The Secret To Great Tech

Technology is the number one topic of conversation in a lot of firms I work with and for good reason. 

Existing adviser tech in our sector is just ok. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great either. And the promise of an AI-driven revolution that allows financial planning firms to get rid of a bunch of time-sucking, labour-intensive jobs is incredibly alluring. 

However, in all the excitement, I feel like adviser-owners have forgotten what allows great tech to be so game-changing for your business. 

There are four things that you have to get right, regardless of which tech you elect to use:

🚨 1. Identify The Real Issue

My wife Debbie is my business partner and co-owner of FP Advance. When I come to her with a brilliant new idea, on many occasions, the comment I get back is “That sounds like a brilliant solution in search of a problem.”

What she’s really saying to me is “Brett, you haven’t spent enough time getting to the real issue.” 

When I go away and do some more thinking and researching, I generally find the real issue is not what was originally presenting as the symptom that I created my solution for. 

By spending more time to identify the ‘real issue’, the solution is usually a lot simpler, which means less time and money spent on implementing it. 

The apocryphal example of this was the US space programme spending millions on a pen that would write in zero gravity, while the Russians just used a pencil.

Before you go and purchase any new tech, you need to be as sure as you can be about the ‘problem’ you are trying to solve. 

📊 2. Bad Data, Big Problem

No matter what tech system you purchase and use, if your data is crap you’ll never get the potential benefits promised by your tech provider. 

I know that there are also connectivity and data sharing issues in financial planning firms (which I’ll cover in a minute) that cause huge issues. However, having poor data in your main back office system is something that all firms can fix. 

Sure, you might start by engaging someone like Nicky Sevel at Woven Advice or Chris Baigent-Reed at Jigsaw Tree to help you cleanse and clean up data. I’m all for that (and both of these firms have been recommended by my clients).

Additionally, you can ensure you have perfect data on every active client at least once per year. At each annual review, when the back office team and the servicing adviser are working on the client file, it’s imperative that any missing data is captured and entered into your system. 

If you do this as part of every annual review, in just 12 months, you’ve fixed your crappy data problem and you’ve also established a process for keeping your data in great shape. 

This is boring and unsexy, but it can transform your business. With great data in your systems, you can then move on to the next important issue.

✅ 3. Learn How To Use What You’ve Got

As your firm grows, your success will increasingly depend on the growth of oThe number of firms I hear moaning about their back office system is huge. Yet I know in the vast majority of cases, these same firms don’t know how to use the software they are paying pretty significant license fees for. 

The solution?

Invest in some regular training on how to use the software. Yes, I know it’s an extra expense, and yes, I know you probably believe the software provider should throw in some of this training. But they won’t, and certainly not in the frequency you are going to need if you want to get the most out of your monthly license fee.

My recommendation is to arrange a full day of training for you and your team once per quarter. Do that for 2 or 3 years and you’ll find you are one of the best users of whatever system you use in the whole country. I’m pretty sure Chris Baigent-Reed at Jigsaw Tree can help with this one too.

Purchasing the software is a small portion of what you really need to invest to have your tech transform your business. 

📡 4. Connectivity is King

I was speaking at a series of road shows with Abraham Okusanya from Timeline earlier this year. An adviser asked Abraham a question about a new AI notetaker that the adviser was introducing into their business. 

Abraham’s response (and I’m paraphrasing) was that adding another piece of unconnected tech to your tech stack is unlikely to drive major productivity improvements in your business. 

I agree. 

Don’t get me wrong, using an AI note-taking tool makes sense, but it would be better if it connected to your other systems.

Recently, I had dinner with two leaders from a great financial planning firm I used to work with. They were using a back office system that I would suggest is not the most recommended system available in the marketplace. They also used Microsoft Copilot for their note-taking, which many advisers tell me is not nearly as good as some of the newer entrants in that space. They also mentioned two other systems that I am going to politely call second-choice systems. 

But here’s the thing. 

All four systems talk to each other, and data entered into one system flows through to the other three. In speaking with the CEO, she felt the connectivity more than made up for the fact that each system wasn’t necessarily best-in-class.

🎯 Why does all of this matter?

Productivity improvements are the key to growing and scaling good-quality financial planning businesses and clearly, technology needs to be at the heart of that. 

Some businesses are going to crack the productivity issue and achieve a step-change in their performance in the very near future. That will allow them to serve a far larger number of clients, and/or provide a broader range of services to their existing clients, and/or dramatically reduce their fees, and/or increase their profits. 

All of these outcomes will put laggard businesses that don’t achieve significant productivity breakthroughs under enormous competitive pressure. 

AI-driven systems and processes will bring benefits to financial planning firms, but they are in the early stages and can be expensive to implement currently. And if you’ve not improved your data and are not using your current systems to best effect, what are the chances of you reaping the benefits of the shiny new AI technology?

The secret to great tech is within your control. All of the points I’ve raised above are things you can influence. Don’t let yourself believe you can just sit there passively waiting for the next tech innovation to save you. 

Let me know how you go.

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