Top 5 CRM systems for financial services companies

The top CRM systems for investment companies to consider

Today, the majority of investment advisor firms have indicated growth as their business priority. The advisory firms prioritizing growth intend on achieving the development primarily by adding new clients organically. Advisers interested in customer acquisition inevitably face operational challenges that can threaten their ability to serve customers. However, by implementing best-of-breed software, investment advisory organizations can grow assets while improving the quality of service they deliver to their customers. A fully integrated customer relationship management solution is the most powerful tools these companies have at their disposal if they want to grow. However, when it comes to selecting the right CRM software tool for the advisory firm, an important question must be answered: Which CRM system will fit your investment business the best?

When it comes to CRM software that was not specifically designed for the company, but is being used by investment advisers, I have selected 5 of the most popular solutions to be aware of. For a fuller listing see the listing at G2Crowd comparing CRM systems for features and pricing:

1. Salesforce

Salesforce is a popular cloud-based CRM solution, which is increasing its presence in the investment advisory industry by providing a wide array of seamless integrations with third-party software solutions. Investment banks and capital markets firms are adopting  Salesforce to strengthen relationships with corporate clients and institutional investors. Salesforce is a cloud-based, fully customizable CRM system that offers integration capabilities via its application programming interface. Sales Cloud helps consolidate your data into one place, manage your data across teams, and is accessible on desktop and mobile devices and automate the organizational process. However, if you choose Salesforce CRM, make sure that you can provide relevant expertise to successfully implement the solution. You can subscribe for a Salesforce Financial Services Cloud demo to see how you can stay connected with clients in real-time, nurture deeper relationships, and increase productivity.

2. Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics comes in both on-premise and cloud-based versions. As to be expected, Microsoft Dynamics integrateswith the rest of Microsoft products. Microsoft Dynamics’ features bridges to all common business challenges: sales force automation, customer service and marketing modules empower the team to focus on what’s most important. Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers editions for financial advisors, which provides a holistic 360° view of all client and household assets and liabilities, as well as financial and insurance product details. It helps easily identify, manage, and track relationships between households, clients, and prospects. The flexible architecture of the solution allows for easy customization so you can mold the application to your specific needs. Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers all of the important functions, which will be helpful for any investment company: sales force automation, marketing planning and automation, social engagement, customer service including field services solutions and analytics.

3. Bpm’online

Bpm online is a cutting-edge, process-driven, cloud based CRM software that connects the dots between marketing, sales and customer service- efficiently managing the complete customer journey from lead to order, and to ongoing account maintenance. Bpm’online helps you coordinate actions in your sales, marketing, and service supports by combining customer data with business process management tools. The solution is suitable for mid-size and large corporations with scalable features. Bpm’online is built around the Bpm platform, which helps you design and automate processes to improve customer service and meet or surpass their expectations. Drag and drop tools and make customization easy with solutions for both cloud and on-premise infrastructures. Bpm'online has customized solutions for a variety of industries including an application for capital market firms and private banks, which has been tailored to meet the specific needs of the industry: Bpm'online provides a comprehensive process-based solution that offers front-and back-office business tools to help private investments and wealth management firms manage their work. If you are looking for a process-driven CRM with fast implementation, a monthly subscription that includes support and upgrade costs; you should consider bpm'online CRM.

4. Sugar CRM

Sugar CRM is an affordable and easy to use CRM platform that can help investment business communicate with prospects, share sales information, close deals and keep customers happy. Companies use Sugar everyday to manage their sales, marketing and support processes. Sugar CRM is customizable for financial services that empowers them with the right information at the right time,seamlessly guiding the customers through every phase of their journey, improves business efficiency, performance and customer satisfaction. As an open-source, web-based CRM solution, Sugar is easy to customize and adapt to the changing needs – it is an ideal fit for small and medium-sized companies as well as large enterprises. The solution is possible to run in the cloud or on-site.

5. Insightly

Insightly is an affordable and robust CRM solution for small businesses. It collects data from multiple channels and effectively stores it for quick reference across different investment projects or contacts. The system can handle all text or emails due to its unique linking relationships. You can link a contact or an organization to a particular project or even multiple projects. Later, you can easily find all projects associated with the needed contact. The solution helps manage all of the customer transactions, interactions, leads, proposals, opportunities and projects from any device at any time. Insightly’s web application allows businesses to start using CRM with just an email address and a web browser. In addition, Insightly for Google Apps is the number one CRM application in the Google Apps marketplace. If you want to become a more customer-facing business, Insightly deserves a strong consideration for the unique ability to easily keep all related information together.

Recommendations of CRM for investment companies

CRM software helps companies automate all customer-facing processes while improving visibility and communication across an entire organization. What are the greatest CRM features that can make investment businesses benefit from using them?

Keep the following list in mind while choosing a suitable CRM solution for your investment company:

• A reliable document management system

Whether it be in the cloud or on your firm's server, it is important that the investment company properly secures sensitive customer information. Investment advisers can utilize secure cloud storage services when possible, given the operational efficiency, back up capabilities, and likely cost savings. There must be a clear record of who, at your firm, accessed the document. In addition, in the investment business, the information should be shared instantly from anywhere: while there is a visiting customer, at the industry events, or from public premises. It's also important to be able to access the needed data from anywhere and at anytime. Try to choose a well-utilized and integrated CRM system. That will help you improve the way you secure storing and managing data that came from different sources.

• Scalability

Look strategically at the mobility and how it can support your business and improve processes. If you expect to grow your business, but cannot say for sure how fast it will expand or how many users you will need to add annually – it is worth looking at the CRM offering the opportunity to quickly scale up, most likely via a SaaS model.

• Sales leads and opportunity management

If you are in the investment business, you are probably using an opportunity pipeline management to organize sales. Automated opportunity management displays all opportunities inside your sales pipeline neatly arranged according to their phase in the sales cycle. This feature lets you focus on your most promising opportunities, and leads you to achieve your sales target goals successfully.

• Analytics

CRM system should provide businesses with access to decision-making analytics. It is important to properly analyze the prospect’s data and be more efficient in building the investment strategies. That is why it is not enough to collect data, there should be proper analytic tools to help make sense of all of the data and how to use it to invest successfully.

In the investment space, client loyalty is paramount. That is why investment and financial service companies are always looking for the best ways to deliver superior service, smarter advice, and add something extra to the customers for their best interests. A properly chosen CRM will help you ensure your future business growth by building strong relations with your current customers and successfully acquiring new ones.