I have mixed feelings about Salesforce.com, a very popular customer relationship management solution.
No doubt about it — millions of users in many industries swear by it.
However, I think that the solution is a poor fit for many smaller registered investment advisers, and even smaller broker-dealers.
To be fair, the solution is ideal for organizations focused on sales and general business. But for the specialized niche that is the advisory world, Salesforce will find a comfortable home only within midsize to larger firms.
Let me explain why I think that this is the case.
There is an inherent complexity involved in customizing Salesforce for smaller firms.
That said, plenty of midsize and large advisory firms on a growth trajectory will adopt the CRM solution, but the complex task of customizing it will remain.
To tackle that chore, advisory firms should look into Process-Comp-oser, an application created to address a single, yet complex, task for most midsize firms: creating firm-specific work flows.
The app makes creating work flows easier by allowing you to author and embed your firm's process library within Salesforce.
In a nutshell, a work flow is simply a way to set procedures or paths to follow for specific tasks. One such task would be having a repeatable, easy-to-follow system for opening new accounts.
ProcessComposer was designed and developed by Orchestrate LLC, which is owned by Foster Group Inc., a wealth management firm with 800 clients and $1 billion in assets under management.
Officials at Foster Group expect a demand for their application among firms desiring a shortcut in developing their own work flows.
ProcessComposer is meant to help guide financial advisers through the mayhem with straightforward wizards, which include visual flow charting while you construct the work flows.
Its target market is RIA firms (or any other business) with 10 or more employees and complex, multistage processes to build into work flows.
It costs $35 per month per user for the first 25 users and becomes less expensive for larger numbers, dropping to $15 per user for more than 100.
The solution is being used by portfolio management and reporting provider Orion Advisor Services LLC and its staff of 110.
“We have seven service teams and need to ensure they are all processing things in the same way throughout the organization,” said Brooke Trainer, Orion's tech support project manager and the company's designated Salesforce guru.
She has used ProcessComposer for four months. Ms. Trainer said the first two were spent gaining proficiency and she has now built 100 work flows with the app.
“It is pretty easy to set up once you understand the structure — and you have much more in the way of details that you can define in there, as compared to generic Salesforce,” Ms. Trainer explained.
There have been very few applications developed specifically for use with Salesforce within the advisory space, because that market, in business terms, is relatively small.
However, since TD Ameritrade Institutional and Schwab Advisor Services are making plans to integrate Salesforce into their custodial platforms, it might help to foster additional applications on the AppExchange.
Don't get me wrong — thanks to the open nature of the Salesforce .com development environment, called simply Force.com, there are now thousands of applications available for tackling common tasks in larger industries.
That's what makes Salesforce appealing; there are so many different developers at work on additional bolt-on tools for those industries.
The problem is, they are not suited for the financial advisory business.
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