Independent Johannesburg-based financial advisory firm, Jorgensen Lascaris Financial Services (JLFS), has used GoldMine, the contact management solution from FrontRange Solutions, to drive a steady year-on-year growth of 30%.
Since the firm`s inception in 2000, it has used GoldMine to record all its transactions and interactions with clients - ensuring high levels of efficiency and client responsiveness as well as giving itself the means of identifying new business opportunities.
CEO Charles Jorgensen says the firm`s client and prospect database is growing all the time and "with a manual system, names would simply have got lost as time went by. But GoldMine allows us to continuously analyse our database in order to match new services to existing or old clients and prospects - or revisit prospects at a time in their activities when they would be most receptive to our approach. We could not have grown as fast as we have without GoldMine."
Of the firm`s 24 staff members, 21 use GoldMine on a daily basis.
"It`s the backbone of our business, because the financial education and planning services we provide are personalised very tightly to each of our clients," Jorgensen says. "Every detail of the client`s portfolio - including our interactions with the client - has a direct bearing on our ability to build his or her wealth. So we rely on GoldMine to keep our records absolutely precise and up to date."
In order to ensure continued precision and reliability, JLFS upgraded to the latest version of GoldMine during 2005. "We`d squeezed everything we could out of our five-year old version," Jorgensen says. "Also, the functionality of that early version was reasonably basic. So we looked around at other products before going for the upgrade - just to make sure there was nothing more effective around.
"With FAIS and other regulatory requirements now making it compulsory to record all client interactions in the financial services sector, GoldMine-type solutions had flooded on to the market - and we investigated most of them. But GoldMine remains the most user-friendly. It`s also easily customisable if we want to change our operations in any way. And it is competitive on price."
In addition, GoldMine`s ease of use pays off in the area of user training - which can be done in-house, thereby eliminating external training fees - and evaluation of staff activity. "We can see at a glance who`s being most proactive in terms of servicing clients," Jorgensen says. "And because we can track the nature of the advice and service being provided, we can continuously refine the value we offer clients."
FrontRange Solutions (SA) managing director, Tracey Newman, says GoldMine`s particular value to professional services organisations is the ease with which it allows both structured and unstructured information to be stored and accessed. "Firms like JLFS have to be able to record and track everything from appointments, financial plans, proposals, quotes and invoices to e-mails, SMSes or phone calls.
"At the same time, they need to be able to view all that material in a coherent way at the touch of a button. And they need pertinent analysis on activity trends among their clients. So, it`s not just a matter of the solution needing to be more than usually efficient at filing information away. It also needs to `understand` the company and the work it does - so that it collects and presents information in ways that are most relevant to the firm`s business objectives and, thereby, positions the firm to be proactive rather than reactive.
"That`s why GoldMine succeeds where competitor packages don`t. It`s not an automation tool. It`s a business enabling tool. It`s designed to support business objectives, not watchdog business activities."
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