Had a demo call with the transitions team at a large RIA network recently.

Had a demo call with the transitions team at a large RIA network recently. Liam runs a lot of the data and onboarding work there, and he said something that reframed the whole problem for me:

“Can I complete phase one without everything I need for phase two? We sort of bifurcate those things.”

That’s a sophisticated way to think about transitions. Most firms treat onboarding as a single linear checklist. This team had already figured out that you can sequence the phases — get to account opening without holding everything hostage to everything else.

What struck me is how rare that clarity is. Most ops teams are still operating under an implicit assumption that all the data has to be clean and complete before anything can move. That assumption is where transitions stall.

The other moment that landed: when Liam saw the Box integration, he said “it’s so cool that this is right in Box.” Not a polished reaction. Just a genuine one. That’s the response you get when a tool fits into the workflow people already live in, instead of asking them to build a new one around it.

I think the point here is that the firms making real progress on transitions aren’t necessarily moving faster. They’re sequencing smarter.

This is fun.