If Don Whalen had to make an elevator speech about his product, he would probably describe PreciseFP as a universal online form for client data entry.
“It's really a replacement for the paper-based gathering of data from clients,” said the financial adviser and former technologist who co-founded Spectrum Input LLC, the company behind PreciseFP. He said he just couldn't go on collecting data the old-fashioned way.
“We've made data collection a whole lot easier, faster and less prone to error — not to mention more satisfying for the client,” said Mr. Whalen, whose product went live in 2008 and now is used by about 100 advisory firms.
At $19.99 a month, PreciseFP — which is browser- and operating-system-agnostic — is also inexpensive. Advisers have the option of customizing their access pages with their own logo information.
Ben Jennings, a certified financial planner and accountant with SoundView Advisors, used the application at his previous firm. He has since built it into the process of accepting new clients at his current firm, which manages $135 million in assets.
“Clients appreciate it when you are organized in the way you get info from them; I think it comes in cleaner than what you get from a paper-based form,” he said, though he acknowledges that software will never eliminate the capacity for human error.
For instance, on the PreciseFP interface, Mr. Jennings noted that some clients occasionally are unsure about account types and sometimes get something wrong with an insurance account, despite the software's comprehensive drop-down boxes.
Still, he said, such mistakes are easier and less time-consuming to fix than when data entry is performed manually. What's more, clients of all ages and backgrounds show little reluctance to use the software.
“Even though more of our current and new clients are in the over-50 crowd, all the increased web activity has made even this demographic [segment] more comfortable about putting things online than people their age used to be,” Mr. Jennings said.
He noted that clients receive not only a customized link to a PreciseFP webpage with SoundView's logo on it but also a link to an educational video explaining how the system works.
Once client data have been collected in the intake process, SoundView's advisers then populate that information to MoneyGuidePro, their online financial planning application.
APPLICATION INTEGRATION
PreciseFP also integrates with the MoneyTree financial planning program and Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management application. At the moment, the software doesn't integrate with the popular Junxure program from CRM Software Inc.
The two most recent integrations were with Laser App Software Inc., a company dedicated to form-filling software that is used by many registered investment advisers and broker-dealers, and Redtail Technology Inc.'s CRM application, which is used by 25,000 planners, RIAs and brokerage firm representatives.
“Advisers can now add client, spouse and family members' details to Redtail with the click of a button. Redtail also captures all assets, insurance policies and liabilities from within our application so that authorized users can access that information at anytime, anywhere,” Mr. Whalen said.
Chris Roberts, Redtail's broker-dealer and institutional relationship manager, said that he had an “aha” moment when he first saw PreciseFP at a technology conference this year.
“I thought it was an amazing tool, and when they showed me how customizable it is, I asked [about] integrating with them,” said Mr. Roberts, who explained that it made little sense for his firm, which also runs on web services technology, to reverse-engineer the idea and build something itself.
Mr. Roberts said that he isn't aware of any other specialized application that handles client data acquisition through client input in a way that is directly comparable with PreciseFP. (I am not aware of any, either.)
Ratnesh Raval, a software developer at Redtail, walked me through an online demonstration of the integration (the online version of this story contains a slide show that explains the integration).
“Anything that is a standard field in Redtail is an option you can choose as something from which to start a survey [questionnaire] in PreciseFP,” he said.
“From there, [an adviser] can go through a seamless sign-on to Redtail. If the client already exists, we show those records in Redtail; if not, a new record opens,” Mr. Raval said.
In other words, if advisers want to customize PreciseFP with questions that they also would like to use within Redtail CRM, they can do so. After an initial setup, data can be passed seamlessly between the applications, and there are even built-in reminders suggesting that advisers do so.
For example, when an adviser whose firm uses both PreciseFP and Redtail sends a client a questionnaire, the adviser will get a reminder in the “tasks” section of the PreciseFP dashboard telling him or her to “send to Redtail” with the click of a link.
E-mail Davis D. Janowski at [email protected].
