It’s easy to talk about ‘going digital’ and visualise the benefits of digital advice tools – becoming better, faster. But it’s not easy to make it happen.
“Embracing digital within your business can boost your profits by improving efficiency and leaving more time to spend with existing clients and gaining new ones”, says OMNIMax’s director, Jonathan Taylor. “Digital tools allow advisers to free up time to enable a higher client-to-adviser ratio and therefore a more efficiently run business.”
The year 2020 saw many advice businesses being forced into digital ways due to COVID. Zoom meetings and digital signatures became the norm if you wanted to continue working. However, many businesses are finding moving into the digital space challenging.
When you talk to a software company, they talk about defining requirements and figuring out what you need. It can all become very overwhelming, very quickly and it all seems a bit definite. Software comes with a big price tag and what if you don’t get it right?
“We’ve found a lot of our clients start with one of our out-of-the-box solutions. They’re quick to set up, cost-effective and web-based, so you can work from anywhere. As advisers use the software, they can determine the workflow that best suits their business model. We then use the boxed solution as a template and modify it to suit. The outcome is a custom workflow designed specifically for your business,” Taylor explains. The benefit of this way of working is that as your business changes, the solution can change with you.
“We also brand and customise the document outputs so that they look like they would have had you done them yourself in Word. The software also helps with compliance and record-keeping. The step-by-step process guides your advisers through, so every client is handled in the same way and the software records this.”
So, if dipping your toes in the water is more your style, an out-of-the-box solution could be your first step in going digital.
This article was previously published in Investment News on July 11, 2021.
