In January, about
According to CEO Rich Cancro, this was much more than just a simple rebrand and user experience refresh. AdvisorEngine CRM is built on an entirely new foundation and comes with an array of new productivity features, Cancro said. Advisors can customize the CRM to their liking without needing a software engineer or tech consultant, and new prospecting tools that can turn website visitors into warm leads can be set up in just minutes.
Integrating technology after an acquisition can be a challenge — one that
Financial Planning spoke with Cancro about the work that went on behind the scenes, the decision to acquire Junxure and his thoughts about the current CRM landscape.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Financial Planning: You’ve said that AdvisorEngine CRM is more than just a new name with some new features. That this is a full overhaul, a rebuilt CRM. Can you give an idea of what went on behind the scenes and how much was really involved to bring this new product out?
Rich Cancro: Where we started was the infrastructure. We brought it from a locally hosted provider into Amazon Web Services and modernized the whole infrastructure. We worked on a whole bunch of other things — security and things like that. We upgraded all the stuff that all of our employees use, from hardware to networks. We wanted to make sure from any minute that a client is being served, whether they’re working with our software online or asking for help, all of it is in the modern framework. So every touchpoint a client may have with this has been upgraded.
Over the past 18 months, our product development team, product managers and designers spent God knows how many hours reviewing all of the feedback we’ve had from our client base, then looked at all of our usage patterns for the technology. Where do people go? Where are they clicking most? What areas and features are they using most? From there, [we] created a roadmap of all the changes we're going to make so that advisors can have a delightful experience with our CRM.
We thought through all that, then did a proof of concept. Our design team and product managers then tested it with our client base in all sorts of roles in an advisors’ office, making sure that we’re designing for all the various personas.
We also added a ton of features. An area that we’re really hyperfocused on is allowing users to configure their environment — what data they want to see, how they want to see it, where they want to see it, what widgets they want and do it in such a way that you don’t need a technologist or data scientist. You just have to be a user of the software, and you can configure the environment literally within seconds and have the experience that you want.
FP: It sounds like the infrastructure piece is why you decided to go with a big product launch rather than release small updates every few months.
RC: The infrastructure we did first. We did that early on, right after the acquisition, but that’s not a small thing. Think of building the foundation for a house. You have to build the foundation and then from there is the architecture, right? So then we created all-new architecture, which gets into modern components, being able to create the experience we want to create. So that’s like your first floor. And then let’s add features: that configurability, adding the prospecting tool, all of those types of things.
Our software development cycle is Agile, so we have releases generally every month. But when you're doing the architecture or infrastructure, you can’t just say “oh, do it piece by piece.” That’s a big lift.
FP: Hindsight is 20/20, but knowing how much work it took to overhaul that Junxure system, would you have still acquired it, or just made the decision to build one in-house instead?
RC: I'm so happy we did it. When you make an acquisition, there are multiple components, but No. 1 always is the people. It’s that team that has all of that historical knowledge. We’ve had people here for 10, 15-plus years. There’s no one in the industry that knows how to convert clients from other CRMs, make it as painless as a conversion can be, and do it really well. They literally know how to convert from anything, whether it's [Microsoft] Excel or any other CRM, and they're passionate about it. They'll stay until late in the night and work weekends to make sure that client is good.
Second, the product is very good. Clearly it's built for advisors who care for their clients in a very scalable way. Segmenting clients, alerting, automation, all of that is at the heart of an advisor’s practice, and always a strength of Junxure.
And third, the connection between the clients and the products and the team is palpable.
FP: How much of the deal was about bringing those Junxure clients over to the AdvisorEngine ecosystem? Have you been able to retain most of those customers?
RC: Even though the brand is changing to AdvisorEgine CRM, it's a standalone product. But we’ve had, I think, terrific client retention. They have the ability to just be a CRM client or, if they want, they can certainly have access to the full wealth platform as well. The full client base can benefit from everything we’re doing, especially going forward.
FP: You said the Junxure technology was great, but we’ve talked about how much work has gone into revamping both the infrastructure and taking it to the cloud and all of these new features. So was it that this was great, cutting-edge tech in 2018 when you acquired it, and it fell behind? Or was it already in need of refreshing when you bought it?
RC: When you think about technology, you’ve always got to think about it in a couple of lenses. Is the tech stack modern and all of those other things? The other part is, does it do what it’s supposed to do? And that is exactly what Junxure did. Junxure was built for advisors that care for their clients and all of the workflows assisting them, which is super important for all of the personalization. So from the pure product perspective, it’s really good.
Technology changes over time. So whether you built something five years ago or if you built it today, you know that in five years from now, you’re going to have to continue to modernize it. What I would say is that in 2018, we knew that we would have to move from the local-based cloud provider to AWS and take advantage of all of the capabilities of AWS. We knew that we’d have to change the architecture and add services and stuff like that to modernize. We knew that we wanted to have the better user experience. We knew that those things needed to happen.
FP: How much did having a parent company like Franklin Templeton help? Would this have been possible before the new resources that it affords you?
RC: Franklin as our parent, our partner, has been phenomenal. With them, we’ve increased our resources over 40 times and doubled our product development team.
Any additional services that our clients find valuable has also been terrific. Ultimately, there are just a lot of smart people who really want to help us and help our clients.
FP: Can you talk at all about the CRM market, how it has changed over the last four to five years?
RC: We have a lot of new advisors growing their businesses, and having the ability to spend gobs of money on consultants is just not realistic for that segment. I think it’s important to keep [CRM] in a low-cost environment so that they don’t have to have spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their CRM work for them
The second thing is having access to data, business intelligence, dashboards, making data actionable and then automating as much as possible.
And communication. People communicate in all sorts of ways — email, phone, text, social media, however it is — and having a home for that where people can have all their communication with clients all in one place … is going to be another important thing certainly going forward.
FP: Speaking of the CRM market, you were early on in acquiring a company and integrating it into your overall ecosystem. Are we likely to see more acquisitions in this space, or is CRM just too difficult for other companies to bring together?
RC: It wouldn't surprise me, but it also wouldn't surprise me if it goes the other way and [CRM companies] continue to be healthy and independent. Your guess is as good as mine at this point.
