Why Advisors Need a Great Data Culture

 

Recorded at the T3 Advisor Conference 2022.  Presented by:

Advisorpedia interviewed Adrian Johnstone, President at Practifi, at the T3 Advisor Confernce in May, 2022.

Recources: Practifii

Related: Innovating the Client Experience at CircleBlack

Transcript:

We want to talk to people about having a positive data culture because we have this challenge in the industry where we're constantly trying to amass more. But if we don't get the quality, right, we can't get the benefit that we're looking for. So, it's fundamental to us that we get ... people to understand that it's a technology enabled industry. But we need the human element to pay attention to the information that they're managing for their clients. . .

Back in 2006 ... coined the phrase data is the new oil, but people don't really go into what the rest of what he had to say was, and of course, data is valuable, like oil, but if you don't invest in structuring it and getting it organized, well, then it's of no value at all. It's unrefined.

So we work really hard with firms. And sadly, you know, we migrate many firms a month for the platform. And so many of them who are on outmoded kind of legacy platforms, their data is not well structured. It's it's 1000s of words and a comments field. And it's of little use, and we're constantly having to explain to them, that they've spent years and poured huge sums of money into their past, but that it's actually a liability for the moving forward. 

Yeah, so Practifi really works hard around data, so much so that we actually have a role based application. So unlike a traditional system, where everyone who logs in sees the same thing. It's not very engaging.  And so it doesn't encourage people to have a good data culture.

So we've structured the system so that whether you're a compliance officer or an advisor, whether you're an executive leader, or a client service person, when you log into Practifi, you see only the data that you need, which makes it very easy for you to stay on top of whether it's up to date, current and in the right context.