Reprint from November 2012
Volume X, Issue 11, November 2012
(C) Copyright 2003-2012 Virtual Office News LLC
The ABC's and Solutions to Implementing
Workflows and Processes to Increase
Profitability and Enjoyment in Managing Your
Practice
By Jennifer Goldman, President, My Virtual COO and Founder of Virtual Solutions for Advisors
Processes have long been recognized as critical to the successful management of a financial advisory practice as they guide staff on the best way to operate and allow the owner to manage the firm’s operations more effectively. In this new age, you can put processes on steroids by automating the work through workflows and the payoff is magnified.
Creating operational efficiencies is a must if you’re serious about reducing staff workload and labor costs as does building a scalable firm. The nuts and bolts of operational efficiency involves creating processes to ensure staff members aren’t wasting time constantly reinventing the wheel, communicating ineffectively with each other, clients and your network, wasting energy or hard-earned profits.
When considering processes, it’s important to understand that not all processes are created equally – there are differences between processes and workflows and types of workflows. Here’s a run-down:
• Processes and workflows are, at their most basic level, a sequence of steps that tells staff how to complete a task. These processes can be built for just about every task undertaken in a financial advisory practice from onboarding clients to the client annual meeting. So, for example, when the practice brings on a new client, a process can be triggered that tells the staff what to do, when to do the work, how best to do it, and which staff member owns each step of the work.
• A “process”, in most Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems, means a series of linear steps. There are no decision breaks, meaning there is just one linear flow of steps to implement it.
Example: A Prospect to Client workflow has a step that allows you to say whether the prospect is a qualified prospect or not. The next set of steps is dependent on which choice you choose: Qualified or Not Qualified.
• An “automated workflow” is a step in a process or workflow that actually is programmed to the do the work. Example: You change a field from the word “prospect” to “client”. Instantly, an email goes to the new client welcoming them aboard and another email automatically goes to the referral source thanking them for the introduction to this new client.
While this sounds fairly easy to implement, Jon Reiners of Orion Advisor and creator of the Salesforce App Orion Connect acknowledges that “Creating the right workflows can be a potential headache for advisors”. To fill the gap, outsourcers and custodians are creating and selling package of workflows so that advisors don’t have to go to the time and trouble of creating their own.
When those workflows are integrated with technologies that advisors are using, that creates a useful shortcut that potentially saves time and money. “It’s like a box of premade brownies for processes,” Reiners says. “Instead of having to put together all the different pieces of a process yourself, that process has already been constructed, is preloaded and you just have to follow the steps.” For those firms that want the processes customized, outsourcers exist that will customize everything to your firm.
“Think about what you need first – do you want customized workflows or someone to come in the office and review or develop customized processes,” he adds. “Give it some thought and decide what you need and write up some kind of request for information for vendors who have some expertise in this area.”
So while virtually all advisors agree that processes, workflows and automated workflows are useful, they are far from universally adopted for a number of reasons, including:
1. The assumption that building workflows and processes via a new CRM system is a piece of cake.
2. It is time consuming to detail processes, and advisors find it difficult to make the time to do it. You can’t find time to write out the steps of any given operations process completed at your firm.
3. Lack of knowledge as to where to start and what tools to use to help build a process.
4. Uncertain return on investment – advisors aren’t convinced that the effort will pay off sufficiently to merit the work involved,
Fortunately, there are some solutions to these dilemmas:
1. Ask your CRM vendor for a video or printed instructions on how to build a workflow or process or ask if they provide this implement service. 2. Hire an outsourcer with process or workflow expertise, or ask your staff, to create processes or workflows in Excel, Mind Map or another tool for you to review/finalize and then have inputted into your CRM.
3. Start small: pick one area of your practice that takes up a lot of your time and start writing down information about how you manage that part of the operation. Share this work with your coach, custodian, tech vendor,
staff or other outsourcers so they can help make the process as effective as possible.
4. Read some examples of solid processes or gather more information about how to create them. It’s as easy as doing some Google searches such as “benefits of workflows and processes” or read “Good to Great”, “Raving Fan”, Six Sigma, Jack Welch, etc. Then do only one process or workflow, get a sense of how your staff and operation benefits from it and then start another one.
Remember that the Holy Grail is to create automated workflows so the technology is doing the work, not you or your staff. When you pay for a CRM system, it isn’t cheap to implement properly, but the fact is that if you use it to its full potential, it pays for itself and more by eliminating work. It’s a way to grow a business not so much by adding staff but by investing in and maximizing technology. Automated workflows save a financial advisor and financial advisory practice a significant amount of time and money. “When advisors can see what the underlying functionality of an automated workflow can save them, it adds so much efficiency that an advisor’s time is freed up to do what they really should be doing, which is meeting with clients, acquiring clients, developing strategies,” says Rowling CEO of Total Rebalance Expert and principal of Rowling & Associates LLP, a financial advisory firm. “Operational processes are taken care of automatically and in a mistake-proof way.”
If you implement processes, workflows and automated workflows properly, there is a shift in each member of your staff’s responsibilities, workload and possibly their job roles. Everyone should be working at their highest skill level. This ultimately means you have created a more efficient practice as it allows you, the CEO, to delegate the more technical, high skill work to the staff. Ultimately, by delegating this type of work you’ll save yourself time, which permits you to refocus your energy on your core competencies, whether it is working only with your top clients, networking, or leaving work at a more reasonable hour. Also, it’s important to understand that technology and process improvements, like any other worthy asset, requires a constant reinvestment to realize its full potential. Whether you realize it or not, you always have a choice as to how the work gets done: investing in technology, processes and outsourcers or staff. While operations improvements -- process/workflows -- have their own hassles, so does an investment in onsite staff that have no processes to guide them – there is management time, the emotional component, benefits and other issues. Process within the technology, when done right, will save time and headaches, let you delegate work to the higher-skilled staff so you can focus on client development.
Our Final Word
Processes, workflows and especially automated workflows are becoming increasingly important to scaling a financial advisory practice and increasing profitability. By investing in technology and implementation your practice can be more profitable, less labor intensive, and altogether more rewarding and enjoyable for everyone including your clients. So now that
you have solutions available within your staff, vendors, custodians, and outsourcers, you can implement and get back to enjoying and helping people navigate their finances and reaching their goals.
