Imagine yourself as the head of a growing boutique financial advising firm. Industry regulations are becoming ever more stringent, and the rise of automated investing platforms is compelling advisors to further establish their relevance to the retail market. How do you stay ahead of the curve in this environment?

Meet Eastport Financial based in Halifax, Nova Scotia with offices in Mahone Bay and Toronto. They meet clients’ needs anywhere from estate planning to wealth management to insurance products, bringing a coaching element to their services that goes beyond finance. I sat down with Matthew Jenkinson, COO, and Lori Burgess, Investment Manager, to find out how Kewl Consulting helped them bring an automation solution to life that would advance Eastport’s organizational goals.

Technology:�Creatio

Client industry: Boutique financial advising

Eastport didn’t have a centralized CRM system in place. Client summaries and contact information were stored separately.. Vendor data was accessed via vendor platforms, rather than in-house. The system worked fine; but Matthew saw the potential to make it better than fine. He wanted their workflow to be great. The main limitation was fragmented data which made communication and workflow choppy. In an already highly specialized team, the last thing management wanted was for further development of non transferable skills just to manage their data. Eastport is a growing boutique firm, and Matthew and Lori knew that the system could be optimized to better capitalize on the unique strengths of their team. They saw an opportunity to move to a modern software architecture to assist in organizing and growing their company.

Importantly, they needed a solution that would also meet regulatory requirements for data storage within the Canadian financial industry.

Eastport knew that they wanted a CRM solution that would give them the automation capabilities they were looking for. They had done significant research to determine the right platform for themselves, and wanted a consultant to do the implementation for them. Although Matthew had had prior experience with coding and software development, he recognized that the marginal cost of managing a CRM project themselves was not worth the marginal gain. Collectively, he and Lori had investigated 30 CRMs and CRM consultants. They considered everything from price to user-friendliness to security levels to how ‘out-of-the-box’ the software would be. And ultimately, Eastport chose Kewl to implement the project.

The first time Matthew had contact with Kewl was in a discovery call with Garett Llorente, Senior Partner and Technical Lead. They talked through various software solutions, with Garett explaining the landscape of CRM products and their benefits and drawbacks. Garett presented the option of Creatio, a platform that had advanced capabilities with the ability to be highly customizable while falling within a similar price range to what Eastport was looking for. It was in alignment with the out-of-the-box solution that Matthew and Lori were looking for, without the hefty price tag and overpowered platform of a Salesforce product. In addition, , the majority of software implementation projects involve a high degree of risk, and Garett’s expertise in CRM implementations across platforms instilled a feeling of confidence in Matthew and Lori that the project would be a success.

“They closed a lot of open-ended questions with facts”

After the initial conversation with Kewl, Matthew and Lori went away to think about their options. In the end, they chose Kewl because “the other work they’ve done spoke volumes to them – they had a history of repeat clients”. Kewl’s track record demonstrated a credibility which comes with being a seasoned, successful CRM implementer. Beyond this, it was clear to Matthew and Lori that Kewl knew their way around the systems they worked with. Lori remembers that when interviewing a few different firms on their ability to provide a solution that met Eastport’s needs, her questions were met with responses such as “I’m not sure we can do that” or simply, “No”. With Kewl, the answers were “Yeah! We can do that,” to which they would add “Or we’ll find a way to do it”. It demonstrated a can-do attitude that instilled confidence in Matthew and Lori.

As Matthew and Lori thought about their decision to work with Kewl, they observed that they were never pushed by Kewl to jump into an agreement. This is due to the fact that Kewl doesn’t take a sales approach to discovery calls. Rather, potential clients meet with business analysts from Kewl’s team, who are able to thoroughly assess which tech solutions will actually meet the prospect’s business requirements. Based on their initial contact, Matthew and Lori felt that they had found the right consultant to drive a successful outcome.

Eastport wanted a CRM system equipped with advanced automation functions in addition to standard functionality such as reminders and data organization. Through a collaborative process, Kewl designed and developed a custom CRM solution which zeroed in on the following key areas:

● Time Management.

Eastport team members could have to complete 7 tasks, for example,and send them back-and-forth within the team prior to or following a typical client meeting. Rather than just designing schedule reminders into Creatio, Kewl took a proactive decision-making approach to the system design. Kewl created a matrix of all the meeting topics possible between Eastport and it’s clients, and made sure that these tasks were automatically uploaded into individual team members’ schedules before, during, and after meetings. In this way, tasks addressing client needs are front and centre in the CRM system. Teamwork and communication will be made seamless within Eastport, and financial advisors will be prepared and proactive for client meetings with less administrative effort. Matthew and Lori noted that this function will be a key driver for Eastport’s workflow.

● Systematization of Relationships and Data

Designing a system for a firm in the finance industry is complex, due to the amount of data relationships inherent in the field. Not only do advisors need to view investment data from their various vendors, but also insurance data amongst vendors as well as simultaneous screen views of insurance and investment data together. Beyond that, advisors must be able to see an individual client’s data, then be able to have a data view of families of clients and all of their assets. Creating all of these connections is difficult to do. An advisor may look after 3 accounts for the head of a household, but when counting all the investments and insurance products amongst the client’s family, there could be a total of 20 accounts that must be linked in an intricate network. Despite the intricacy, Kewl was no stranger to managing complex datasets and was able to create connections between these data relationships when designing Eastport’s custom system.

● Automation.

For Kewl, it was not just about consolidating data but also transforming it into something actionable. Once the data was consolidated, Kewl designed the CRM system to create data historicals that would capture patterns about a client’s past portfolio performance and risk levels. For example, the data will be put through an algorithm that will identify whether clients are outside of their previously determined risk profile. Advisors will receive notifications whenever this happens, allowing them to adjust the portfolio and continue meeting client goals. This means that the system will begin to drive business decisions. The longer the client works with Eastport, the more patterns the CRM system will also pick up regarding management fees falling and the overall yield of the portfolio climbing. Altogether, this will help Eastport further demonstrate their value to their clients.

In order to keep the project on budget and on time, Kewl proposed a weekly meeting rhythm which is typical with their other client projects. At first, Matthew questioned the necessity of a weekly meeting for the implementation of a CRM system. Life and work get busy. Yet, those one hour meetings with Kewl began to exceed his expectations. Garett and Daniel, Kewl’s technical leads for the project, drove those weekly meetings and led discussions with Eastport about the system design. They also proactively took over the process of driving communication with the CRM provider, Creatio. Kewl “kept the wheel moving”, which Matthew appreciated.

“It felt like a partnership in a genuine fashion.”

Communication was not only consistent with Kewl, but it was also constructive and valuable. Kewl demonstrated a good understanding of what the Eastport team were looking for, and how to create wins at both the user-level and management level. Lori was impressed by the way Garett could remember specific emails Eastport had sent him and reference back to details within those emails in order to help keep the conversations constructive and productive during their regular meetings. The understanding and collaboration Kewl showed throughout the implementation project made for an exceptional experience for Matthew and Lori. “It felt like a partnership in a genuine fashion”, Matthew added, “there’s an ownership they take when partnering with their clients”.

At the time of writing, Eastport had just entered the beginning of the transition phase with their custom-built Creatio system. Their team is just beginning to integrate the platform into their day-to-day workflow, yet Lori has already noted that the CRM solution is “going to be amazing for task management and ensuring communication is not lost”. Within every team, there are different styles of verbal communication. From a management perspective, Lori looks forward to this CRM system keeping communication objective. Managers will be able to better keep track of tasks and ensure that team members are not being over- or under-assigned work. In addition, the system is expected to have an important impact on Eastport’s customer experience. For example, the team won’t have to worry about relying on disparate datasets anymore in order to keep clients’ profiles updated with the latest compliance documents. And, clients will experience a faster, data-driven service with Eastport’s automated analyses.