Why not? You name the steps, you identify the clients, and then your admins move the client through as appropriate. You get great, simple, visual management information, which tells you how many clients are at what stage and how long it’s all taking. Pipedrive has a free trial and then the classic three-tier pricing model. You either want Silver at £12.50 a month or Gold at twice that.
Trello is another tool that can help simplify transfer processes. This is a task management tool based on the famous Kanban board project management approach. It provides a visual overview of the different tasks being worked on in a project and who is working on them. The board starts with a general list of information about the project, such as the objectives and individual responsibilities, each presented in cards, with further lists covering different aspects of the workflow. Tasks are placed on each card and the relevant individuals are added to the card, which moves through the workflow as progress is made towards completion.
You don’t need to be a genius to see how this could help with ensuring every client goes through a well-mapped process. Whole IT development projects are run with Trello – it’s a really powerful tool. It’s got a great free-forever tier (priced for advisers) and a premium tier at $10 (£7.80) per month per user that would do all any reasonable company would need.
Perhaps the best known tool for helping with project management is Basecamp. This feels like it’s used everywhere, which is testament to its effectiveness in managing processes and projects. My company runs on Basecamp. Like the others, its beauty is largely in its simplicity in making it easy to view what needs to be done, what’s being done, who’s doing it and what the current status is.
Basecamp is $99 per month for your whole business, no matter how many people use it.
The fundamentals
So those are my tips. Using cool tech might sound trivial in the context of a big transfer exercise, but the oversight, simplification of process and the visibility they offer can be a genuine differentiator and, used right, could unlock a huge amount of value and risk reduction at a business level.
None of these tools will tell you what the process needs to be. The good news is that you know this already. You know what goes into a suitability letter – and it might be less than you think. You know how often you have to phone the client – not visit them – for a platform switch, and you know what’s involved in chasing down providers. The trick is to set it all down in a logical process flow and then follow the living daylights out of it, over and over again, till you get good at it.
