On average, advisors spend nine hours a week on compliance-related tasks.
Advisors at firms that use ECM, however, spend only five hours on these activities – a big productivity boost.Rehmann Financial created a composite application composed of ECM and CRM to make staff more efficient by streamlining its compliance review process.According to Amy Flourry, Rehmann’s Operations Manager, “Integration is so important to us, I can’t emphasize it enough. It’s one of the first things we look at when considering new software, and frankly, we’ve found many programs that claim they’ll integrate with our CRM, but they really don’t.”After implementing an
ECM system in 2007, Rehmann found that “the link between our CRM and ECM systems is seamless, which is what makes it so valuable,” says Flourry. “It’s simple enough that it doesn’t overwhelm our advisors, but complex enough to do everything we need.”Technology Coordinator Katie Skoczylas adds, “Our advisors don’t want to know the fancy stuff in the background just to find a copy of a letter, they just want to click on a button to open a client file. But we like knowing that when you move a document into the client folder structure of our ECM repository, it’s immediately available in our CRM system.”She continues, “Right away we started using the business process management tools included in our ECM suite for our correspondence, checks and securities logs. For example, we used to have to make two copies of a check, then have 25 support staff from different regions cutting and pasting information into a single Excel file.”Now staff scans checks into the ECM system, eliminating both the two copies and the Excel file itself – as well as a daily process that took 5-10 minutes per check. “With our ECM system, the check log literally creates itself. It takes staff less than a minute. All they have to do is scan in the checks and compliance supervisors can review them right from the ECM system.”The same goes for the 400 or so pieces of correspondence supervisors need to review every month, which they approve with a digital signature. Skoczylas says, “The compliance supervisor looks up a piece of correspondence, highlights it, signs and dates it with a time stamp.”Flourry notes that ECM has boosted Rehmann’s efficiency so much that the firm has brought on four new advisors in the last year but hasn’t had to hire any new administrative staff. “When you tell your executives that your administration staff can do something in 20 minutes that used to take four hours, they can appreciate that,” she says.
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