Drive Inorganic Growth With the Business Development App
BY Allison Lasley
Practifi
For forward-thinking wealth management firms to stay competitive, it’s important to drive not only organic growth but also leverage alternate growth strategies to bring in new business. Whether it’s advisor recruitment, buying a book of business or acquiring another firm, having a strategic corporate development plan is key to staying ahead. Mergers and acquisitions hit another record year high in 2021 and there are no signs of this slowing down. However, this rapid industry growth doesn’t come without a few headaches.
Generally, acquiring firms lack the technical infrastructure needed to manage multiple growth activities effectively. In most cases, complex onboarding and due diligence processes are managed in spreadsheets. This makes it difficult for business development teams to create repeatable processes and report on the ROI of their efforts. Furthermore, it creates a rough transition process for the firms, advisors and clients involved.
As the performance optimization platform for enterprise wealth management firms, Practifi provides comprehensive lifecycle management from deal prospecting to onboarding new firms to advisor revenue generation. With the Business Development app, acquiring firms can unify growth activities in one platform, leverage repeatable processes and find ideal acquisition targets.
Here are a few ways Practifi makes managing the acquisition lifecycle easier for RIAs, broker-dealers and networks that are actively acquiring.
Unify growth activities in one platform
While M&A activity often makes the headlines, advisor recruitment and buying client books also remain key elements of a holistic corporate development plan. Firms that do all three of these activities are ahead of most, but unfortunately, most technology doesn’t cater to the unique and complex needs of these growth tactics. As a result, firms use spreadsheets and non-industry-specific technology to manage these important growth activities; creating inefficiencies and making it difficult to track deal progression.
Quickly view and act on current task, open deal and active processes from the Business Development app home dashboard
Practifi makes managing the full acquisition lifecycle easier by unifying all growth activities into one, intuitive platform. Business development reps can add new pipeline candidates including their size and valuation, operations specialists can see due diligence tasks approaching or overdue, and growth managers can oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of each deal. With a unified and transparent view of growth opportunities, teams can work together more efficiently and ensure deals stay on track.
Leverage repeatable processes
To become an acquisition machine, firms must acquire or integrate new business regularly. However, without repeatable and consistent processes, it’s impossible to scale to this level of efficiency. Spreadsheets and static tools used to manage growth activities limit the power of automation, making it difficult for many firms to realize the true value of their efforts.
And while the transaction is important, it’s just one part of the integration process. Post-acquisition, it’s just as important to have standardized processes in place to integrate firms or welcome new clients and advisors. This is key to becoming a ‘buyer of choice’ for future acquisition targets.
Set tasks for each lifecycle stage and monitor the pipeline progress of each aquisition target
Practifi helps firms build an end-to-end acquisition machine. With the power of an enterprise workflow engine, you’ll be able to use complex, multi-outcome processes. These can be configured and repeated as needed to increase the efficiency of your acquisition efforts.
In addition, the Business Development app’s comprehensive acquisition lifecycle ensures all growth activities progress through specific stages. Whether the firm or advisor is in the consideration, contention, due diligence, onboarding or acquired stage, each acquisition target receives a consistent experience. At the same time, business development teams can execute a standardized, repeatable process.
Find the ideal acquisition targets
Pipeline management for wealth management firms is unique and complex. Due to this and a lack of industry-specific technology options, most firms struggle to build insightful reporting on organic and inorganic growth performance. As a result, acquiring firms cannot measure the efficiency and profitability of their business development efforts. However, choosing compatible acquisitions is crucial to a strategic corporate development plan.
Gain insight into pipeline performance and identify ideal acquisition targets with business development reports and dashboards
Practifi’s industry-specific reports and dashboards help firms identify ideal acquisition targets by increasing transparency into pipeline performance. Growth managers can monitor acquisitions by attributes, stage, owner and AUM. In addition, by tracking the amount of time spent on individual growth activities and the potential revenue, executives and key decision makers can identify the most compatible acquisition type for the firm.
A platform that makes managing acquisitions easier
For forward-thinking wealth management firms, having a strategic corporate development plan is key to staying ahead. However, managing important growth activities in spreadsheets and siloed platforms limits efficiency, insights and scalability.
A performance optimization platform built for the wealth management industry, Practifi makes managing growth activities easier by providing an end-to-end transition experience. From deal prospecting to onboarding new firms to advisor revenue generation, Practifi helps acquiring firms unify growth activities in one platform, enable repeatable processes and identify ideal acquisition targets.
To learn how Practifi can help with your acquisition needs, reach out to member of our team today.
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