Financial Services Cloud (FSC) is the most suited Salesforce Cloud product for the Financial Services industry. FSC is a relatively new offering by Salesforce and was launched in August 2015. It is a managed package that enhances and extends the functionality of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud combined to better meet the needs of wealth management firms, insurance companies and banks. Financial Advisors and Bankers can take advantage of FSC to have a holistic view of their clients and adapt their sales strategy to best serve their clients.
As a Financial Services organization, you may find yourself deciding between the two options. Will FSC truly add value to the way your business operates, or should you stick with Sales Cloud and customize it yourself? Here are 5 reasons you should consider using FSC if you are making this decision.
Why Not Only Use Sales Cloud?
Sales Cloud, on the other hand, has been the core Salesforce product that has been around for a long time.
When it comes to meeting the needs of the Financial Services industry, however, Sales Cloud requires heavy customization. Customization can lead to implementation challenges and ongoing maintenance that burdens Salesforce Administrators and Developers.
Overall, it leads to a less stable instance. I’ve seen this happen, spending a significant amount of time my previous roles fixing bugs and issues that came into light due to unnecessary declarative (point-and-click) and programmatic (code) customizations. As business processes change, a lot of custom functionality may not be useful to the users and would need to be modified.
With the FSC package added to Sales Cloud, firms can have peace of mind by getting many industry-specific features out-of-the-box.
Now let’s look at some of the key reasons to implement FSC over Sales Cloud.
1. Household Data Model
The household data model in FSC lets financial advisors manage their clients’ households, businesses and related individuals all in one place.
Administrators can use either the Person Account data model or Individual data model to set up the Household-Individual relationships.
There are 3 important object relationships that can be leveraged by advisors to view their clients’ household map:
- Account-Contact Relationships (ACR) can be used to build Account-Contact Relationships between their clients and households. For example, it can be a relationship between a household and a member of the household.
- Account-Account Relationships (AAR) can be used to relate households with businesses and organizations. For example, it can be a relationship between a household and their trust.
- Contact-Contact Relationships (CCR) can be used to relate members of the household with other contacts. For example, it can be a member of the household related to their attorney or accountant.
The Relationship Map lightning component is part of the FSC package and provides advisors a holistic view of their clients’ relationships.
2. Financial Accounts and Goals
FSC supports different types of financial accounts like Investment Accounts, Bank Accounts and Insurance Policies.
The Financial Account object comes with pre-defined record types for different types of financial accounts. Financial Account data can be viewed for each member of the household and is also rolled-up to the member’s household record.
- Financial Goals help advisors to keep track of their clients’ investment goals and build an investment strategy to meet those financial goals.
- Financial Account Roles define the role of a member in a particular financial account. In the example below, Rachel Adams is the primary owner of the Investment Account (Sample) financial account.
3. Tracking Leads & Referrals
Keeping track of leads and referrals is extremely important in the Financial Services industry.
The FSC package includes various referral components that help advisors and retail bankers keep track of the referrals.
A referral in FSC follows a certain path, which is similar to an opportunity. It goes through a series of stages, from its creation to its conversion. The system will automatically create an Account and an Opportunity upon conversion. Referrer information can also be viewed on an Individual record to identify the top referrers.
4. Action Plans
Action Plans in FSC are used to automate some repeatable tasks and ensure deadlines are met for predefined steps.
Action Plans can auto-assign tasks to different team members and ensure compliance at every step. For example, onboarding a new client includes several stages, such as setting up a first meeting, discussing financial goals and signing documents.
All of these steps can be defined in an Action Plan template, which can then be used in the Action Plan to monitor progress.
5. Advisor Analytics
Access to analytics (reports and dashboards) empowers financial advisors to make informed decisions faster and serve their clients better. FSC includes several pre-defined reports and dashboards that can be customized as needed by financial institutions.
Here are some examples of reports and dashboards that are included as part of the FSC package:
- Opportunities with Financial Accounts report
- Financial Accounts with Household report
- Assets Under Management (AUM) by Age Range report
- Relationship Management dashboard
- My Book of Business – Overview dashboard
- My Book of Business – Engagement Opportunities dashboard
Einstein Analytics for Financial Services is also a great add-on for financial institutions looking for more advanced analytics and predictive alerts powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Summary
As you can see, FSC is a powerful package and can save financial institutions time and money over customizing Sales Cloud.
Due to the complexity of FSC, it is highly recommended to work with a Salesforce Consulting partner to implement this in your organization. Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin if you would like to discuss further and learn about my own experience working with Financial Services Cloud.