Katy Smithy

About Katy Smithy

Posts by Katy Smithy:

March 1 2023

Streamline contract generation process and improve efficiency

Are you a financial advisor struggling with a time-consuming and error-prone agreement generation process? Discover how one of our clients was able to streamline its process and improve efficiency with the help of RooksDM. Our team of technology consultants implemented automation and CRM integration to reduce manual data entry and improve the tracking of client information.

The Challenge

Cumbersome Agreement Generation Process

The client, a financial advisory firm, was spending a lot of time generating new client agreements and entering the same data into multiple systems. Previously they would take a template agreement and copy and paste new client data into the document. They would manually need to save this and sent it to the client for e-signature.

As they continued to grow, this seemly simple workaround became cumbersome. It was not only time-consuming to manually create client agreements, but also increased the risk of errors. Simple mistakes happen with repetitive manual tasks when the workload increases. The client needed a solution that would streamline the process and make it more efficient.

The Solution

RooksDM Implements Streamlined Solution

RooksDM worked with the client to understand the current process, identify inefficiencies, and determine the technology needed to overcome them.
To streamline the process, RooksDM implemented an internal form that would trigger workflow automations.
This form interfaced with the client’s CRM for tracking and sending communications to the client.
Additionally, it generated client agreements based on templates for e-signature and created client-specific files and folders.

The Result

Significant Improvement in Efficiency and Service

After implementing the solution, the client saw a significant improvement in the efficiency of their agreement generation process. The automation enabled them to generate agreements quickly and easily, reducing the time spent on manual data entry. Additionally, the form’s integration with the CRM made it easier to keep track of client information and send communications.

The client was also able to provide a better service to their clients by having agreements ready to be signed quickly. Overall, the solution provided by RooksDM helped the client to streamline their process, save time, and improve the overall service provided to their clients.

Ready to streamline your contract generation process?

Click here to schedule a time to talk to one of our experts.

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Microsoft Teams empowers client organization structures

August 16 2022

Restructuring Microsoft Teams

Katy Smithy Case Study

Privacy and organization are a company’s top priorities when sensitive information is involved. This is the case for South Bay Financial Partners, a financial advisory firm. They specialize in financial planning and help their clients make money decisions, manage their debt, invest, pay taxes, negotiate insurance, and plan for retirement.

“Security was really my #1 priority,” said Tara Unverzagt, Founder & Chief Advisor at South Bay Financial. “We are tax preparers and the IRS has cybersecurity standards that are tough to meet in a growing company.”

When South Bay Financial Partners wanted to leverage Microsoft Teams to empower their client’s organizational structure, they turned to RooksDM for help.

The Challenge

Using the Diamond Model for Enhancing Employee Performance

The first and most important thing that South Bay and RooksDM had to tackle wasn’t even digital. They had to figure out the best organizational structure for South Bay Financial Partners’ clients and how to structure internal access to clients and client details.

For this, South Bay Financial Partners already had an interest in modeling their Teams environment to align with the Herbers & Company Diamond Teams®, a popular organizational structure for financial advisory firms.

“Moving to Teams was an important first step to moving to the Diamond structure,” said Tara Unverzagt.

With RooksDM’s help, South Bay Financial Partners created three client categories:

Younger clients that are just beginning their financial journey.
Clients with a good handle on their finances who want help managing details and finding new opportunities.
Clients planning for their future and planning for their family’s future and security.

Once South Bay Financial Partners and RooksDM had the client structure confirmed, the next step was to integrate this structure into Microsoft Teams.

The Obstacle

Concerns with Microsoft Teams Update

South Bay Financial Partners already had Microsoft Teams, which had positive and negative repercussions.

On the plus side, South Bay Financial Partners employees were already familiar with Microsoft Teams and had an idea of how they wanted the channels set up.

On the downside, a lot of information saved in Microsoft Teams was not structured or labeled in such a way to be easily reorganized based on the new structure. The new client structure also came with levels of confidentiality. Some information could be easily accessed by all employees while other details needed to be securely saved so only approved individuals could access it.

And the fact that South Bay Financial Partners was currently (and actively) using Microsoft Teams meant that the reorganization needed to happen quickly and effectively over one weekend so as not to disrupt business.

Here are some other helpful links to utilizing Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office to optimize your company’s work.

The Solution

Data loss prevention and Microsoft Teams

South Bay Financial Partners needed to manually label client details and documents before RooksDM could map them into the new structure. This required South Bay Financial Partners to manually tag and organize a thousand documents.

Luckily the manual work was kept to a minimum.

While South Bay Financial Partners worked on labeling details and documents so they aligned with their categories, RooksDM built an environment that would seamlessly do this work moving forward. Without the tool that RooksDM implemented, it would have been a huge task to migrate South Bay Financial Partners’ information into the new system. And, it would have been a job to maintain that organization.

RooksDM utilized AGAT, an innovative software provider specializing in security and compliance solutions, to get all these documents where they needed to be for clients and for the new organization structure.

Using AGAT allowed RooksDM to easily:

Migrate everything in Teams to the new structure, including chats
Mapped where everything needed to live
Change naming conventions
Understand the alignment of each document
Securely move over 1,000 docs move

RooksDM created all this reorganization in a staging environment, so they could quickly release the update over the course of a weekend.

Before the release, RooksDM helped South Bay Financial Partners sync all their files to the cloud, creating a cache of the environment so if any important information was discovered missing after the update, it was not lost permanently and could easily be retrieved by a developer. This happened a few times with a few files that were quickly recovered.

The Result

Microsoft Teams performance improvements

The update to Microsoft Teams took one weekend. After the weekend of implementation and testing, South Bay Financial Partners was working with a newly restructured Microsoft Teams by Monday morning. RooksDM set up training and created roles so certain employees could access certain categories and certain classified details based on their access level.

Access level did the following:

Identified documents and details as private or public
Made clear who had access to what
Outlined private channel
Set up roles that supported the org chart

The work creating roles and layers of classification allowed South Bay Financial Partners’ HR to use Microsoft Teams for recruitment and hiring! An added benefit of RooksDM restructuring Microsoft Teams for South Bay Financial Partners.

“I love how Teams helps me track my time,” said Tara Unverzagt. “ I can see who I ‘called’ on the team and how long I talked to them. Since we track all our time, that’s a helpful tool. We went from using Zoom, Slack, and Google for file storage to Teams which does all of it in one place, integrate. The ‘chat’ about a client or topic is where the files for that client or topic are located. Easy to find everything you need in one place.”

South Bay Financial Partners’ goal in restructuring Teams was in preparation for business growth. Already, it is saving them time, increasing security, optimizing organization, and helping them keep up with all the necessary documents, especially time-sensitive ones like client tax returns.

Conclusion

Use technology to your advantage

You know your business, and RooksDM knows the technology. South Bay Financial Partners had an idea of how to restructure their clients to optimize tasks and increase security. They even went so far as to research the school of thought that best aligned with their intentions. With RooksDM, South Bay Financial Partners was able to reorganize its internal structure according to the Diamond Model and then leverage Microsoft Teams to put that restructure into daily practice.

Already, that restructure is opening up opportunities and efficiencies South Bay Financial Partners didn’t anticipate. They have set themselves up nicely to scale.

“I would recommend it for anyone who is concerned about security, which should be anybody in the financial world,” said Tara Unverzagt. “For smaller companies, everyone has their finger in all the pies. As you grow, you need to separate responsibilities and access. Teams is the easiest way to make that happen.

If you have a project and need someone technologically minded to help you implement your idea into daily practice, schedule a consultation with RookDM today! As we did with South Bay Financial Partners, we can also help with the work leading up to the technical work so development hours are optimized for the task at hand.

Interested in customizing Microsoft Teams?

Schedule a consultation with RooksDM!

March 25 2022

What is Power BI?

Katy Smithy Resources

Power BI is a Microsoft product, primarily used for reporting and building dashboards in order to view the information in a meaningful way.

Power BI has gained more traction over the years and is widely considered the go-to reporting software because it sits on top of the full Microsoft stack. It also integrates well with data environments set up with other platforms, such as Google’s BigQuery.

What does Power BI do?

Microsoft’s Power BI can be used for internal business purposes–reporting on how employees are using their time and measuring productivity–as well as external reporting, such as showcasing the progress of a project to a client or assessing web traffic after a marketing campaign.

This is a shortlist of what Microsoft’s Power BI does:

Connects to data in real-time, updating as new information is available.
Transform and model the data in a meaningful way.
Creates charts and graphs, reports, and dashboards.
Shares reports with others using the Power BI service, allowing visuals to be embedded into all Power BI apps.
Also integrates with other Microsoft solutions, such as Azure data services.
Creates workspaces — places to collaborate with colleagues to create collections of dashboards and reports–enabling peer-to-peer sharing.
Streamlines publication and distribution of data.
Integrates with Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, enabling users to verbally ask questions in their natural language to access charts and graphs.

You can also just build reports and dashboards from SharePoint if you don’t have a more gourmet data layer or a database.

Do I have to use Microsoft to use Power BI?

No, you don’t have to use Microsoft to use Power BI. All you need to start using Power BI is a data layer–a collection of data–so you have metrics to manipulate and visualize.

Power BI works great with the Microsoft stack, which is why technology consultants like RookDM use it so often, but it’s not limited to Microsoft.

Power BI can be used with BigQuery, a Google product, Azure, and other similar software.

BigQuery, specifically, works great with Power BI because it’s not as mature nor as complicated as Microsoft’s stack.

Learn more about Power BI

Need help wielding the power of Power BI?

Schedule a free consultation with us!

Click Here

January 6 2022

Multi-person scheduling and team scheduling with Calendly

Katy Smithy Resources

Calendly is a widely-used scheduling platform that allows users to make 1-click meetings, relieving the busywork that goes into scheduling meetings.

RooksDM recommends all their clients use Calendly to set internal meetings and to set meetings with their clients. It’s easy to use and has a price structure to suit companies of different sizes.

See Calendly’s pricing structure on their website.

One-Click Process Allows Leads and Last Minute Meetings to Happen Seamlessly

Calendly provides you with a public link to your calendar that you can share with leads, clients and co-workers. Everyone sees your availability and is able to schedule meetings without you having to spend extra time and energy coordinating.

You can customize your availability and can create meeting options that depict the format and time-frames you are willing to allow on your calendar.

Calendly has multi-person scheduling features

There are several multi-person scheduling options that allow multiple people to input their available and time preferences so multiple people from different companies or groups can coordinate a convenient time to meet.

The Round Robin feature allows scheduling to happen evenly across a team so no one team member gets more Calendly meetings on their calendar than another team member. This feature helps keep work evenly distributed.
Collective scheduling allows scheduling to happen when all members of a given team are available. This feature prevents meetings from happening without key players being present.
The group event feature allows multiple invitees to sign-up for a meeting time. This works well for classes, webinars or other lectures. It allows you, as the host, to set the max number of people who can sign up for a given meeting-time.

Manage Meeting Cancelations

If you need to adjust your calendar and cancel meetings set through Calendly, you can cancel those meetings through Calendly. When you cancel a meeting through Calendly, you can also send a message to others on that meeting. A link to your Calendly calendar will be included so the process of rescheduling the meeting can take place seamlessly.

Calendly can send attendees automatic messages

Calendly allows you to send automated messages to those with whom you’re meeting before and after the meeting. This can include sending an agenda or other pre-meeting information that may be necessary to have beforehand. After-meeting messages can help nurture new relationships and propel leads along the client channel.

Connect Calendly to your CRM to optimizes tasks

Aside from simply managing your calendar, Calendly can connect to your CRM to help keep you on task with email and SMS reminders.

Want help integrating Calendly and your CRM?

Schedule a free consultation with us!

Click Here

November 16 2021

7 Reasons We Love ClickUp

Katy Smithy Resources

There are a lot of project management solutions out there. They are bright and colorful. Some are even easy to use. To encourage discussion and manage projects in our team and with our vendors and clients, we use ClickUp.

Here’s why:

1. Gantt charts improve task breakdown and forecasting

Gantt charts, integrated into our project management system, have revolutionized the way we view and arrange projects. It’s much easier to view and manage dependent tasks–tasks that cannot be started or completed until something else is done. In other views and in other program management systems, these appear more like lists with due dates, the only indicator of what needs to be done in order to start another task.

This view also allows us to mobilize due dates and start dates. If a task takes longer than projected or a meeting is delayed, we can easily see how the overall timeline for a project at large is affected. We can make decisions based on this adjustment and keep the clients’ expectations in line with reality.

Photo credit ClickUp.

2. Mind maps in ClickUp encourage collaboration and delegation

Mind mapping is a way for a group of people, each with different interests and strengths, to collaborate on a project. The resulting diagram visually organizes information and creates a hierarchical relationship between ideas and tasks.

ClickUp has a feature that allows users to easily create mind maps and integrate these visuals into their project management, building tasks and gantt charts from the information.

Photo credit ClickUp.

3. ClickUp templates make routine tasks easy

ClickUp has templates ready to use and a user-friendly way to create templates. For instance, we have a meeting template that we’ve customized and use for every meeting, be it with a vendor or a client. This helps us keep information streamlined and all parties informed. After every meeting, attendees and interested parties not able to attend receive the meeting-minutes in the same format.

4. Can create docs in ClickUp directly

Instead of having to save documents externally and upload and attach them to tasks as you would in other project management systems, you can create documents directly in ClickUp and link to them internally. Since ClickUp is browser based as well as an app, you can create and access these documents whenever and wherever.

5. Straightforward to do lists in ClickUp

As all project management software has, ClickUp has a to do list that enables users to create tasks, assign responsibilities and set deadlines. The to do list function in ClickUp is unique. It integrates with gantt charts and mind maps.

6. Goal tracking keeps everyone on task and on timeline

The idea of gamification has been around for a minute, but never seemed quite as important as during the pandemic when so many teams were forced to work remotely and still collaborate creatively and meet deadlines. ClickUp’s goal tracking allows teammates and managers to see who might have a bit too much on their plate or be otherwise struggling to complete tasks.

Photo credit ClickUp.

7. ClickUp pricing is affordable; it’s free project management software for one-woman teams

If you are a one-woman team or a manager shopping for the project management solution, you can sign up for and use ClickUp for free, forever. You’ll get unlimited access to the system. If you onboard a team, plans start as low as $5 per member.

September 13 2021

Law firm now generates retainer agreements in seconds

Katy Smithy Case Study

Industry
Family Law Practice

THE CHALLENGE

It’s no surprise that when a company experiences growth — especially a merger — that processes need to be reviewed and updated. For this Chicago law firm, that was the case. After merging two firms together, they realized that their intake process was cumbersome and prevented them from growing.

Too much time was being spent on manual data entry and document creation. Their goal was to create an efficient system to eliminate steps for the firm’s team and create a better client experience.

THE OBSTACLE

Prior to speaking with a client, the law firm needed to have a signed retainer agreement on file in order to begin working with them. This process was similar to other small firms — attorneys manually copied and pasted data from an email inquiry into a Microsoft Word template.

While this process works for a small firm, manual data entry becomes a burden when you receive multiple inquiries per week. When this Chicago law firm first began working with RooksDM, they knew this process could be updated but weren’t sure where to start.

THE SOLUTION

RooksDM stepped in and proposed the law firm begin using Lawmatics to help facilitate the process of creating a retainer agreement. They were able to take the firm’s existing retainer agreements and upload them into the CRM. They also mapped fields from the CRM to the retainer agreement to make the process of generating a retainer agreement simple and quick.

Now when an attorney is speaking with a prospective client, they simply:

Click a button to create a retainer agreement
Select which retainer agreement
Select which client
Send the retainer agreement via the system with the ability to e-sign the document

Not only did this change improve the client experience drastically, staff at the law firm have now saved hundreds of hours each month on unnecessary data entry and emailing. This simple change is not only saving the law firm time, it’s allowed them to increase billable hours and decrease leads falling through the cracks.

Are you interested in automating your retainer agreement? Schedule a consultation with RooksDM!

September 13 2021

Sending Dynamic Responses Based on Form Fields

Katy Smithy Case Study

THE CHALLENGE – Customizing Communication for New Leads

It is an undeniable fact that all businesses need new business. Reaching and engaging with quality leads is critical for the success of a financial advisory firm. What better way to woo potential clients than with personalized communication based on their buyer persona profile.

This Torrance CA based financial firm wanted a way to collect new leads and sort the new leads into one of their four pre-established personas. They needed this information sorted into their CRM, RedTail, and they needed to configure which persona each lead best-fit and send them custom communication based on that persona.

THE OBSTACLE – Using Google Forms to Collect Leads Works But Not Well

The first attempt at collecting leads and identifying personas was done with a questionnaire made with Google Forms. Once a new lead completed the questionnaire, this financial firm would manually add each lead to their CRM and manually calculate each lead’s persona using Google Sheets. Then a financial advisor would send the lead an email using customized language for that persona with more details.

The form was a success engaging with new leads, but it was a tedious task, taking about ten minutes per lead to complete. While the firm was receiving just one or two questionnaires a week, it was a very doable task.

Then the firm’s marketing efforts in a podcast resulted in 60 new questionnaire submissions in just one week! The tedious task became a tedious problem.

THE SOLUTION – Integrating Lead Generation with CRM and Email

After learning more about the pain points of this manual process, RooksDM was able to create a slicker-looking questionnaire that automatically calculated each lead’s persona by using Typeform.

Then using Microsoft Logic Apps they were able to connect the Typeform to their CRM and send automated emails with customized messages based on each lead’s persona. Amazing, right!?

What once was a manual process, taking ten minutes per lead, now works quietly and automatically on its own without taking financial advisors away from other work.

Check out the example below.

THE RESULTS – Getting New Leads and Automatically Sending Customized Emails

Last year, the financial firm received over 500 new leads using their Typeform questionnaire and all that information is synced into their CRM and the first communication effort is sent automatically.

The impact of automating marketing efforts for lead generation:

10% or greater revenue increase within six to nine months
16.5% higher campaign response rates and conversion rates
85% decrease in cost per lead

Information from Customer Experience Matrix.

In the end, this financial firm was able to personalize engagement with leads without even lifting a finger.

Are you interested in automating your lead process? Schedule a consultation with RooksDM!

September 13 2021

Law firm gains valuable time and grows business by automating client intake

Katy Smithy Case Study

Industry
Law (Immigration)

THE CHALLENGE
Founded by immigrants, this boutique full-service immigration law firm is dedicated to its clients and their cases. They pride themselves on being responsive to clients and potential clients, but as they began to receive more and more inquiries, they realized their processes were slowing them down, impacting their service, and holding them back from growing.

THE OBSTACLE
When a prospective client submitted an inquiry on the firm’s website, the firm’s attorneys and staff had to do a lot of manual work before they even had their first meeting with the client. They were spending valuable time copying and pasting client information into their database, customizing engagement letters, and scheduling initial meetings. New inquiries were getting bottlenecked, costing them valuable billable time and impacting the client’s experience.

They needed an easier way to:

Assign attorneys to new client inquiries and schedule appointments
Send the client an engagement letter and receive back an executed copy
Collect payments
Schedule meetings

THE SOLUTION
After learning about the law firm’s processes and identifying their pain points, RooksDM came up with a plan to automate their intake and scheduling process. We implemented an end-to-end solution for client intake, from the moment the client submits an inquiry to their first meeting with an attorney.

Based on dynamic criteria on the inquiry form, like preferred language or matter type, an attorney is assigned to the prospective client. An engagement letter is then automatically populated and sent to the prospective client for their electronic signature. The client then automatically receives an email to schedule an appointment and make a payment.

The technology solutions included:

Jotform
HelloSign
Calendly
Paypal for payment processing

THE RESULTS
The tools and technologies RooksDM implemented freed up valuable time for the law firm’s attorneys and staff. Now, the entire client intake process is 100 percent automated. This has saved the law firm 30-60 minutes per client inquiry, allowing attorneys to focus on billable work and enabling them to take on new clients and continue to grow their business. Clients also enjoy a quick and seamless intake experience, setting the stage for a successful engagement.

Want to automate your intake processes to help your business grow? Contact us today.

July 12 2021

5 Reasons We Love JotForm

Katy Smithy Resources

With dozens of online form builders to choose from, it can be hard to know which one to pick. One we particularly love is JotForm. With JotForm, you get an advanced, feature-rich form building platform that’s also intuitive and easy to use.

Here are 5 reasons why we love JotForm:

Professional Form Templates and Widgets

With JotForm’s library of thousands of form templates, it’s quick and easy to get started building a form. Simply select one of the temples, and from there, you can add your company’s logo and further edit and customize your form to meet your business needs—no coding necessary. If you want more advanced components included in your form, JotForm’s widget library includes hundreds of options, including an e-signature widget to collect legally-binding signatures through your online forms and a widget that links to your business’s terms and conditions and lets users agree to them with a checkbox.

Form Integrations Galore

We are all about saving you time by efficiently leveraging technology, and JotForm integrations allow you to do just that. Forms created with JotForm can seamlessly be synced with the tools your company already uses. For example, contact forms submission information can be automatically sent to your CRM, email marketing service, virtual meeting platform, and could storage systems.

Convert Existing PDFs to Online Forms

Manually converting your PDF forms into online forms is tedious and time consuming. But JotForm does the hard work for you. Simply upload your PDF to transform it into an online form. The layout of your original PDF is retained into a form that’s easy to fill out online.

Security through HIPPA Compliant Forms

We’ve worked with many healthcare providers and understand how vital it is for patient information to remain private and secure. With JotForm, you can create HIPPA-compliant forms to collect and manage sensitive patient information. Form data is automatically encrypted, guaranteeing the privacy of your patients’ health information.

Easy Payment Collection

JotForm makes it super easy to collect payment for your services and offers payment processing through the biggest and most trusted names in the payment industry, including PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and Square, just to name a few. Best of all—JotForm doesn’t charge you additional fees for receiving online payments through their forms.

Want to learn more about Jot Forms?

Schedule a free consultation with us!

Click here

April 26 2021

Which Microsoft plan is best for my business?

Katy Smithy Resources microsoft 365

Unsure of which Microsoft 365 is best for your business? We hear this a lot from our clients.

There are so many different options and add ons. Check out the comparison chart below to easily compare plans.

Business

$5 user/month

Best for users that need easy remote solutions, with Microsoft Teams, secure cloud storage, and Office Online.

(web and mobile versions only; desktop versions not included)

Standard

$12.50 user/month

Best for users that need full remote work and collaboration tools including Microsoft Teams, secure cloud storage, business email, and premium Office applications across devices.

Premium

$20 user/month

Best for users that require secure, remote work solutions with everything included in Business Standard, plus advanced cyberthreat protection and device management.

Enterprise 3 (E3)

$32 user/month

Best for users that need productivity apps combined with core security and compliance capabilities.

Enterprise 5 (E5)

$57 user/month

Best for users that need productivity apps and advanced security, compliance, voice, and analytical capabilities.

*All packages above include Premium Office Apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Forms, Outlook, Publisher, and Access.

*All monthly prices based on an annual commitment

Still unsure which plan is best for you?

Reach out to us! We’d be happy to talk to you about your needs and give you our reccomendation.