Automating Your Future - Key Ways to Bring Automation into Your Firm in 2023
It feels like more and more aspects of life can be automated. Whether it’s lights around our house, scheduled emails, and notifications, automated portfolio audits or something obscure, the world is getting more automated.
I asked the world’s most authoritative community what they want to automate in their lives, and the responses were generally around areas of client experience.
Naval Ravakant says “If the work doesn’t require creativity, delegate it, automate it, or leave it.”
This is all great and wonderful for someone to say, but for advisors who run real businesses and serve the needs of real clients, it is hard to draw a line between our creative work and the work our clients need.
So what can and does automation look like for real-life advisors and advisory firms?
Here are some key ways that I recommend you start to bring in automation into your business.
Few things are more painful than the terrible back and forth of “finding a time.” Embrace a scheduling tool that works with your email and practice it with your team to where you feel comfortable sharing it with a client.
You will be surprised to hear this, but emailing your assistant to schedule a time is also an annoying and unnecessary step.
Once you have the meeting set up, make sure you are utilizing the features that send an agenda, the link to join zoom and provide the ability for your client to cancel or reschedule.
An hour before the meeting, ensure you send a gentle email automation that reminds them of the time.
There are tons of really great tools that won’t miss a beat with your meetings. Whether in person or virtual, I recommend having a Zoom going with an AI-driven recorder that collects every bit of the conversation so that you can have the best possible follow-up and no one in your firm will miss a beat.?Fathom.Video?is a personal favorite of mine.
Your compliance folks will question everything. Thats okay. That’s kind of their job. Walk them through the specs of these tools, and they will find they are likely far superior to the solutions advisors have been using.
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The amazing thing is that your meetings can connect to your CRM and sometimes create automated tasks, full links to your meeting, and a comprehensive record.
I’ve graduated from apologizing for my notetaker being present to advertising its superiority.
2. Cash Queries Across Your Portfolios
Your clients likely pay you to manage assets. Stay on top of it by monitoring large cash balances across their portfolio. Using systems like Orion and Black Diamond, our team at Milemarker will help you set up automated queries that find cash positions that need to be allocated or can be prompted to call your clients to talk through new opportunities.
3. Asset Location
Tools like SEI LifeYield can scan your book of business and find tax optimization opportunities helping guide you and your clients through asset location that can help you minimize taxes based on account types. The scans can be automated, and with the right trading integrations, the actual allocation changes can be nearly automatic.
4. Zapier, all the things
It’s 2023, and you need to use tools like Zapier to give you more efficiency. Your technology is nuanced, and the scenarios around it are likely equally detailed. At minimum, ensure you are test-driving tools like Zapier to add some simple automation into your workflow.
5. Serving Advisors? Stop doing it through email.
At Milemarker, one of our critical rules is to help our clients modernize their customer service with personalized workflows that tailor all data gathering to the unique situation, advisor, and workflow. We are happy to walk you through how advisors like you can really elevate their service.
What about you?
What are you automating this year?
Originally published on the Connected Newsletter.