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2 minute read
When we first came up with the idea for AdviceCloud, one of the key problems we wanted to solve was bridging the gap between the portfolio and client management processes. Custodians give access to only one side of the financial advice operation. First and foremost though, a financial advisor must be client-oriented. An efficiently and actively managed portfolio means little if it is not in line with a client's goals, risk-tolerance, and spending needs.
Most financial advisory firms utilize Customer Relationship Management software, also known as CRM, to track their clients' personal information and facilitate interactions they have with their clients. An effective CRM setup guides the client management process by providing a collaborative space for financial advisors and their teams (if applicable) to track client data, important dates, tasks, and other information that is required to oversee all aspects of client management. CRM solutions help financial advisors maintain a proactive rather than reactive relationship with their clients. For example, a CRM system helps track a client's birthdate so that an advisor can know when to make required minimum distributions from applicable investment accounts.
AdviceCloud is built from the ground up with client management as the driving force behind all financial advice workflows. Our homepage calls out the highest priority needs that an advisor must address for the day. Many of these callouts are derived from data found within the user's CRM system that would otherwise not be available if we only provided data from the user's custodian and investment accounts. The household details page intermixes portfolio and CRM data for an at-a-glance view of the client's most important information.
Integrating CRM systems with AdviceCloud is made possible thanks to APIs and other data syncing capabilities provided by many of today's popular CRM applications. One of the more widely used CRM applications in the financial advice industry is Wealthbox, a CRM platform tailor-built for financial advisors. Wealthbox comes with built-in data fields that are important for financial advice, including income, retirement, house-holding, and other financial services contact fields. Wealthbox is the CRM of choice for many of the financial advisors we worked with while building AdviceCloud. As such, we decided to focus exclusively on integrating AdviceCloud with Wealthbox prior to launching.
AdviceCloud is designed to work alongside your CRM software. While we offer many two-way data syncing capabilities within the AdviceCloud application that let you create and modify data in other systems, our goal is not to replicate every feature that exists in Wealthbox. We have carefully selected the capabilities we believe should be at the user's fingertips when working with their clients' portfolios. The notes pane offers a quick glance at the history of client interactions as well as a way to jot down anything to comes to mind during the portfolio management process. Task creation helps quickly track time-sensitive requirements that arise from any investment needs. However, more in-depth CRM capabilities like building workflow templates and managing opportunities are left exclusively to the Wealthbox application.
AdviceCloud combines portfolio and customer relationship management to make the two processes greater than the sum of their parts. Wealthbox is the CRM that we have integrated with to make the financial advice workflow better for our users. You can check out our Wealthbox page for more details on what capabilities AdviceCloud offers through its CRM integration.