Three times. That’s how often a new prospect’s data gets entered at an advisory firm running a spreadsheet questionnaire alongside a CRM and a financial planning platform. Names, birthdates, household members, account balances, income, goals. The advisor collects it in the questionnaire. Someone in ops keys it into the CRM. Then the planning team types it in again to start the plan.
Every pass is a chance for the numbers to drift. A spouse’s birthdate entered one way in the CRM and another in the plan. A 401(k) balance off by a digit. Nobody notices until the plan is in front of the client.
A firm we worked with recently was facing a growing onboarding backlog and weighing whether to hire contractor developers to connect the three systems. The appeal made sense. The cost was easy to estimate, and hiring is something management already knows how to approve.
But a custom integration is only as stable as the systems on either side of it. Every time the questionnaire adds a column or the planning platform renames a field, the mapping breaks, and ops ends up maintaining it.
LEA reads each completed questionnaire as it comes in, creates the prospect record in the CRM, and carries the same data into the planning platform, flagging anything missing or inconsistent before it moves downstream. Advisors keep the questionnaire they already use. Ops stops retyping and starts reviewing exceptions. The planning team starts every plan with data that already matches the CRM.
Entered once. Used everywhere.
#WealthManagement #RIA #ClientOnboarding