Raymond James’ 4,640 advisors have complete flexibility in how they manage their customer relationships. Until recently, that also meant the customer relationship management (CRM) tools the advisors used were locally managed, and may have varied from homegrown spreadsheet type systems to third-party solutions individually selected at each location.

This spring, Raymond James began offering its advisors a new proposition. Working with Microsoft, Raymond James launched a centrally-managed Microsoft Dynamics CRM system intended to give its advisors the latest tools and functionality for managing customer relationships without the advisor having to undertake the effort involved in implementing, maintaining and backing up a system for managing extensive client data.

“Our advisors have asked for corporate CRM for sometime,” says Raymond James’ Abbott.

“Our advisors have asked for corporate CRM for sometime,” says Mark Abbott, vice president of information technology at Raymond James. In fact, the selection of Microsoft Dynamics CRM comes on the heels of a years-long effort on the part of Raymond James to build a CRM system that would have the functionality to deliver advisors a competitive advantage, according to Mike Shelly, Raymond James’ vice president of business technology management. The new project represents a major milestone in Raymond James’ ongoing commitment to offer advanced technological tools to all advisors.

“We conducted an exhaustive search in deciding what to buy, and both our user base and IT team chose Microsoft CRM,” Shelly says.

In fact, advisors who took part in head-to-head testing consistently chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including advisors who had personally purchased other products. Users cited tight integration with Outlook and the product’s functionality and roadmap. The Raymond James technology team appreciated the ease of integration with the firm’s corporate technology infrastructure, which is run on Microsoft software, including Microsoft SQL Server, BizTalk and the Microsoft Office system. The team also cited confidence in the commitment Microsoft has made to the Dynamics CRM product.

The initial roll-out was to 2,500 people. “It’s not mandatory, so we are starting with the advisors who have expressed a need for this product, and rolling it out to them and their branches,” Shelly says.

With more than 4,600 producing advisors and their staff, there will be thousands of users on the system. As the migration to the new system is voluntary, the firm has a three-year goal of 7,000 users.

For advisors, part of the value proposition is not having to synchronize account information with their own CRM product. Moving forward, as an increasing amount of back-office data in different databases is incorporated into the system, advisors will also be able to see a wider view of customer data and histories in a few clicks, rather than searching different databases.

In the first round of integration, all client and account data was incorporated, eliminating that task for advisors. Shelly says it’s still too early to develop metrics on the type of productivity gains advisors are getting from the system, but the firm is tracking usage.

“Some offices have turned off older systems, some are converting and some never had a system and are up and running with CRM for the first time. In terms of productivity, CRM is just a tool and much depends on how deep into it the users get,” he says. “We are keeping track of activities entered, and we know who has been putting a lot of data into it, so maybe down the road we will be able to draw a connection between usage and productivity.”

Anecdotally, initial feedback has been positive, particularly in terms of the user interface.

“On the user side, the Outlook integration means it has been turned on in a way that you are using CRM without even really realizing you are using CRM. It’s all very familiar,” Abbott says.

“What we are hearing from strong users is ‘This is great; it’s what I’m looking for,’ and they’re looking forward to seeing more integration,” adds Shelly.

From an IT perspective it fits well with the firm’s BizTalk infrastructure, and IT staff have found the product easy to work with in terms of creating new entities and changing labels or fields, Shelly says.

“One of the greatest advantages of this system for advisors is data back-up,” says Shelly. “In a situation where an advisor has to retrieve information, such as litigation or a natural disaster, he or she might typically have written information on a yellow pad or entered data into a local management system which can have limited usability. But if they utilize our system, they are way ahead of the game, because we store every piece of information that is entered. This system provides the ultimate in data reliability and accessibility.”

www.raymondjames.com

By Renee Wijnen Caruthers