How to Streamline and Scale your RIA's Operation Using AI
Please note: This blog was originally written for the Journal of Financial Planning.
AI isn’t a passing trend – even in the world of financial planning. Advisors and firm owners who want to stay relevant will need to learn new ways of incorporating AI tools into their practice for service delivery, communication, and more. The good news is that AI doesn’t have to be intimidating. Let’s dig into tangible ways financial advisors leverage AI to enhance their businesses – and how you can start implementing these solutions today.
The Importance of Scaling Operations
Creating a scalable business model has been a pain point for entrepreneurs in every industry, and the financial planning profession is no exception. Service-based businesses can struggle to manage growth effectively while balancing things like team turnover, operational inefficiencies, quality control, and overall personal and professional fulfillment for the founder and the team.
RIAs need to find a clear path forward to creating a strong infrastructure that supports their scaling firm, and AI can help in several ways:
Streamlining growth. From automating communication with prospects, to creating more impactful services, AI technology can help you to create a stronger growth path for your business.
Team retention and attraction. There are so many different AI tools on the market to fill different operational needs for your team. This can create a more involved work environment and reduce the workplace stressor of having too few resources to execute your services.
Enhancing your differentiators. Every firm has a “secret sauce” that sets them apart. Using different AI tools can help you lean into yours, whether it’s client communication, improved content, or faster turnaround times for client deliverables.
The Role of AI in Streamlining, Delegating, and Automating
Firms of every size are leveraging new technology to streamline, delegate, and automate within their firm’s existing processes.
Streamlining operations involves optimizing your processes, eliminating bottlenecks, and reducing inefficiencies. Delegating responsibilities ensures that you can focus on the bigger picture and strategic decisions while your team handles day-to-day tasks. Finally, automating repetitive tasks can significantly improve efficiency, reduce errors, and free up valuable resources for your firm.
AI can assist you in streamlining, delegating, and automating your firm’s operations by:
Identifying inefficiencies
Suggesting improvements
Leaning out your processes
Automating tasks
Offering more precise reporting
Delaying hiring needs
Creating more support for your existing team
In today’s competitive business landscape, AI is non-negotiable. As you scale, you can't afford to stop investing in technology, research, and development to improve your procedures and systems continually.
Unfortunately, many advisors get stuck on the “how” of incorporating AI into their practice, and as a result they stall out – never implementing it at all. It can be helpful to look at each operational “bucket” (streamlining, delegating, automating) to determine how AI can help you in each area of your business.
Streamlining Processes
Streamlining your operations means simplifying your business processes to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve overall performance. Often, advisors want to fast forward past the “streamlining” phase and dive straight into incorporating new technology into their practice. However, creating repeatable processes that work for you, your clients, and your team, should always be your first step prior to adding new technology into the equation.
Luckily, AI can help you achieve streamlined processes so you don’t have to constantly reinvent the wheel.
Tool for Streamlining: ChatGPT
Many advisors use ChatGPT to create email templates for common client communications they send. You might want to create an email template for:
Onboarding new prospects.
New prospect follow-up.
Proposal delivery.
Financial plan delivery.
Data gathering.
Surge meeting bookings.
To use ChatGPT in this capacity, you start a new project, and can request that it draft an email template containing specific items you want included. It’s useful to create individual projects within ChatGPT’s interface for each template you want to create, so that they’re easily searchable later.
Remember to be specific with your prompts when using ChatGPT. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to use a certain communication style (friendly, assertive, or direct), request that it adds a subject line to the template, or to summarize the points you list in the body of the email template.
It’s helpful to view ChatGPT as an intern. You’re training the tool to recognize what tone and style you prefer, and what type of answers you’re looking for. The more specific you can be, the better.
ChatGPT Prompt Example: “Create an email template and subject line to a new lead who just scheduled a prospect call with our company Level Best - Operations Consulting. Be friendly and straight to the point. Include our company brochure.”
You may need to chat back and forth with ChatGPT to get the draft to a point where you or your team members can edit and fine-tune it. Once you're done with this process, store these email templates in a place you can easily use -- CRM, text expander, workflows.
Already have email templates? You can plug your existing templates into ChatGPT or Grammarly Pro to edit them for a specific communication style or to simplify and improve the text you already have.
Automating Repetitive Tasks
Automation is using technology to replace or enhance manual tasks, reducing human involvement and increasing efficiency in processes. Automation benefits both small and large firms that are looking to reduce human error, costs, and time spent.
AI can automate your business in many different ways, but I’m going to focus on some of the most impactful use cases I see.
Tool for Automating: Otter.ai
Otter.ai makes your meeting follow-up process a breeze, and many of the firms I’ve spoken to recently are excited about this tool and the automation features it brings to the table. To leverage Otter.ai, you connect it to your video conferencing tool of choice, and it automatically records and transcribes your conversation. Otter.ai is used to transcribe your meeting notes and generate a summary. Much like ChatGPT, you can also prompt it to summarize looking for specific data or key points.
Tool for Automating: ChatGPT
You may not want to leverage a transcription tool to automate your meeting summaries and follow-up, and that’s okay. You can also leverage ChatGPT to synchronize your meeting notes into a client-ready follow-up email, or build a summary for internal team use.
Prolonging Your Hiring Process through Delegating With AI
It’s easy to look at AI and think that it offers a solid suite of productivity tools, and leave it at that. However, AI can have a long-term cost-saving impact on your business when used to delegate effectively and to free up team capacity. Here are a few ways to help your firm scale with your current team (and avoid hiring) using AI:
Keep learning. Empower yourself and your team to leverage new systems helps with keeping your business going. Set a list of best practices (like not putting sensitive business or client information into an open AI system), and communication guidelines, and start exploring. You never know what one team member may find that will save the entire firm time and money.
Find ways for AI to support each team member’s key job functions. Whether it’s creating templates, or automating deep work and administrative tasks, AI can help each member of your team reduce the time and energy they spend to accomplish their day-to-day job.
Organize “main tasks” that AI will assist with. This could include leveraging a tool like FP Alpha to “read” a client’s tax return, or estate planning documents, summarizing key data from client meetings and notes, identifying actionable planning insights, etc.
Marketing. Use AI to help you edit videos, save time on newsletters using Grammarly Pro, and create outlines or “jumping off points” for blogs and eBooks.
Remember: AI is fantastic for getting a quick win and saving time, but it still requires a human touch – especially when used for things like client and prospect communications. Make sure you build in time to review the work that AI produces to ensure it’s up to snuff!
Ongoing Business Operations in an AI-Enhanced Environment
As the AI landscape changes, it’s useful to monitor your existing tools and ask if an AI enhancement is on the horizon. It’s also important to continually assess your processes and team members’ job functions to determine if AI can help your firm enhance your work and save both time and money.
If you feel hesitant about using AI or feel worried about whether or not it will reduce the value your firm brings to the table, remember: just because you’re saving 30 minutes on writing a meeting follow-up doesn’t mean the automated follow-up created by AI isn’t valuable to your client. You might even go so far as to assign a team member to be “in charge” of finding new ways to leverage AI as a firm, and ensuring you maintain a human element in your processes while using new technology, can help you move the needle in your business.
Are you an RIA looking to create an innovative practice that's ahead of the curve? Then it's time to familiarize yourself with the tools available on the market, and how they can help you streamline, automate, and delegate tasks. A technology evaluation is an excellent place to start, and that's where Level Best consulting services come in.
We offer technology evaluations for firms like yours, where we assess your current technology stack and identify areas where you can leverage AI to improve your workflow. Our team of experts will work with you to create a customized plan that fits your unique needs and helps you stay ahead of the competition.
Don't wait any longer to get started on the path to innovation. Contact Level Best today to schedule your technology evaluation and learn how AI can help your firm grow.
