This is the third consecutive post in a series on developing business processes.
In Part 1, I wrote about the importance of building processes and procedures to build your advisory firm, and presented five steps for doing so. In Part 2, I presented the first step in implementing processes and procedures: creating a comprehensive list of each key process.
In Part 3, beginning with the topic of Business Analysis, I'd like to bring you up to date on my CRM (customer relationship management software) decision. In the past few months, I explained why I was going to subscribe to Salesforce.com. This was an almost certain decision until it took an unusual turn. Here's what prompted the change of direction.
I had signed up for a 30-day free trial with SalesForce. I was about to pay a third party $600 to migrate our ACT data to the new platform, but decided to do it ourselves. With the data in place, and less than a week left on the free trial, we learned that we were mistakenly on an inferior version and not on SalesForce’s Wealth Management platform to which we intended to subscribe. When we asked for an additional 15-day free trial on the correct platform, we were told no, since we had already used a 30-day trial. My mind was made up at that time that SF was not in our future!