The Race for ROI: Now Is the Time to Invest in Technology

For example, consider the case of a medium-sized firm with $1 million in revenue. If a technology implementation will lower overhead costs by a net 9% ($90,000) per year, these savings drop directly to the bottom line, increasing profits and cash flow by a corresponding amount. When a business value multiple (in this example, a conservative estimate of 10) is applied to this increased profitability, then the net business value increase achieved is $900,000. Not bad for a $10,000, $20,000 or even $50,000 purchase.

When viewed in the light of the business value multiple, just about any investment in technology that will save staff time and increase capacity becomes a very simple decision.

Challenge Assumptions

When developing their technology plan, advisors should constantly re-think the way they process their business.

When asked, leading advisors say that the key to their success in building efficient businesses is to continually challenge their assumptions as to why and how certain things are done. This process of self-examination can have a dramatic impact.

As an example, consider the recent experience of a successful independent advisory firm in Southern California that was growing rapidly. As part of its history, the firm prided itself on its reporting and communication with clients to service their entire financial picture.

Inherent in that, however, was a vast manual reporting system that had been cobbled together through the years and was quickly becoming an operational burden and a nightmare to manage. Because the firm had continued to do business as usual, it was beginning to fall behind in service, while communications and reports provided as its "standard" service model were taking nearly a month out of every quarter to complete.

Just before the firm reached a breaking point, however, it started to challenge the way it provided reports and invested in a composite application to automate the process by integrating document management technology with the portfolio management system and CRM software.

This integration allowed the firm to publish reports electronically to private, secure client websites, triggering an email to clients informing them that their report was ready to be viewed. Because it could track the email opening and report downloading, the firm realized that less than one in 10 of its clients actually viewed the reports.

What the firm had thought would be a service decrease by switching to electronic delivery actually wasn't a decrease at all. In reality, it was a service increase as the information was much timelier. Additionally, the firm realized that it had completely misunderstood what its real value proposition was to its clients. It was clearly not in providing quarterly reports.

By challenging its assumptions and existing ways of doing business, the new technology saved the firm roughly three weeks per quarter of staff time and tens of thousands of dollars in annual printing, collating and mailing costs. It also provided added capacity to grow the firm without adding additional back-office staff.

Looking back, the firm realized that had it viewed the cost of the technology as an added expense, it might never have invested in the first place. This realization was critical to continued success and the firm is now looking for ways to automate virtually every process.

Think Differently

Other ways to stretch technology can be seen in thinking differently about the types of solutions used and to understand the true costs of a process. Operational costs include not only the actual dollars for the software, hardware and systems, but also in the staff time it takes to run that software, including operational time, training, management and maintenance.

An excellent example of this can be seen with some of the daily processes related to account maintenance and data reconciliation. Typically, many firms are using in-house systems that require a lot of manual work to accomplish these tasks, despite advancements in technology and new outsourced service models that can efficiently handle these manual steps with a higher accuracy rate and much less staff time.

According to the "2011 Asset Management Operations and Compensation Survey" by Advent Software, The Investment Adviser Association and the Advent Users' Group, advisory firms using in-house systems spend 25 hours per month for small firms, 60 hours per month for medium-sized firms and 160 hours per month for larger firms on account reconciliation.

Contrast this in-house process with an online portfolio management and performance reporting system that automatically performs account reconciliation on a daily basis via electronic feeds from custodians and other data providers as part of its service model: Virtually all of these tasks and staff costs are eliminated, with a much higher confidence rate and fewer errors.

Thinking differently in this case creates capacity by outsourcing what was once a core internal process to those who can do it better, faster and cheaper due to advancements in purpose-built technology.

These are just a few of the many ways advisors can magnify the return on their investment in technology as they race to build the necessary infrastructure and capacity to efficiently scale and grow their firms to capture a disproportionate share of the coming opportunity.

So too, can you. Start with a plan, challenge assumptions, think differently, take advantage of increased multiples and start investing now to get the most of your technology dollar today.