"Some Assembly Required"

  All too often we either ignore or don’t even notice these few little words at the bottom of a commercial or printed on the box of a toy or even on knock-down furniture we purchased to assemble in our kid’s dorm room on move in day. And what an unpleasant surprise it is for so many………..What are all these parts for?......Why do I have so many pieces left over?.......I had no idea it would be this difficult!........or even worse yet……I think I just broke something!   Sure it’s easy to laugh about this as most of us have been there at one point or another but unfortunately the same scenarios play out time and time again within business too.

  Sure it seems, and often is, easy at first to purchase the latest software tool for a new CRM, or Aggregation, or Reporting, or Portfolio Modeling and Billing strategy. Find a new offering…..request a demo…..talk to a few people……quickly negotiate a “great price”…..sign the contract or licensing agreement….and voilà……you now have cutting edge technology for your Advisors and Clients. Right? Does any of this sound familiar?

  Now play that forward a year or even just two and what happens? And it gets exponentially worse the longer this so called FinTech strategy continues. I call it the “Lint Roller” effect where a firm just keeps picking up new but disjointed technology applications as it rolls along. It’s absolutely detrimental to any organization that does not have an integration strategy in place or at least in the making as this now seemingly random sampling of technology is not integrated, often overlaps each other in functionality, and worse yet different tools on your own platform that are supposed to calculate the same things actually provide Clients with different answers!   Simply stated, with FinTech as with kids’ toys or dorm room furniture, SOME ASSEMBLY IS REQUIRED! 

  But hey, who reads the instructions until after something does not look quite right or is not working the way we intended it to. Instructions are just for…….well others…..you know……those who don’t know what they are doing. Right?  WRONG! 

In the absence of a true universal common FinTech platform that easily allows for vendor agnostic access and true plug and play customization through what I call “mini apps” or specific tools as opposed to competing “hub and spoke”  full platforms, instructions or an integration road-map are exactly what is needed. Even as new bleeding edge and fully customizable platforms do appear and become accessible by firms, the transition to a new strategy as firms peel back the outer layer of their own former lint roller approach will require some careful planning and guidance. Some Assembly Is Required.

  While a properly understood and fully functional FinTech platform is key to user adoption and provides incredibly powerful tools for Advisors and Clients, it is this integration and cross functional training that are too often left unaddressed until the end when they become the pieces that are left over. Why do firms continue to wind up in this position? 

  After many years in Leadership roles within the Financial Services industry one thing that remains clear and consistent to me is that despite all of the technological advances we’ve all witnessed, there is still Some Assembly Required to have a comprehensive wealth management platform that provides Advisors and Clients with ready to use meaningful tools to help make their world a bit easier to manage. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

  You can also check us out at www.copernicussolutions.com to see how we can help create your firms Road Map, or even guide your integration efforts.