If you spend time helping advisors navigate their future, you are probably very familiar with the simple question, “What’s your tech stack?”

Inevitably, this question unlocks a lot of feedback that goes well beyond the contents of the stack and quickly deep dives into shortfalls, disconnects, frustration, and a few highlights.

Needless to say, advisors we talk with regularly are not generally in love with their technology experience.

When we combine general discontentment with the natural tension caused by consolidation and often redundant CRMs, accounting systems, planning systems, and various accouterments – most tech stacks look like a car crash vs. a well-oiled machine.

Similar to how we think about wealth management clients taking advantage of the full spectrum of services your firm offers, the idea of utilization is a significant factor when you look at your tech stack.

Putting You Back in Utilization

It’s often surprising for the executive teams of wealth management firms to really get into the details of how little advisors actually use the technology that the home office sponsors.

To quote my friend Steve Gresham, in wealth management, “Adoption is the new innovation.”

Steve is right. The technology advisors actually adopt is generally remarkable and noteworthy.

Measuring utilization (aka adoption) and satisfaction will give you insight into the efficacy of your technology decisions.

Too much, Too Little, Too easy to Ignore

First, let’s think about satisfaction. Although the Rolling Stones had a hit without any, your team’s level of satisfaction is critical to retaining top talent and increasing efficiency in your firm. You might know if your team really dislikes a part of your technology (baseball bats to the office printer are a good sign). But to know for sure, you have to ask them. Often, the significant error I have observed inside firms is that surveys either overly complicate the questions around features or make too broad of brush strokes so that people aren’t able to be specific.

Firms that have implemented a net promoter system might be tempted to jam in all sorts of questions in the context of a survey that only gathers around 13% of the population in a B2B context. To get a feel for the true happiness around your technology, you need data points over time. Too many specific questions will make you edit them each year, removing your ability to chart whether happiness increases or decreases.

All of this leads me to ask, “What if you simply could rate your technology the same way you would rate your meal at a restaurant?” You can obviously say things about your rating, but a level playing field of measurement creates a much more repeatable process to curate the experience you deliver. Write your questions with meals in mind, and you’ll likely stay on the right track to be able to quantify satisfaction.

Of course, the first step in evaluating a meal or your tech stack is to know what’s in it. It’s common for firms to lose track of all the technology they have at their disposal. Not until budgets are reviewed, or expense reports are submitted do we remember all the stuff we use in our technology suite.

What if we could provide something that helps you keep track of what you stack?

To this end, our team is about to launch a solution geared toward serving the technology analysis, utilization, licensing, and satisfaction for wealth management firms.

If you’d like a sneak peek, shoot me a reply, and I’d love to get your insight.