CRM: Redtail CRM
We are not heavy CRM users. Our line of Portfolio Advisory Services is $1 million to $10 million in liquid assets. Our Family Service Office line is $10 million and up. We are looking to expand the use of Redtail CRM from Portfolio Advisory Services to other parts of the firm. We want to get marketing content, email lists and things like that out there.
Redtail CRM has been with us since two or three years ago when Portfolio Advisory Services was launched. We didn't have a CRM tool before. We have not used CRM to a large extent in the Family Service Office group. Each advisor can only have 15 to 25 relationships. We keep those relationships limited on purpose. There is not much impact from using a CRM tool when you have a small number of relationships. Portfolio Advisory Services, on the other hand, can have up to 100 clients per advisor. We've been able to use Redtail CRM a lot more there.
Reporting and Portfolio Management: Addepar
Where we set ourselves apart is how we did it used Addepar in all our different lines of business. We are heavy users of Addepar and have been since starting the firm in April 2015. Having so much history, data and experience with that tool (Addepar), we have started to use it in other ways outside of what we were using it nine years ago when we started.
We have become so integrated with Addepar. Building the client-side portal view (Addepar Portal, the company's client portal) through Addepar has limited our use of Redtail CRM in other areas of the business. Many of these software vendors have generally done a good job of adding bells and whistles and improvements along the way to make it more of a one-stop shop. This is how we see it at Addepar.
As we've learned and developed our use of Addepar, it's become less important for us to actually integrate a CRM like Salesforce or something of that magnitude. We've seen it in the past, and frankly, given our limited needs and how we've used other tools, it didn't make economic sense for us to do it.
Integrations are much simpler than they were a few years ago. Synchronization between guardians and Addepar is a piece of cake. We mostly have Faithfulness as our guardianbut we have other guardians that we sync with.
We have a large amount of data and Addepar allows us to assign custom attributes and run reports. It opens the door to being able to use it for things outside of what we've done historically. This has moved us away from producing client-facing reports to starting to use the data that is embedded within Addepar and the history there to track firm-wide daily revenue versus plan and client growth versus market growth. We analyze the data to make sure the business is growing. Is it driven by new customer business or market movements? It measures our portfolio's correlations with the market and changes in total asset allocation trends over time. We continue to find new ways to use Addepar to come up with these tests that are important to us.
Trading and Rebalancing: Fidelity Wealthscape
We are not sole stock pickers. We do not have a managed portfolio of individual securities. When we're rebalancing, often, all we're doing is buying and selling mutual fund and ETF positions within a pattern structure. We have limited use of models in Crescent Grove to begin with. We have many highly customized portfolios, so trading activity is not about individual positions.
We have recently started using the client facing portal at Addepar to securely store, upload and download documents. We have also stored files on the client-facing Addepar portal.
Financial Planning: MoneyGuidePro by Envestnet
We have used Investnet | MoneyGuidePro for six or seven years for clients' retirement cash flow projections. This can extend to various planning objectives around Social Security and pensions and analytics.
Document management: internal
We are using an internally generated file directory for document management. We do not rely on a third-party document management application.
Cybersecurity: Venn
There are no internal servers at Crescent Grove. Everything is in the cloud through Venn (Venn Software, Venn.com).
As told by reporter Rob Burgess and edited for length and clarity. The views and opinions are not representative of the views of WealthManagement.com.
Want to tell us what's in your possession? Contact Rob Burgess at (email protected).