several vendors and to watch a demo of the application to see it actually being used. Likewise, they get references and talk with firms of similar size who are using that system.
AdvicePeriod, a Los Angeles-based wealth management firm with $3 billion in assets under management, uses Salentica Elements powered by Salesforce. According to its website, Elements “is a turnkey, yet configurable solution built on the Lightning Platform by Salesforce and is designed specifically for the unique needs of RIAs and wealth managers to deepen client relationships and grow with scale.”
Jonathan Straub, AdvicePeriod’s founder and principal, says Elements integrates with the company’s portfolio management and reporting software, Black Diamond. He likes its flexibility in helping the company model its data. It also has “excellent reporting and dashboarding features, an included workflow creation solution [Conga Orchestrate] and all the third-party integrations Salesforce has to offer.”
One drawback with the system, Straub says, is its complexity. “Although this is a benefit for us, prospective firms will most likely need a full-time employee who can understand how Salesforce works to get the most out of the platform.” Straub says it took about a week for AdvicePeriod’s advisors to familiarize themselves with the system’s core features, although “we are constantly adding and enhancing features, so we don’t think the learning will ever end.”
Elements starts at $80 per user per month, although discounts are available if it’s bundled with other services such as Black Diamond, Straub says. “When choosing a CRM system, it is important to understand the problem you are trying to solve,” Straub advises. “For us, we realized that we needed to improve integration within our tech stack. We also realized that we wanted to digitize all of our business processes. To do this, it was important to have the ability to create complex, multi-step workflows.”