Uniform processes key to boosting practice capacity

Speaking to ifa ahead of the ifa Future Forum 2022, Elixir Consulting senior consultant and business coach, Graham Burnard, urged advice practice owners to devote time to reviewing their systems and processes to ensure they apply consistently across their business.

“I think one of the problems we see is, an advice practice might have three advisers who think they are doing things the same way, but they all might prepare documentation or set up review meetings in a slightly different way,” he said.

“So, that consistency is not there, which means you're not getting the efficiency.”

During his session at the ifa Future Forum 2022, he will deep dive into how advisers can crush their capacity constraints by completing a health check on their practice to diagnose the issues that are causing a drag, and implementing productive processes to maximise capacity.

Mr Burnard said practice owners should document their systems and processes, and enforce it across their business for all employees, which can be updated if there is room for improvement.

“When you have individuality, errors start to creep in. This could lead to backlogs and the wheels start to fall off,” Mr Burnard warned.

“But the more you can stick to uniform consistent processes, the more efficiently you can run your practice. This will also make recruiting and onboarding easier because there's only one way that staff needs to learn how to do things.”

Mr Burnard also recommended reducing friction in the business and identifying efficiency drains to reduce capacity constraints.

“To do that, you need to analyse the theoretical capacity of the business. Ask yourself, ‘if everything was running smoothly, how many clients could I onboard and service, and do annual reviews?’” he said.

“If you're not meeting those targets, it could be due to friction in the business's capacity constraints through duplicated work, lack of consistency, poor training, lack of technological tools, or manual processes.”

The next step is to allocate resources optimally in a business — particularly for financial planners — who are the most finite resource in the business.

“Ask what you are doing that someone else in the business should be doing, and make sure they're doing it,” Mr Burnard said.

“You reduce costs and grow advice capacity by making sure you're ruthless about offloading tasks and allocating resources efficiently.”

Advisers could look for “efficiency dividends” by using technological tools to streamline tasks, and integrating workflows into the CRM.

They could produce file notes by using voice-to-text systems, ensure technological tools integrate to avoid errors through double entry of data, set client appointments using online calendars, and use video to communicate with clients.

“Systemise it for consistency but make sure that it's driven out of your client relationship management system,” Mr Burnard said.

Practice owners could then grow capacity through recruiting either university graduates, onshore or offshore outsourced service providers, or paraplanners.

“If you've got a really clear view on where your capacity constraints are in the business, you'll know what additional resources you need,” Mr Burnard said.

“This allows you to get very targeted and avoid missing the mark on what you actually need in order to increase capacity most cost effectively.”

To hear more from Graham Burnard about how you could serve more clients without sacrificing the quality of work (fuelled by case studies from other practices who have done it successfully), come along to the ifa Future Forum 2022.

It will take place on 16 November at Montage in Sydney.

Make sure you book your tickets now by clicking here.

For more information about the ifa Future Forum 2022, including agenda and speakers, click here.