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April 14, 2011 at 06:45 AM
Recently, I met with an advisory firm's owners who told me they shift approximately one-third of their staff away from their daily responsibilities for two weeks every quarter to focus solely on generating client reports.
To some, this might not seem like a misallocation of resources, but consider too that the firm was already paying for the outsourcing of its data aggregation and reporting. As it turns out, the staff was taking what was produced by the outsourced “solution” and re-entering it into Excel to generate custom reports.
The firm in this instance was a multi-family office with 50 full-time employees, but I’ve heard similar stories from across the country. These tales of inefficiency and frustration have come from such diverse firms as a $4 billion RIA in New York that’s been in business for more than half a century, a $250 million breakaway in San Francisco and a $1 billion firm in the Midwest with several regional offices.
These firms, and many more like them, have found that the complicated systems they devise in an attempt to compensate for the shortcomings of off-the-shelf products and outsourced providers still require them to devote considerable effort to key functions such as data aggregation, reporting, billing and work-flow management. The result is that resources—human, financial and technological—are devoted to systems and processes that don’t add meaningful value to the advisor’s core business of managing investments and client relationships.
In this, the first in a three-part series on how advisors can grow their businesses and better serve high-net-worth clients, we focus on the smart use of specialists. While that is the business my firm is in, the steps you should take to evaluate and smartly use specialists will serve you well regardless of who you choose to partner with.
The Value of Specialists
Advisors need to stop settling for outsourced providers and instead look for specialists who can provide efficiency and scalability without further burdening the practice’s infrastructure. A specialist will enable the advisor to retain complete control over how their firm operates and works with clients while seamlessly integrating with other systems.
Specialists bring focused knowledge and experienceto the partnership. Unlike an advisory firm that tackles issues of reporting, governance and account tracking only as it relates to their client relationships, a specialist whose core business is data aggregation and reporting solutions will invest their time, money and human capital in ensuring they are the best at fulfilling these essential functions.
For example, specialists can make major investments in emerging technology to remain competitive in the market. For the specialist, a $250,000 investment in a
