Everyone has their own interpretation of what a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can do and what the benefits are for their business. The real question for advisers is what do you need and what are the real advantages of using a CRM system which should be completely integrated as part of your Client Management software?
Ask yourself some simple questions. Do you have lots of filing cabinets? If so, have you considered storing the information currently held in them electronically? If you’re a step ahead and you have all but removed the need for filing cabinets in your business, are you storing your electronically-held details efficiently?
Clients will contact you (or vice versa!) in different ways throughout the average working day. Your business should be set up to receive new details through fact finds, additional client details or details of changes through telephone conversations and further meetings, faxes, emails, IM (Instant Messages) conversations, SMSs (texts), written correspondence and so on. Similarly there are provider details and contact points – again, these could come in a whole range of formats.
What this means in practice is that there is as many ways to store details as there are to send and receive information and each has a time/cost implication. The first thing to establish is what should you store and what can you discard? What are you going to do with the information? It is important to establish a system that everyone follows - otherwise you will never be as efficient as you could be in terms of using and accessing the stored information.
Next up - what are you trying to achieve with the information? What reports do you need for management information, for client reporting or for compliance? Once the level of reporting is established, it helps to decide whether the information needs to be stored as structured details or whether as documents. For example if you want to write to your clients and providers, then you need to store all the appropriate name and address details as structured fields so you can order the information quickly. If you are going to do policy summary reports you can enter the basic policy details and use the links to providers to download the current investment and pension details. You could choose to store a selection of the details from the fact find (and then scan in the fact find itself). Whatever you decide to do, it is important to give guidelines to your colleagues as to which fields to store. This is vitally important if you want to do any summary reports.
Furthermore, you need to ensure that all the documents (scans, emails, faxes, notes etc) are properly indexed for easy retrieval. If you want to store the details of a conversation, it is often easy to summarise it in a few lines. If you record the conversation, you can decide when to start and stop recording. It is important to record details of a conversation not only as notes but also in writing back to a client to confirm the conversation. It is becoming more and more common for this type of client communication to be conducted by email – as such, you probably need a system for storing (and retrieving) important emails.
So that begs the question, what emails and faxes do you keep and which do you dispose of? It is best (and safest) to keep all client contact – but that can get out of hand quite quickly given the volume of email correspondence these days. You could prioritise emails by storing all the important emails and faxes in your CRM system and in your Deleted and Sent boxes in Outlook. All other emails that you do not believe that you will ever need again can be archived (as long as you regularly back up your Outlook data). You could then copy the Deleted and Sent items off on a regular basis – say every two years or so that your Outlook is not too clogged up.
So that’s what a CRM system can do to make you more efficient. But it’s not just about efficiency. A CRM system can help you to develop your business as well. Let’s take a more in-depth look at what a CRM system can do for an advisory firm.
- Increasing sales
- Saving time
- Enhancing your client proposition and helping with RDR
- Managing the business
- Getting easier management information
- Valuing the business
Increasing sales
With RDR set to change the landscape of the industry, advisers are all looking at the sales process. Regardless of your fee structure, if you can quickly access all of your client’s details when they are on the phone, when you are about to meet the client and during a client meeting, you can identify changes in the client details, or look at the history of client contact both by you and your staff. This enables you to identify shortfalls and gaps more easily. If client reports are very easy to create, you are probably more likely to be more ambitious and produce more reports than previously. Again, this creates sales opportunities that you can exploit.
Saving time
You automatically save time by being more efficient. Your CRM system can help you with this, whether you run it on your own hardware or through the internet. If you use the software through the internet you do not need to worry about systems, you can access the software from any location. This means that you do not need to travel to see your client details as they are not bound to the office. You also do not need to worry about backup (as the hosted provider should do this for you) – although you do need to be sure to ensure that you have access to your data. You can also make arrangements with staff and other advisers where you can share the less-paper office without having to share offices. For many, this saving of time and effort improves the work pattern and lifestyle and makes a hosted solution well worthwhile.
Enhancing your client proposition and helping with RDR
Every aspect of contact with your clients has to be reviewed when looking to get your client proposition ready for RDR. You have to be more efficient in the new competitive environment and in particular to justify fees. When classifying your clients, if you keep accurate records, you can regularly review the client proposition as it is essential that the remuneration for each client is justified. Again, a good CRM system will make this much easier to achieve
Managing the business
Many businesses use checklists to manage tracking, TCF, compliance etc. These can be automated with several concurrent events – any of them can happen at the same time, involving several people and different tasks can be done by different individuals or teams and several different types of track – linked to the client, the policy or the piece of business. You can have unlimited checklists linked to the diary for reminders. This helps to delegate work but is also useful for staff awareness and training – your staff will find it much easier to know what is expected of them. These checklists link automatically to the CRM system, providing a seamless management system for the business.
Getting easier management information
Once details have been entered into the CRM system as part of your Client Management software, you can then get management information such as the amount of business classified as required. It should not be necessary to do any manual counting, grouping etc – which should make your board meetings much more productive and efficient. The CRM system needs to be properly integrated into your Client Management software, not as an afterthought as the benefits of single entry are lost.
Valuing the business
Research suggests that having a proper database structure that is fully utilised can at least double the value of the business. Higher figures are often mentioned. This is because it makes the business much more attractive to any potential acquirer – they don’t need to dig the information out of the heads of key individuals (including you!). But selling the business is not the only time that you want to value the business. Your time, your work pattern, convenience all can be helped by using the best software to match your business practices.
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