How to Overcome Challenges When Integrating Financial Services to Salesforce

Countless bytes of data are created every day and for financial services companies, this data represents unexploited potential to capture a better view and insight into existing customers, opportunities for new business, target market audiences, and the competitive landscape. According to IDG research, 49 percent of financial services companies have more than ten different internal or external sources of data that are critical to their business processes. This raises significant challenges for financial services companies because this flood of data cannot be used to drive innovation unless they find a way to connect their disparate data sources to achieve a unified view of their data.

Erik Fike, Senior Vice President and Chief Engagement Officer at Strategic Growth, spent some time sharing the company's thoughts regarding the challenges CTOs and other IT leaders face while integrating their siloed systems, paying specific attention to wealth management companies and their Salesforce integrations.

Salesforce Integration Challenges

Strategic Growth has always been driven to find faster and more efficient ways of integrating data into Salesforce. Many of their customers seek to implement Salesforce within their business ecosystem. The problem arises when clients request that their intricate solution stack be integrated so that the data in their ERP, or bespoke in-house solutions, surfaces inside Salesforce.  Fike noted that “No organization can achieve a holistic view of their clients if their systems remain siloed, therefore, integration plays a key role in making sure that disparate systems are connected.”

Strategic Growth typically finds that small to mid-market wealth management companies oftentimes lack the technical infrastructure and experience needed to deploy IT solutions that enable them to take advantage of the data they collect. Fike said, “Every wealth management company needs a way to see into their client’s holdings and have a clear view of the investments products and services that their clients have purchased. There's often a lot of applications and other paperwork that needs to be completed, insurance products that need to be kept up to date, and financial accounts between banks and financial service providers that must be tracked. Most of these tasks are performed using different applications which all house data in various structures and formats.” Strategic Growth typically sees, wealth management companies struggling to move this collection of data into a CRM where their brokers and financial advisors can have instant access to all that data in one central location.

A lot of smaller and mid-market wealth management companies have access to some pretty good tools like Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, TD Waterhouse and Charles Schwab, to name a few, that allow companies and their brokers to manage the products and services their clients have within their portfolio. The challenge, however, is bringing the data from these disparate software solutions together to create a clear 360-degree view of their clients' portfolio into Salesforce.
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Why is a 360-degree View of Your Client So Important?

“Consolidating data into Salesforce opens the door up for wealth management companies to leverage the data at their fingertips to formulate long-term plans for their clients. Data on the products and services that clients use as well as products and services that they don't use can be examined, and the insights made actionable in order to establish a roadmap that will allow clients to invest in a certain holding, security, or strategy that will be the most beneficial for success. The concept of a 360-degree view of the customer that contains not only a client’s portfolio information, but also their interactions with the business, allows for a unified view of the customer’s journey. This access to account data and client-specific details is a critical component of delivering the best possible service to their client,” shared Fike.

How an Integration Platform Empowers Interconnectivity

Fike said “integration platforms make it possible to move data from disparate solutions into Salesforce. The only problem is that there aren’t many turnkey and off-the-shelf platforms that make it possible to easily build flows and bring that data into Salesforce without having expert level coding skill.”

A Hybrid Integration Platform (HIP) is the new way to integrate, providing the ability to connect anything, anyone, and anywhere, from cloud, to on-premises systems. A HIP like Synatic offers standard out-of-the-box components and connectors that allow wealth management companies to easily and rapidly integrate data between systems. Through a user-friendly drag and drop user interface, Synatic allows data to be loaded into Salesforce where the information can be used to drive critical decision making.

By successfully implementing a Salesforce integration, wealth management companies can unlock valuable insights and ensure heightened customer-centricity. If you are looking to strategically retain clients and augment services to these clients contact Synatic today.