Until recently, segregated business units allowed for exponential growth within the financial services industry. Advisors establish their book of business independently, manage client portfolios, and generate revenue for everyone involved - including the institution they are part of. What’s not to like about this model?!
But times are changing, and ever-evolving laws and regulations impact financial services institutions in every way. Regulatory changes have been a driving force for the industry to evaluate not only its internal process, but also its technology stack. Our experience shows that a platform like Salesforce is an excellent solution for the financial services industry, enabling institutions to consolidate internal processes, mitigate risk, and build stronger client relationships.
What Executives Need to Consider
Migrating to a new CRM platform is a serious undertaking - Salesforce is no exception to that rule. But with a plan that is well-thought-out, success is within reach. Here are a few things to consider when implementing Salesforce for financial services.
Define Success
Defining what a successful Salesforce implementation means for financial services institutions is difficult and too often ignored when embarking on a Salesforce journey. The difficulty lies not only in the technological challenges, but also in the fact that there are several important stakeholders with competing definitions of success. For advisors, it might mean having more modern tools to personalize client outreach. But for those of you at headquarters, success might be defined by how much visibility you have into the entirety of the institution. The key to a successful implementation project starts by evaluating every stakeholder’s definition of success and incorporating these into a unified approach.
There Is No One-Size-Fits-All
It sounds cliche, but there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Implementing Salesforce for financial institutions comes down to a combination of art and science. While Salesforce offers robust out-of-the-box functionality, the challenges are unique to each institution and therefore will require unique customizations. It is important to embrace this, so institutions can make the technology work for them - not the other way around.
The Nuance of a Successful Implementation
As segregated business units become a thing of the past, having an open dialogue with stakeholders across the organization is crucial to gathering requirements for your next-generation technology. At CRM Science, we’ve seen internal teams fail because they try to solve issues in a vacuum. When implementing Salesforce for financial services, this antiquated problem-solving approach will not lead to successful user adoption.
Craft Your Message
We get it - change is hard. It requires people to give up what they’ve become accustomed to, leaving them wondering what they will get in return. We recommend that you acknowledge this and craft messages that talk to the value of Salesforce. Also, plan to provide personalized support and training opportunities to enable each advisor. Doing so changes the tone, keeps everyone informed, and improves the team’s cooperation throughout the project.
Have a Flexible and Dynamic Plan
Migrating from dozens of different systems is a daunting task. We recommend identifying the systems to migrate from in advance by working with your staff at IT centers. A comprehensive list of internal systems gives you visibility into what lies ahead and allows you to include these system migrations in the project’s scope. But even when you kick off your implementation with a comprehensive plan, surprises will be plentiful. Make sure your plan is flexible, so that you can steer these surprises in the right direction and continue on the path to success.
The preparation involved in a migration project is a key part of the process and spans across technology, people, and processes. Accounting for these will result in a robust plan that will guide you on the path of success when implementing Salesforce for financial services.
Want to learn more about implementing Salesforce for financial services, contact us to schedule a meeting.
