Digitalisation opens up new opportunities for fiduciary companies to make their processes more efficient. What needs to be considered? In this blog post, you will get an overview of the most important principles of process optimisation in fiduciary companies.
With process optimisations, fiduciary companies can increase their efficiency and productivity. Many fiduciary companies have already started to optimise their processes as part of the digital transformation. However, this must not only mean having formerly analogue information available digitally and introducing a new document management system instead of paper folders. Instead, fiduciary companies should approach digital transformation holistically. What does this mean in practice?
Reading Tip: In this blog post, you can read why digitising processes does not make a fiduciary company innovative.
Digital transformation in the fiduciary sector is based on five pillars: Business models, employees, processes, customer relationships and technologies. These pillars do not exist independently of each other and instead play together. To maximise the benefits of process optimisation for your fiduciary, you must also be prepared to rethink your business model, the way you work, the way you collaborate with your clients and the way you use technology solutions.
Step 1 in process optimisation: Identify weak points
Before you can start process optimisation, you need to uncover inefficiencies in your current processes and accordingly the potential for optimisation. To do this, you should answer the following questions honestly:
- To what extent are the needs and expectations of your customers changing? Can you continue to meet these changing customer expectations?
- Which customer segments do you want to focus on in the medium and long term? Where do economies of scale arise?
- When and why does idle time occur in your team? Does the current division of labour still make sense?
- How can you reduce dependencies and waiting times both in the team and the cooperation with your clients?
- How is your fiduciary company addressing the ongoing skills shortage in the industry? Are you using the currently available human resources as profitably as possible?
- To what extent do you use innovative technologies to make work processes easier and prevent idle time and waiting times?
- Are there software breaks that make daily work difficult for you and your team? How can you avoid this in the future?
- Which non-business-related routine activities can you automate and create more time for those issues that give your fiduciary company a competitive edge?
- What makes your fiduciary company stand out from the competition? How can you further develop these differentiators to strengthen your position in the market?
- How sustainable is your business model?
Whether customer relationship management, team leadership, technology stack or a realignment of the business model: Depending on your answers to the above questions, you can identify the areas in which you would like to optimise processes. Never forget that the goal is to increase efficiency and simplify existing processes. Try to eliminate unnecessary intermediate steps and reduce the complexity of processes whenever possible. Do not fall into the over-optimisation trap, for example, by introducing several new tools at the same time to improve mandate management and expecting an increase in productivity – only to delete most of them again after a few months. Too many changes within a brief period and inconsistency tend to lead to confusion. Test new software solutions and apps internally or with trusted partners before encouraging your clients to install these technology solutions.
Extra Tip: The most common coordination and collaboration solutions such as Slack, Monday, Confluence or Jira can simplify aspects of the fiduciary’s daily routine. However, they were not developed for fiduciary companies, which makes process optimisations and holistic transformations difficult. Modern fiduciary software such as Accounto, on the other hand, supports you in making the processes in your fiduciary company more efficient. Experience in a free demo how Accounto can lay the foundation for process optimisations in your fiduciary company.
This is the biggest obstacle to process optimisation
One of the most common barriers to transformations and process optimisations is that employees do not initially go along with them. The first reaction to change is often rejection. Statements like “Why do we suddenly have to do this differently now when it has worked for years?” or “Soon we will all be replaced by technology” come up. In this phase of the change process, you as a manager must take the fears and concerns of the employees seriously. Show what optimising your processes means for the team but also for individual employees. After the rejection phase, many people experience a feeling of shock or anger. Especially if you want to automate tasks, you should consider that fiduciaries may perceive this as a threat. In this phase, you should show your employees what an important function they will continue to have in the company in the future.
The shock and anger phase is usually followed by acceptance. The opportunities and possibilities of change are moving into the centre. It is about exploring advantages and disadvantages. Communicate clearly what opportunities the process optimisations open up for your fiduciary company. Also, address possible challenges and develop a plan with the team on how you will deal with them. The final phase of change is engagement. The majority of the employees are now behind the change and are going along with the process optimisation. However, keep in mind that you are working with people and individuals do not always behave exactly according to a certain model.
At Accounto Transformation Workshop on Thursday, 15 June 2023, in Zurich, you will receive individual practical tips from experienced transformation coaches on how you can implement process optimisations in your fiduciary company and accompany your employees in digital transformation.
