Improving the support for adviser firms who are implementing and managing integration services was a hot topic at a recent AdviceTech Forum, a monthly collaboration hub for advice firms, tech vendors, product providers and platforms run by AdviserSoftware.com.
The AdviceTech Forum gives firms an opportunity to discuss the key business issues and challenges facing advisers and to identify how technology can be used to solve them. The forum highlighted the challenges advice firms are facing when researching, implementing and managing integrated data services such as contract enquiry, bulk downloads and commission feeds.
The forum called for greater industry collaboration, explored what providers are doing to help and what actions advisers can take to improve their approach to integrations.
Top challenges when it comes to managing integrations
Claire Thompson, technology analyst at Mazars, said it comes down to keeping lines of communication open with the technology vendors: “If you’re using a client portal and your clients are regularly accessing that, but the valuations stop, this obviously causes your client some concern and will generate phone calls to the firm. That’s something that back-office providers can look at improving. Tech vendors should alert us to tell us what has failed.”
She added, “It can be really confusing understanding the breadth of offerings. There’s quite a lot of integrations out there, they all do slightly different things. It’s how you narrow down and really work out what it is that’s most useful to you as a business.”
Industry expert Aston Easton pointed out how a lack of technology expertise can be a potential barrier to implementing and using data services: “Some users have a fear of how complex [systems] are to install, set up and implement within their organisation and that varies depending on what it is you want to integrate with.”
Building a better understanding of how the integration will work matters as Aston said: “When you start getting into the nitty gritty and the detail of it, and even in the test phase, you find actually it won’t cover certain aspects, areas or products that you want to integrate with.”
Aston continued: “I’d like readily available support. If you’re coming to implement something and you actually hit a brick wall, rather than send an email off and wait a few days for someone to come back to you with solutions. There also needs to be clearer guides, checklists, step by step guides to embed into your organisation or CRM system”.
What are providers doing to help the challenges raised by advisers?
Platform consultants understand the breadth of technologies advice firms are using. In this context, Jamie Hutchin, head of retail platform proposition at Aegon, discussed his experience when working with advisers to integrate data services into their businesses: “We have done training internally, our platform consultants have an understanding of all the different technology that adviser firms are using. So, best of breed solutions, in-house solutions, how it all fits together and why it’s important for advisers to understand this in the event things go wrong.”
