Teamwork, Cyber-style | February 2002 Web Exclusive

Web Exclusive: Teamwork, Cyber-style

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By Lucretia DiSanto Jones

Virtually connected advisors have an excellent opportunity to gain additional business.

Financial advisors know that teaming up with professionals in other disciplines is a great way to market and grow their businesses, hone their expertise and penetrate their target markets more effectively. Veteran advisors become masters at implementing the team approach, and astute newcomers to the insurance and financial services arena quickly learn that being a team player can lead to greater success.

A growing number of financial advisors are, indeed, taking advantage of the benefits of collaboration. In fact, a market research report released by Bromberg Consulting reveals that 84 percent of advisors collaborate with other professionals.

Robb will present Collaborative Solutions to Client Management at the Financial Advisors Forum on Friday, April 19

Paul Robb, CEO of Collaborate Solutions, Inc., in Tucson, believes that cooperative efforts among professionals create an enormous marketing opportunity for each team member. "Collaboration enables us to continue joint work with advisors outside of our own companies and split commissions, which means a huge opportunity for more business," he says.

On the same page

This teamwork, however, poses questions of its own. In this age of multi-disciplinary cooperation and specialization, how do you keep all members of the team singing from the same sheet of music? You can spend a lot of time on the phone, emailing, faxing and mailing back and forth all the information that each advisor needs to do his job and stay informed. Then you need to spend a lot of time relaying that information to the client.

That's one way to tackle it.

But to keep all the members of the team in touch, while also keeping the client in control, you should consider using an automated practice management tool. This is online technology that allows financial advisors and clients to work together as a team as if they are sharing the same office.

This collaborative virtual office, as Robb calls it, is the online real estate where advisors access common clients' insurance and investment information, legal and tax documents, financial and accounting statements and more.

Robb will present Collaborative Solutions to Client Management, on Friday, April 19, at the Financial Advisors Forum, sponsored by NAIFA, Advisor Today and Financial Planning. He will discuss the collaborative virtual office, the future of high-tech, multi-disciplinary practices and the security and convenience of online collaboration.

He will also demonstrate Collaborate! Financial, a software package featuring online document sharing and storage as well as permission-granting capabilities. The permission-granting feature is key because it keeps the client in control, as required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The client decides which advisors on the team have access to which documents.

If we build it.

Despite the increase in teamwork among advisors, it is surprising how few use an online collaboration tool. While 93 percent of advisors who work with others use the Internet for business purposes, only 3 percent use any form of collaborative software.

This is surprising given the benefits for the advisor: immediate access to documents and reports, less duplication in data gathering, comprehensive reporting and referrals from others on the teams. These advantages also result in stronger relationships with clients, faster project completion and increased revenue.

A collaborative virtual office also offers benefits to clients: immediate access to their financial portfolio, less duplication of data gathering and dissemination, greater control over data disclosure and comprehensive reports and advice. The result is greater confidence and trust in the advisory team, faster project completion and lower fees.

Robb embarked on the quest to create collaboration software when in his own practice he came across the typical problem: keeping in touch with all team members and the client. Enter collaboration software.

To learn more about the collaborative virtual office, register today for the Financial Advisors Forum at www.financial-planning.com/forum or call 212-631-9777.

For more on teaming up with other advisors, read Janet Arrowood's Expert to Expert column, Building a Dream Team, which also appears in the February print version of Advisor Today.

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