To make the most of advances in technology, is it worth looking at more than fintech solutions? Felicity Cooper AFP®talks about her experience in taking up a whole range of apps and software to benefit her clients, team and business.

The team at Cooper Wealth Management may be relatively small – just five people, including founder and 2018 FPA Financial Planner AFP^® Professional of the Year, Felicity Cooper AFP^®. But they definitely punch above their weight when it comes to being innovative and going the extra mile for their clients.

 “Every Tuesday, anyone from the team can put forward a cool new idea,” says Felicity. “It could be about improving one of our processes or adding value to the client experience. Every idea goes up on our Agile board and then once a quarter, we review all of these to come up with our quarterly project.

 “For example, we might have a couple of ideas about reducing the time it takes to turnaround an SOA. So, we compare these ideas, or sometimes combine them, and agree on which will have the biggest impact. Or we might use those original ideas to trigger a group brainstorm about the whole SOA process and see if there are new and better ideas we can come up with.

 “Of course, technology can often play a big role in bringing these ideas to life, especially when it comes to making efficiency gains.”

Making life easier for everyone

All ideas from the team are welcome, as long as they support one of three key objectives – making things better for the client, for the team or the bottom line.

“Any idea we trial has to either make someone’s life better or support a more sustainable business,” says Felicity. “No one wants to be wasting time or do things they don’t want to do, whether they’re your clients or your team.

“So, with every new opportunity to trial a technology, we look at who this is meant to help. As a financial planning business, we’re all about delivering solutions that can make people happier. That’s the mission we’re on and it’s how the business operates, too.”

What does it look like when the Cooper Wealth Management team get to work on an idea they’re convinced can make a positive difference?

“Well, we’re always asking clients what we could be doing better,” says Felicity. “One thing we kept hearing was that people don’t get around to thinking about seeing a financial planner until they have some down time – usually at the end of their working day or at the weekend. And they can’t call up the office to schedule an appointment at these times.”

In response to this insight, Felicity and the team introduced the ScheduleOnce app for clients, current and future, to make appointments online.

“Then we realised some clients prefer not to take time to travel to a meeting,” she says. “So, we introduced Zoom for remote appointments. If clients choose to have a virtual meeting, Zoom is set-up to send the calendar invite and meeting link to both planner and client. It also automatically records the meeting, so both parties have a complete record of the discussion and next steps.

“Once we’d introduced this new benefit for clients, we then started to think how we can make things better on the back-end to save time for the team,” says Felicity.

“So, we rolled out our ideas to streamline the whole appointments process. When a client makes an online booking now, they flag it as an initial appointment or a catch-up. If it’s the former, that triggers an automated email with our fact find documentation, Financial Services Guide (FSG), a list of what to bring to the meeting and a map of how to get here.

“This automated process includes setting up the client record in Xplan, with a note on file that the FSG has been sent for compliance purposes.”

An appetite for experiments and failure

Felicity is the first to admit that trying her hand at a new app or software product is something she gets a kick out of.

“I definitely have more than my fair share of curiosity about technology. I can’t resist trying something new and will jump on an introductory offer for a bright and shiny app that’s just hit the market. So, we have a lot of software licences and app subscriptions, and we probably only end up using about 10 per cent of these in the business.

“About four times a year, I’ll go through the inventory and do a cull, so we’re not paying for technology we no longer need.”

While this might seem like a somewhat arbitrary approach, it’s all provided for in the Cooper Wealth Management test fund.

“We allocate a set percentage of revenue to trying out new apps,” says Felicity. “It’s very much a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you never try to make things work better, you won’t get to see what impact these changes could have for your business.”

For anyone thinking of following Felicity’s experimental approach, she adds that being prepared for frequent failures to happen is essential.

“In my view, you need to stick with something for around six months to know if it’s going to work or not. I’m a firm believer in the 80/20 rule that says 80 per cent of your success comes from 20 per cent of your effort. So, it’s inevitable that at least half of your technology trials won’t lead anywhere.”

Sometimes, what appears to be a spectacular failure can actually bring about positive outcomes.

“When we first tried webinars, it was pretty disastrous,” Felicity concedes. “The first time, we got people to register at the wrong link and the second time, I forgot to turn the sound on. It took me a while to realise why everyone had left! So, we parked webinars for a while. But eventually, we came back to the idea and we’ve had some of our biggest new clients come on board off the back of our webinars.”

By keeping clients informed when they’re trying something new, Felicity and her team can limit any negative impact of these ‘failures’ on brand reputation and client relationships.

“We will tell clients when we’re trying something new and that it may take a while to get used to it,” she says. “After all, we’re financial planners, not IT people. And through all our trial and error, we’re also very clear that we’re making changes – and mistakes – for the right reasons. We only innovate because we want to keep evolving towards better outcomes for everyone.”

A better client experience

When it comes to improving the overall client experience at Cooper Wealth Management, online bookings and remote meetings are just the tip of the iceberg. Video production is now playing an important role in client interactions, thanks to a suit of handy apps from the Wistia platform.

“Wistia is a bit like YouTube but it’s more compliant,” says Felicity. “We first started using it for our market updates, sending these out as a video summary instead of an email. Then we added captions, so people can follow along when they’re in public and don’t have access to headphones for listening to the commentary.”

With the growing importance of video in client communication, the business has actually set up its own video studio on the premises, and team members are getting comfortable recording video on a more ad hoc basis to supplement other client communications.

“At the end of a first meeting with a client, we’ll make and send a quick video clip to touch on highlights of the discussion, and to say how excited and positive we are about working with that person,” says Felicity. “Videos like these will just be recorded at a desk using the Soapbox feature from Wistia.”

Introducing direct debits has also been a win for taking the hassle out of invoicing and payments.

“Some clients are on a monthly schedule and were having to manually pay their invoice each month,” Felicity says.

“Now we’ve set up GoCardless, which integrates with Xero to make direct debits easy to set up and manage. This might be something that larger firms have been doing for years, but technologies like these are making it possible for a smaller business, like ours, to offer more convenience to our clients.”

On the radar

With new apps launching and client needs changing over time, Felicity and her team are unlikely to be running out of ideas to trial new technology anytime soon. If current and future projects are anything to go by, their journey up the technology learning curve is going to continue.

“We’re currently putting together a 16-part online learning course for the Australian Shareholders’ Association,” she says. “Having the video studio for recording content has made it much easier to fit this project in around business as usual.

“We’ve also had a lot of false starts in social media marketing. We’ve been close to launching a series of ads, but when the time came to go live, we realised we were too busy to service new leads we expected to come from the campaign.

“But I’m sure a time will come when this project will come to the front of the queue, so it’s good to know we already have at least some of the technology and knowledge up our sleeve to make it happen.”

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 Five apps for a better business 

GoCardless: For automated payments

Lucidchart: For mind mapping processes before coding these into Xplan

ScheduleOnce: For online appointments

Wistia: For video production and hosting

Zoom: For remote meetings

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Tech sprint tips 

1. One at a time

Although Felicity Cooper AFP^® may have a big appetite for tech experiments in her business – Cooper Wealth Management – she’s very strict with applying a ‘don’t try to eat the elephant in one bite’ policy in working on tech projects. The business only works on one project at a time, so that her team – and clients – won’t experience change fatigue.

“Behavioural science tells us we have a finite capacity for taking on new things and adapting to change. When our resources run dry, we can’t be as effective in moving things forward.

So, we choose where to make an impact and focus on that before moving on to the

next priority.”

2. Short and sharp

Tech sprints at Cooper Wealth Management last for 13 weeks, giving the team a goal of four new ideas to trial each year. If a project hasn’t had the desired outcome or even been completed at the end of the quarter, it’s time to move on to the next project. 

“If a new technology has met its success target in that first quarter, it’s a keeper. But if it’s clear something hasn’t worked, we will cut it fast. Sometimes projects get shelved and we’ll revisit them again when the time is right or we have enough time and resources to get the result we’re looking for.”

3. Be prepared to fail

Accepting that you’ll fail often is a big part of taking an innovative approach to technology, and running a business in general. By keeping in mind tips one, two and four on this list, you won’t be wasting much in the way of resources on an idea that’s going nowhere. So, you can afford to try things out and then let them go if they’re not working.

“I can’t resist trying new things in the business, it’s in my nature and it’s always going to be part of the way we work at Cooper Wealth Management. But even if you have a more limited change agenda, it’s important to remember that 80 per cent of your success is coming from 20 per cent of your effort. So, some degree of failure is to be expected.” 

4. Set targets for success

Knowing exactly what success looks like is vital. For introducing online appointments, for example, you might decide to set a target of having more than 50 per cent of clients make appointments online.

“Deciding whether a new process or app is working or not isn’t based on a gut feeling or a discussion. We set objective goals for what we want from the change we’re making, so we can make a quick decision about whether implementation of technology has been

a success.” 

5. Map the journey

Seeing where you’ve come from and what you’ve achieved is an important part of the innovation process. It’s easy to get stuck on the 80 per cent that isn’t working for you, if you don’t acknowledge the 20 per cent that has made a difference to you, the business and your stakeholders. 

“It can sometimes feel like we’re putting all this effort in and getting nowhere. So, we keep journals for all our projects as a reminder of how things used to be and what we’ve done to make a change happen. Three years ago, we were cranking out SOAs manually and today, we’re using Xplan instead. Without the journaling process, we’d just be taking that very important change to our process for granted.”

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