Working for a technology provider in financial services, I have had a unique perspective to see the impact of those changes on our clients. Observing our clients and advisors begin to adapt to working remotely, one tool jumped out as essential: automated workflow.
The past nearly two years have brought previously unimaginable changes to the financial services workforce. Nearly 40% of financial services employees never worked from home prior to the pandemic, but now 86% support the idea of working from home at least one day a week.
An automated workflow is key to a successful remote workforce — whether employees work remotely full time or follow a hybrid schedule. Here are three ways an automated workflow supports a remote workforce.
Decreases Redundancies and Opens Bottlenecks
A significant benefit of workflow automation is its ability to take over tedious tasks, which improves efficiency and allows RIAs to spend their time building client relationships and growing their business. The proportion of financial services employees working more than 60 hours a week nearly doubled during the pandemic, from 8% to 15%. Those long hours can lead to burnout and decreased customer service quality. Automating processes and workflow frees up time and mental energy spent on mundane tasks, and allows advisors and firms to work more efficiently and spend less time bogged down with tedious details.
Additionally, an automated workflow leads to fewer redundancies and helps processes run much more smoothly — which not only leads to higher productivity and improved customer service, but also cost savings. Estimates from Gartner suggest that automation can help avoid 30% of manual accounting rework to fix errors. Deloitte finds that workplace automation can reduce general process costs by as much as 30%, when considering staff and time savings and accuracy improvements. When multiplied by the number of advisors in a firm, the time and resource savings of automation are staggering.
Simplifies and Improves Client Communication
A survey from PwC found that among financial services employees who are less productive working remotely, difficulty collaborating plays a major role. An automated workflow increases collaboration by sending automatic process updates, which keeps all employees on the same page and working toward shared goals. With remote employees potentially following different schedules, workflow automation improves collaboration between teams and the entire firm regardless of who is working in the office and who is working remotely.
An automated workflow also improves client communication by providing advisors and office staff with a clear snapshot of each account. From a single dashboard, advisors can view a client’s status and financial goals, which provides them with resources to communicate clearly and better meet clients’ needs. An automated workflow can also include standard checkpoints to update clients, eliminating some guesswork on when and how advisors should reach out.
The quality of communication from a financial advisor has a significant impact on client retention, meaning that any opportunity to improve communication could lead to long-term improvements in customer satisfaction and create a competitive advantage.
Increases Consistency and Compliance
A remote workforce allows for greater flexibility for employees, which can increase engagement and morale. But a common downside is a lack of cohesiveness between employees and workloads. In the financial services space, that lack of cohesion creates opportunities for errors and compliance issues. An automated workflow logs actions and ensures that every step of the process is completed correctly, no matter where the advisor is working.
Further, an automated workflow alerts all team members about the progress of an account, including when each step is completed and another begins. That information creates consistency throughout the firm, as all advisors work through the same framework to deliver quality results. It also ensures that every step is completed properly and that nothing falls through the cracks, forestalling future compliance issues which can be costly for firms.
Remote work is the future of financial services. Adopting an automated workflow can improve the efficiency, compliance, and quality of work while also saving advisors valuable time and resources.
