Salesforce.com unveils CRM for indie advisers

Salesforce.com Inc is going after the independent adviser market with Salesforce for Wealth Management, a customized, adviser-focused version of its popular customer relationship management application.

Odds are good that the software will make the short list among advisers who desire a hosted solution.

Its existing version of Salesforce can claim 60,000 users who are brokers and advisers from companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. Another 40,000 operations and support staffers from those firms rely on the software as well.

To stay competitive, advisers need to update their technology.

“We’ve found that it is important to independents to have the same quality technology as those at Merrill [Lynch] and other big companies. Advisers can’t wait any longer,” said Renny Monaghan, vice president of financial services for Salesforce.com Inc. of San Francisco. “There’s just too much competition, too little time. They need integrated systems designed for advisers, so they can spend more time working with clients, and less time managing their technology.”

A BETA USER

Parallel Advisors LLC of San Francisco participated as a beta user of the new product before implementing it across the firm, said Jacob F. Schutt, a principal with the registered investment advisory firm. Salesforce suggested him as a source for this story.

Parallel Advisors, which manages $100 million in assets, was using the standard version of Salesforce when Mr. Schutt heard about the adviser-friendly version of the software.

“We hadn’t yet done a lot of customization on the standard version we were using, and some of the customizations in the new version were very intriguing to us, especially the work-flow features,” he said.

The idea was to achieve a much more consistent process for Parallel Advisors and clients, Mr. Schutt said. The firm will spend about $900 per quarter so that he, another adviser and one support person can use the application.

The features that will appeal most to advisers are the household and relationship group features that allow an adviser to link related family accounts. Also, it is easy to customize and create as many fields as needed.

In addition, advisers gain access to simplified holdings data that resides in the CRM system, without having to go to the portfolio management system. There are customized dashboard views that provide advisers a simple, at-a-glance view of their assets and clients under management.

While there are discounts available for volume licensing, a typical small firm with a handful of licenses is likely to spend around $1,200 per year, per seat, for Salesforce for Wealth Management.

GROWTH BY ACQUISITION

“We do grow our firm by acquisition and most folks we acquire are using something already, so we needed something that would allow for simple conversion, that is scalable, and can be accessed anywhere, anytime,” explained Gary Roth, chief operating officer of United Capital Financial Advisers of Newport Beach Calif. The firm manages $10 billion in assets. Salesforce recommended him for this article.

For some vendors, the wealth management system represents a significant source of competition.

“Microsoft CRM and Salesforce.com both represent major competitors, and they are larger companies,” said Greg Friedman, president of CRM Software Inc., the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.-based purveyor of the Junxure customer relationship management application.

“Our differentiators [as a CRM provider] are twofold — we’re a service company and our support is built around my experiences as a consumer and adviser — and that gives us a special perspective,” explained Mr. Friedman, who also is the president of the advisory firm Friedman & Associates in Novato, Calif.

While Salesforce for Wealth Management will likely be attractive to many advisers, others may find value in XLR8, a less expensive application designed for small firms (InvestmentNews, April 21).

XLR8 is an adviser-customized overlay for the Salesforce.com platform that provides 500 adviser-specific fields. A basic installation requires a one-time upfront fee of $1,500 for the first XLR8 license and a one-time $350 for each additional user. Salesforce.com then charges $125 per month for at least one enterprise license per firm and $50 per month for each additional user.

E-mail Davis D. Janowski at [email protected].

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