For any medium to large-sized financial services organization, the operations department is the backbone of the organization. Without a well-functioning ops team, nothing else that goes on in the business works quite right.  

Sure, advisors can deliver advice—but without operations to handle opening accounts, their time won’t be spent where it matters most. 

So if your organization needs to improve their operations, what do you do?

The best place to begin is to assess how your operations team is using technology, where they’re inefficient, and then get them the tools they need to complete their jobs quickly and accurately. Sometimes that may mean discovering an existing solution on the market, and other times it may mean building something custom to use within your firm’s four walls. 

And if you have the right technology partner, you can even do both. 

In today’s article, we’re taking a quick look at how you can improve your operations team with the right technology solutions.

Step one: Lock in the Right CRM

No operations team—in fact, no business of any kind—can grow at scale without the right CRM in place. A good CRM does more than deliver a place for your sales team to take notes; it acts as the unified hub for the entire organization. 

Advisors can use it for recording notes from a meeting, service can use it to remind them when a client needs outreach, and operations can use it to manage the various tasks that need to be contained where all that other client information is stored. 

And here’s where a CRM becomes really powerful. When it’s integrated with your other important solutions, like a custodian or financial planning software, it becomes so much more than a CRM. It becomes the true wealth management platform where all work can get done. Instead of hopping between ten apps in one day, the operations team can stay in one central location for almost anything they need to do.

Step two: Guide your processes

Repeatable processes are the holy grail for operations. Nothing disrupts a firm faster than one team member doing something their way and another person doing it completely differently.  

 Let’s face it: It’s 2023; there is no reason for anyone to be going rogue in operations because of a lack of knowledge or undetermined processes or workflows. If an organization doesn’t have guided workflows in place, it’s not because there are a lack of options.

 Again, technology is the saving grace here. The right CRM or wealth management platform puts guided workflows into place for an operations team so everyone can be on the same page and deliver service and support in exactly the same way. Fewer questions have to be asked, new team members can get trained right from day one, and service and support improve for everyone—including, and most importantly, your clients.

Step three: Build to suit

An integrated, unified CRM system with guided workflows is the beginning, but it’s not the end for all organizations. There will be times when you need to build your own processes or unique tools to serve a purpose unique to your firm.

 You could build a proprietary system from scratch. But there’s a better way.

 Partnering with a wealth management platform you can build on top of is faster and gives your organization the opportunity to level up across the board, in every department. There’s no need to build system after system when you can instead bolt your custom processes and needs onto your existing platform.

 Does your firm have a solid technology backbone? If your operations could use stability, a unified wealth management platform can be what you need to solidify your workflows, bring your organization together, and give you the foundation you need to build your own custom solutions at a faster pace. 

 

Click here to see how SkienceONE gives you the best of both worlds. Buy technology that works flawlessly from day one and gives you the platform to build custom solutions.