I’m the president and CEO of Willow Creek Wealth Administration, an RIA in Sebastopol, Calif. It’s about an hour north of San Francisco. It’s a cool spot within the wine nation in Sonoma County.
My background has all the time been in know-how, operational effectivity and safety. I’ve been right here for about 10 years, however I’ve been in monetary companies for 18 years. I began right here in 2014 because the director of operations. In 2018, I turned a companion. Then we accomplished a big section of our succession plan in 2021. That’s after I stepped in because the president and CEO.
CRM: AdvisorEngine
For CRM, we use AdvisorEngine, which was previously Junxure Cloud. We’re long-time customers of the Junxure product in all its iterations. We used Junxure Desktop manner again earlier than I got here to Willow Creek. We transitioned to the cloud model in 2015. That was early. It was in beta then.
I take a look at our tech stack as a hub-and-spoke setup. I see the CRM because the hub. We drive the whole lot we do by way of CRM. We rely closely on AdvisorEngine to drive all these processes. We’ve got about 100 workflows within the system. We’re repeatedly constructing and tweaking these. We’ve been engaged on these since 2014, once we moved to their cloud model. That drives the whole lot from easy examine deposits to extra advanced duties like full consumer onboarding and the whole lot in between.
The most important recreation changer on the tech aspect for us by way of effectivity and offering constant worth to purchasers has come by way of the efficient use of CRM. We’ve got well-documented back-office processes and are driving it by way of workflows. We guarantee issues are achieved in the identical manner in the identical time-frame by everybody concerned. It helps you drive your constant worth proposition to your purchasers. It makes it extra environment friendly if you happen to aren’t bouncing round attempting to determine the way to do one thing each time. It’s automated as a lot as potential.
Reporting, Portfolio Administration, Buying and selling & Rebalancing: Orion Advisor Options
We’ve been by way of all of the modifications Orion has seen over the past decade-plus. Orion has all the time been a pacesetter within the know-how area. They’ve all the time put plenty of deal with their platform in constructing out new performance and options. They proceed to do this, which is likely one of the causes we like Orion. We use plenty of completely different options inside Orion. We use Orion for reporting, billing, consumer portal, buying and selling, rebalancing and a few of our compliance. We attempt to use the whole lot we presumably can on the Orion platform.
It’s important to ensure you’re using it as absolutely as you’ll be able to when you’re buying know-how. Typically, I discuss to different companies and they’re not absolutely using the whole lot they’ve out there to them by way of these platforms. All these software program platforms proceed to get costlier and they’re all the time altering. We continually take a look at the software program that we’re utilizing from a vital perspective. You will need to be sure it’s the perfect resolution for you. Many companies take the shotgun method to shopping for software program and utilizing 10% of it. It takes effort to take a look at software program and make sure you’re utilizing 90%-plus of it. Get the worth out of the software program that you just’re paying for.
It’s costly. I definitely wasn’t completely satisfied about Orion elevating their costs just lately. Portfolio administration is probably going the most expensive piece of the know-how stack for each agency. It’s for us, as properly. It turns into extra of a query of alternate options as the costs proceed to extend. Am I getting enough worth out of this platform as the worth rises? Am I using the whole lot I can from this software program? Am I extracting all the worth I can out of it? These questions do turn out to be cloudier as issues turn out to be costlier. Orion is an ideal instance of that. Then again, we’re so built-in into processes that the switching value is gigantic. I’m positive they know that, too.
Monetary Planning: Envestnet | MoneyGuidePro
We’ve used MoneyGuidePro for over a decade. Our advisors like that system. It’s simple and goals-based. It aligns properly with our funding philosophy and our method to monetary planning.
We combine MoneyGuidePro with Orion. We will allow it for purchasers to present fundamental details about their monetary plans. That feeds from MoneyGuidePro right into a tab on their consumer portal on Orion. From the opposite route, we additionally feed holdings information and account data from Orion into MoneyGuidePro. It makes it straightforward for advisors to replace information within the monetary plan with a few clicks from Orion.
Doc Administration: Laserfiche
Laserfiche is a big platform that does many various issues. Important doc administration is a type of. It provides us further performance in automating paperwork. We will construct workflow processes inside Laserfiche to drop recordsdata right into a scorching folder. These recordsdata can be learn and filed accurately in consumer or reporting folders. We will construct these workflows to do various things. Relying on the sort, we additionally seize many sorts of metadata on recordsdata. It permits us to be artistic issues in looking out and automation.
We additionally tie Laserfiche again into the CRM. It’s one of many spokes of our CRM hub. You may go right into a consumer’s file inside AdvisorEngine. You may hit the paperwork tab in there. You see the consumer’s doc folder inside Laserfiche. You may add and open recordsdata straight from AdvisorEngine, which is good. We additionally tie it into completely different file numbers inside our system so we are able to pull out, mix and seek for information in recordsdata.
Cybersecurity: KnowBe4
We use KnowBe4 for ongoing cybersecurity coaching. They’ve an in depth library of movies and paperwork we are able to put collectively in coaching packages that exit to our group each quarter. We will observe that they’ve taken and handed the quizzes. It additionally has phishing testing. It makes use of actual phishing emails that they’ve of their database. It will probably randomize these and ship them to workers all through the week. We do a full spherical of that each week for all our workers. That goes again to our diligent mindset about electronic mail phishing and scams as a result of that has turn out to be extra subtle up to now few years.
As informed to reporter Rob Burgess and edited for size and readability. The views and opinions should not consultant of the views of WealthManagement.com.
Wish to inform us what’s in your wealthstack? Contact Rob Burgess at [email protected].
