Just like any small business, small financial planning firms struggle to offer top-notch technology without the luxury of having in-house IT experts. Trying to stay ahead of the technology curve can be both challenging and frustrating, but increasingly, small firms are finding they can play with the big boys.
One of the simplest solutions to improve productivity, efficiency and reduce your travel budget is the collaborative technology that enables you to conduct meetings from remote locations. In fact, advisors already have the technology at their fingertips to connect with clients, satellite offices or informal networks without leaving their desktops. While there are several providers of this collaborative technology, WebEx (www.webex.com) which we’ll examine below, is the name that has become almost a generic for the technology. But it is not the only provider catering to small business, and advisors might also check out Microsoft Office Live Meeting (www.microsoft.com/meetlive), Go To Meeting (wwwgotomeeting.com) and Genesys (wwwgenesys.com).
All enable organizations of any size to participate in online meetings to share presentations with clients and colleagues, integrate live audio/video/data, and collaborate on and edit documents in real time.
Technology guru Kip Gregory, principal of The Gregory Group in Washington, D.C., considers WebEx a powerful tool for small financial planning firms based on its flexibility, professionalism, availability and economics. Once you understand how it works, Gregory says, you can apply it any number of ways in business. You’re not only talking to others, he points out, but also looking at and sharing the same information at the same time.
“This is a tool that gives these planners access to professional-level technology that people couldn’t envision 10 years ago for just pennies a minute,” Gregory says. “It enables you to take a standard phone conversation and turn it into a collaborative ‘roll-up-your-sleeves and actually work-through-a-challenge’ session and get concrete results on the other end.”
WebEx users do not require additional hardware or software to access the collaborative meetings. The beauty of WebEx, says Praful Shah, the firm’s vice president of strategic communications, is that companies need only an Internet browser to use this on-demand service. No matter what size the organization is, no technical skills are necessary to install or implement the technology. WebEx deploys the technology and provides the service.