Advisors, the New Conductors of Tech

Blog
Kyle Fleming – 07/21/2021

The orchestra is an inspiring concept. Individual musicians sound beautifully on their own, but together, there must be coordination to produce that awe-worthy result. That’s why the conductor has a uniquely crucial role as the orchestra cannot exist by itself, nor can the conductor be left out. This coordination concept of orchestration is particularly interesting when applied to technology.

Just like each musician, various technologies work great independently doing the manual and repeatable jobs that are undesirable to humans. They need coordination to come together to make a meaningful end-to-end workflow. Traditionally, a developer played that role, but, what if a person without a developer’s skillset could also do it – both weave and coordinate siloed technologies into one cohesive flow which in turn designs and manages a single workflow with little effort? This is essentially no-code automation.

Looking at the tech landscape, no-code Automation as a Service platforms exist today. For example, Slack and Gmail can be integrated and personalized with very little prep. To be clear, no-code isn’t some magical term that makes something out of nothing, there is actually a significant amount of code backing these tools. The advantage is the user doesn’t have to write code to build new exciting and helpful things.

As the operational hub for advisors, the Black Diamond® Wealth Platform recognized a unique opportunity to extend this concept into the wealth tech space; where advisors could design their workflows by picking from a list of actions– seamlessly coordinating technology to produce a desired end-to-end experience.

This idea was first introduced with template scheduling for the Data Mining application. In this workflow an advisor can select a template to automatically run on a set schedule, customize the data inputs, and optionally share the output with others at their firms through Black Diamond’s secure Vault. The most popular configuration of this workflow is to generate a transaction blotter after reconciliation is complete each morning – telling the system exactly what to prioritize so advisors can start their day serving their clients.

With the rise of remote and digital interactions, it was imperative for Black Diamond to elevate the support model for advisors and their respective clients. Enter the DocuSign® workflow. The advisor can now design an entire DocuSign experience directly from Black Diamond’s Client View application. The system walks the advisor through setting up the request and provides options like creating a To-Do list task for the recipient(s) within their portal and supports automatic storage of the final document within the Vault. This type of no-code automation provides visibility and efficiency out of the box.

Looking ahead, I see an opportunity to bring more and more internal applications together through no-code automation. One compelling idea is for a customized message to automatically post on the Relationship Timeline when a new client initially logs in to their Client Experience portal. The advisor is able to create posts with attachments or a welcome video beforehand, and to their clients, the immediate message is warm and reassuring. Following the post, the advisor will have also designated a series of actions to kick off such as alerts or even a DocuSign request for streamlined onboarding.

Adding additional partner integrations into this tech orchestra will be an ultimate efficiency driver. Imagine a world where advisors can configure their entire tech stack, just by using a simple and efficient interface; making it possible for every advisor to conduct their own orchestra.

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