Building a sustainable technology platform

By Alyssa Yocom

The financial planning profession and how we deliver services to our clients have changed significantly over the last several decades. No longer are we updating financial statements on paper accounting ledgers and running financial planning software on floppy disks. There are literally hundreds of technology offerings across financial planning, portfolio accounting, tax planning, insurance management, estate planning, and task and relationship management.

So how do we select the right tools to serve our clients? We must be forward-thinking and aim to build a sustainable technology platform that will service our firms’ needs today and create synergies and efficiencies for years to come.

Defining “sustainable”

Sustainable in this context means that the technology achieves the firm’s goals and service delivery, that it can be maintained at its current level, and that it can evolve and grow with the firm. This should hold true for individual technology solutions and for the overall platform of solutions.

Identifying your needs

Building a sustainable technology platform starts with understanding your firm’s unique offerings and how you like to get work done. Identify your core services, and ask yourself, “What could help us deliver this better?”

Perhaps you could use a customer relationship management (CRM) system or task manager that does a better job of mapping workflows for your growing team (see “Move beyond a CRM with process control software” in this issue), or you may desire a financial planning solution that can better model complex estate and tax issues.

While in this brainstorming phase, I challenge you to think about what you wish you could do with technology and try not to limit yourself to what you currently know. In an ideal world, how would you deliver your services to clients? You may discover solutions that can help you move closer to that ideal.

Also, think about technology as an opportunity to make our roles more efficient. If we identify technology that offers automation and that integrates with other areas of our business, we’ll spend less time entering tasks, emailing coworkers, and managing data across technologies, and we can spend more time serving our clients.

Building a technology platform that works for you

After identifying your needs, it’s time to start building your firm’s technology platform. This will require thinking about your firm’s needs both today and in the future. Furthermore, integration should be high on your priority list. Having “the best” financial planning software, “the best” CRM, and “the best” portfolio accounting program is meaningless if the three programs do not work together so you are constantly entering and managing data in three different locations.

Once you’ve identified the technology you’d like to use, begin onboarding. In my experience, there is no easy way to migrate data, bring a new program online, and train your users. Most software companies will offer you basic training or an option to work with a consultant, but this can be expensive, and the experience usually falls short of the “seamless migration” that the sales team promised.

Consider hiring a dedicated technology analyst early in the process. Educate this person about your firm, how work gets completed, and the services that get delivered. From there, the technology analyst can help you select the right technology solutions and help you onboard them. This person may also be able to do some custom development within various programs so that they best align with your firm’s needs.

Technology is ever-changing. It is important to review your existing programs and other solutions available at least annually to ensure that your firm’s overall technology platform remains sustainable. The programs you select in 2022 may need to be changed or built upon by the time we get to 2024. A consultant can help in this area, too.

A case study: Schultz Financial Group Inc.

In late 2018, we saw some of our legacy software programs begin to die off. Some developer companies were sold, and there were no more bug fixes or software updates for others. We also felt increasingly frustrated that several of our programs couldn’t do what we wanted them to do. So we started a quest to revamp our entire technology platform. We spent most of 2019 identifying potential solutions and testing their individual capabilities. Over the course of 2020, our firm transitioned our CRM, portfolio accounting, tax planning, and financial planning programs.

Early on, we identified the importance of having a non-advisor team member with a knack for technology and data management lead this initiative. This ensured that our other team members could stay dedicated to serving our clients. However, no one was off the hook. Each team member provided input that ultimately shaped which programs we brought online. We designed hundreds of custom workflows and processes that our technology analyst was able to build within our CRM, and we have integrated data across technologies where we could.

We have invested more time and money into our technology platform over the last several years and, as a result, our team members now spend less time managing data and more time delivering services to our clients.

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Alyssa Yocom, CPWA^®, CFP^®, is a wealth manager at Schultz Financial Group Inc. in Reno, NV, and a member of the NAPFA Women’s Initiative.

image credit: istock.com/AndreyPopov