The irony of financial technology is that many advisors feel constrained by it rather than empowered, because they often spend too much time struggling with tools that do not fit their practice or even the financial advice industry. This does not have to be the case.
Instead, advisors can take advantage of easy-to-learn tools that are customized for the size and services of their business, by focusing on the core of their tech stack—namely their CRM, financial planning and risk analysis software.
Regarding vendors, bigger is not always better and sometimes what was wonderful in the past no longer makes sense for the future of your practice. With that in mind, here’s how I figured out the best tools for my time and money.
Customer Relationship Management
We throw around the acronym CRM so freely that it’s easy to forget such tools should help us convert prospects into clients and maximize the client experience. Unfortunately, too many advisors use CRM to shuffle data without gleaning actionable insights. That often happens when advisors rely on unwieldy software with loads of features that are irrelevant for the practice, are difficult to master or lack a responsive helpdesk.
I used Salesforce as my CRM platform for years, and while the largest vendor on the market certainly has much to offer, eventually I had to accept that there were more fitting solutions out there for me. Although Redtail is a popular CRM for advisors, I decided to go with Wealthbox. Four years later, I’m still happy with my choice.
Among the major strengths of Wealthbox, ease of use tops the list. Somehow the product designers at Wealthbox have managed to “consumerize” the CRM experience, by blending CRM and email in a way I’ve never seen. Wealthbox feels so natural to use because it’s intuitive, yet it’s also super powerful.
Its dashboard lets practice leaders see what their team is doing in real-time in the “activity stream”. The CRM is also exceptionally good at integrating different sources of advisory-specific data and makes it simple for advisors to track the social media activity of their contacts by plugging in their names and emails. Finally, Wealthbox is known for constantly advancing their CRM platform based on feature requests from advisors, and I like the fact that they welcome my input and often act on it.
Financial Planning
Think of the big vendors in financial planning software and you have a wide selection: Advizr, RightCapital, MoneyGuidePro and eMoney Advisor, to name a few. Of those eMoney continues to stand out.