Jumping on Salesforce bandwagon

The Salesforce bandwagon is filling up.

Advisor Group, a large independent-broker-dealer network, will roll out Salesforce.com to financial advisers affiliated with all three of its firms — FSC Securities Corp., Royal Alliance Associates Inc. and SagePoint Financial Inc. — beginning this month.

The technology is being beta-tested by a group of advisers and will be implemented throughout the year.

Advisor Group has worked closely with Salesforce to integrate the customer relationship management software with its own systems, primarily its Vision2020 accounting platform.

What's more, Advisor Group is looking to add Chatter.

Chatter is a Salesforce App Exchange bolt-on program — basically a secure, private social network for use within an organization that uses the Salesforce CRM solution.

I had an extensive conversation with David Ballard, Advisor Group's chief information officer, regarding the decision to use Salesforce.

“We want the advisers to focus on their client relationships, and not our back-office processes,” he said.

“The idea was to get everything up into the cloud and sell the advisers on the idea that we will take care of security, they have one sign-on at the front door and they will be able to reach everything we offer from there — and it will not cost the advisers a thing,” Mr. Ballard said.

Shortly after he joined Advisor Group three years ago, he heard advisers complaining about having to enter data in multiple places. It was evident to Mr. Ballard that as good as Vision2020 was, it was an account-centric solution, and the advisers wanted more.

The new system shifts the focus to a client-centric system, with advisers getting a household view of their accounts and a direct connection to Advisor Group's back-office systems, including document management.

Salesforce acts as the hub for all of this.

Mercer Advisors Inc., a wealth management registered investment advisory firm with $3.5 billion in assets under management, also is turning to Salesforce.

Mercer is going to tie together Orion Advisor Services Inc.'s back-office account management and reporting technology with Salesforce to create, in essence, a single-user interface to power the entire firm.

A GOOD FIT

It is clear that Salesforce is a good fit for these larger firms because it is scalable and flexible, and because these firms plan to grow and have the expertise available to make it work.

I aired my mixed feelings about smaller firms' using the application in a recent column (InvestmentNews, Jan. 16). With that said, I have heard from a consultant group that thinks they can provide Salesforce in an economical and efficient fashion to RIA firms of any size.

Rest assured that I will explore that assertion in an upcoming column.

* * *

To my surprise, I have met a number of advisers who have yet to dip a toe into the social-media waters.

To those folks, I would suggest that they check out an advisory marketing firm called the Faulkner Media Group.

This firm, started by a former adviser turned marketer, offers what can basically be described as social media in a can.

“We offer a VIP concierge service for advisers that have not set up [social-media] accounts on their own,” said Craig Faulkner, founder and chief executive of the firm.

The firm's goal is to help build an adviser's clientele and create a steady stream of new leads with video newsletters, presentations and websites that run on several platforms.

It is all about building business through social-media marketing solutions. The firm will help advisory firms deliver regular tweets and posts, and will help them share content with prospects on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Although a few consultants already offer advisers these services, not many are doing so in such a straightforward manner as Faulkner.

One question I posed was how the firm goes about handling the compliance issues of social media.

“We don't directly work with Finra; we work through broker-dealers — as many other marketing firms do — and they actually submit the [social-media] content,” Mr. Faulkner said.

He said that once the content is sent to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc., the average turnaround time is three to four weeks to get back a “no objection” letter, which is how the firm determines whether content is compliant.

I had Daniel Bernstein, director of professional services at MarketCounsel LLC, weigh in on this key issue.

“Here is the problem with saying it is compliant,” he said. “The message might be compliant, but the message would be considered a form of advertising, and that means the retention responsibilities are there.”

To that point, archiving and retention are something that Faulkner doesn't yet provide. However, see the online version of this story for links to past coverage of these solutions.

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