"We want to show our customers and our partners that we're seriously committed to the process," McLaughlin told ThinkAdvisor. "We went from having a basic prototype about nine months ago to having 12 iterations pushed out with a new feature on every single one."
In the new mobile app, some of the biggest fixes include increased speed, reduced errors, minimized clashes and an improved fingerprint identification. The app allows users to get quick and easy access to information – including a list of the day's activities, a monthly calendar view, as well as contact info with notes and accounts with asset info.
More Americans own smartphones today than six years ago, which makes mobile apps increasingly important.
"You have to have everything at your fingertips. Every device, every location," McLaughlin said. "A millennial today, or even just a tech-savvy geek like myself; I don't wait to schedule meetings with my advisor or anyone I'm working with. I text you the question I have in the moment and I expect an answer shortly; like, very shortly."
According to Pew Research Center, the vast majority of Americans – 95% – now own a cellphone of some kind. The share of Americans that own smartphones is now 77%, up from just 35% in Pew Research Center's first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011.
Yet it's surprising to McLaughlin that more of Redtail's competitors aren't making mobile apps. Salesforce and Wealthbox are the only other fintech competitors that have a "real mobile app," according to McLaughlin.
"In an advisor's life or any business's life, you're dealing with, let's say, 500 clients. There's no way you can know all that information on the fly," McLaughlin said. "Certainly you know your top 5% of clients or top 100 clients; you know enough about them, but there's no way you're going to know all the details that allow you to connect on that real time. So, having access to that on your fingertips? There's the mobile play again."
