Even with an organized CRM in place, you may still find yourself spending a lot of time and energy on tasks such as generating contracts. Thankfully, there are now a number of integration tools available that can automate this process for you, saving you valuable time and allowing you to focus on more important tasks.
One such tool is DocuSign, which is a popular electronic signature platform. With DocuSign, you can easily create, send, and manage contracts and other documents directly from your CRM. This means that you can easily pull client information from your CRM and use it to automatically generate contracts, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.
Other great options are PandaDoc and Hellosign.
What are the differences between DocuSign, PandaDoc and Dropbox Sign (formerly Hellosign)
Feature
DocuSign
PandaDoc
Dropbox Sign(formerly Hellosign)
E-signatures
X
X
X
CRM Integration
X
X
X
Templates
X
X
X
Tracking
X
X
X
Automation
X
X
n/a
Advanced security
SOC 2 Type II
GDPR
eIDAS
FERPA
HIPAAData is encrypted in transit and at rest.
Stored in a SOC, FISMA, and PCI DSS Level 1 compliant cloud
ISO 27001
SOC 2 Type II
WCAG 2.0 Level AA
eIDAS
GDPR
Email Access codesCertification of completion & electronic record disclosure
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
eIDAS
GDPR
Use 2FA for an added layer of protection.
Documents stored and encrypted at rest using AES 256-bit encryption
Note: that this is a general comparison, and it’s always good to check the specific features and functionalities that each tool offers.
Conclusion
Overall, these integration tools can be a huge asset for financial advisors looking to streamline their workflows and improve their efficiency. By automating the contract generation process, you can save time, reduce errors, and focus on providing the best possible service to your clients.
Want to automatically generate contracts?
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The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the financial industry, also known as FinTech, has been on the rise in recent years. From automating repetitive tasks to providing personalized financial advice, AI is revolutionizing the way financial services are delivered.
Guide to using AI in financial services
Automation of repetitive tasks
One of the most common ways that AI is being used in fintech is through the automation of mundane tasks such as data entry and account management. By using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms, financial institutions can automate tasks such as data entry, account management, and even fraud detection. This not only saves time and resources but also reduces the risk of human error.
Personalized financial advice
Another way that AI is being used in fintech is through the development of personalized financial advice. By using data and analytics, AI can help financial institutions to better understand their customers’ needs and provide customized financial advice. For example, a robo-advisor service uses AI to provide personalized investment recommendations based on an individual’s risk tolerance and financial goals.
Improving customer service
AI is also being used to improve the customer experience by providing 24/7 customer service through chatbots and virtual assistants. These AI-powered tools can provide quick and accurate responses to customer inquiries, reducing the need for human customer service representatives.
Fraud detection and prevention
AI is also being used to identify and prevent fraud in the financial industry. By analyzing large amounts of data and identifying patterns and anomalies, AI can detect and flag suspicious activity, reducing the risk of fraudulent transactions.
Developing new financial products and services
In addition, AI is being used in the financial industry to develop new financial products and services. For instance, AI-powered algorithms can be used to create and manage new types of investment funds and trading strategies.
Conclusion
Overall, AI is being used in the financial industry to automate mundane tasks, provide personalized financial advice, improve customer service, identify and prevent fraud, and develop new financial products and services. As technology continues to evolve, the use of AI in fintech is expected to grow even more, bringing a new level of efficiency and effectiveness to the financial industry.
As a Financial Advisor, it’s important to have the right tools to help you manage your clients and their financial portfolios. The Microsoft Power Platform can be a valuable addition to your toolkit, as it provides a range of powerful capabilities to help you streamline your workflows and make informed decisions. What is Microsoft Power Platform? Click here the learn more.
How can a financial advisor use Microsoft Power Platform?
Automated Alerts: Microsoft Power Platform can automatically send alerts to financial advisors when a client uploads a document, eliminating the need for manual checks and follow-ups.
Auto-scheduling: Microsoft Power Platform can automatically create tasks based on dates, such as sending reminders to clients to book a time for their quarterly report meeting. If a client doesn’t book within 30 days, additional reminders can be sent. This ensures that financial advisors never miss a meeting and can plan accordingly.
Document Collection: We understand that document collection is a big task for financial advisors. Microsoft Power Platform can route documents to the right location, streamlining the process via workflows. This ensures that documents are easily accessible and organized.
Portfolio Management: Microsoft Power Platform can take data from the CRM and automatically enter it into the portfolio management system, eliminating the need for manual data entry. This allows financial advisors to have a complete view of their client’s portfolios, making it easier to make informed decisions.
Power Platform has the capabilities to help you succeed
Overall, the Microsoft Power Platform can be a powerful tool for financial advisors looking to streamline their workflows and make more informed decisions. Whether you’re looking to automate repetitive tasks, gain insights into market trends, or connect to a wide range of data sources, the Power Platform has the capabilities to help you succeed. It is a must-have for any financial advisor looking to stay competitive and provide the best possible service to their clients.
Did you know we have a Power Platform training?
Learn how you can implement advanced tech solutions using Power Platform.
As a financial advisor, you know that the intake process can be time-consuming and complex. With multiple forms to fill out and a lot of information to collect, it’s easy to see how this process can quickly become overwhelming. But what if there was a way to streamline this process and make it easier for both you and your clients?
Introduction to Jotforms
Enter Jotforms, a powerful tool that allows you to create custom forms and surveys that can be used to streamline your intake process. With this tool, you can easily create digital forms that can be filled out by your clients online. This means that your clients can fill out the forms at their convenience, eliminating the need for in-person meetings or the need to print and mail forms.
Jotform integrates with other tools
One of the biggest advantages of using Jotforms is that it can be integrated with other tools such as your Salesforce or OneDrive, allowing you to easily collect and store client information in a central location. This means that you can easily access and manage all of your client information in one place, reducing the need for manual data entry and improving the overall efficiency of your intake process.
How to customize Jotform
In addition, Jotforms offers a variety of customization options, allowing you to tailor the forms to your specific needs. You can add images, videos, and other multimedia elements to your forms, and you can also set up conditional logic to ensure that only relevant questions are asked.
Data tracking and analysis in Jotform
Another key feature of Jotforms is the ability to track responses and analyze data. With this feature, you can easily track who has completed the forms and who hasn’t, and you can also analyze the data to gain insights into your client’s needs and preferences.
Summary
Overall, Jotforms is a powerful tool that can help you streamline your intake process and make it easier for both you and your clients. By using digital forms, you can reduce the need for in-person meetings, improve the overall efficiency of your intake process, and gain valuable insights into your client’s needs and preferences.
Streamline your intake process with Jotform
Improve your efficiency and provide better service to your clients.
To automatically save attachments from Outlook into a client folder in Teams, you can use the Power Automate (previously known as Microsoft Flow) tool to create a workflow that will do this for you.
High-level overview:
Sign in to the Power Automate website (https://flow.microsoft.com/) and click on the “Create” button.
Select the “When a new email arrives” trigger.
In the “Subject” field, enter the subject of the standard email that is received OR In the “From” field, enter the email address of the client whose attachments you want to save in Teams.
In the “Has attachment” field, select “Yes”.
Click on the “Add an action” button and search for the “Create file” action.
Select the “Create file” action and choose the Teams folder where you want the attachments to be saved.
In the “File name” field, enter a name for the attachment. You can use a dynamic value such as “Email subject” to automatically use the email subject as the file name.
Click on the “Add an action” button again and search for the “Move email” action.
Select the “Move email” action and choose the folder where you want to move the email after the attachment has been saved.
Click on the “Create flow” button to save your workflow.
From now on, whenever you receive an email from the specified client with an attachment, the attachment will be automatically saved to the specified Teams folder and the email will be moved to the specified folder. This can save you time and help you keep your client’s documents organized.
Note: To use this workflow, you will need to have a Microsoft account with access to Power Automate and have the necessary permissions to create and edit workflows.
According to a recent study by Clio, the average lawyer billed just 2.5 hours of an 8-hour day. Low billable hours are normally a sign to increase lead generation or to improve firm efficiency. Not surprisingly, the same study found that tech-centric law firms collected nearly 40% more revenue per lawyer compared to firms not using these technologies.
There are several ways that a law firm can increase their firm’s efficiency. One way is to customize Microsoft Teams to streamline communication and collaboration. Microsoft Teams is a communication and collaboration platform that can be a valuable resource for law firms looking to streamline their workflows and improve collaboration.
Here are a few options:
Create channels for each case type: Since there are limitations to the number of channels you can have per team (250 channels), we recommend that you organize your Teams channels by types of cases or teams (i.e. Immigration, Personal Injury, General, etc).
Use tags to stay organized: Tags are like a distribution list for chats. It makes it easy to reach a group of people without having to type each individual name. This can be useful for law firms, as it allows you to quickly update any team members working on a particular case. For example, a paralegal could open a new chat and type “Weston Merger Team”. This would then populate all team members associated with this matter into the chat.
Use custom video backgrounds: Microsoft Teams allows you to customize your background during video calls, which can be a fun way to personalize your workspace and make your meetings more engaging. It is also a great way to ensure consistent branding and clean backgrounds for external meetings.
Integrate with other tools and systems: Microsoft Teams integrates with a wide range of tools and systems, including most CRMs, project management tools, and more. This can be useful for law firms, as it allows you to connect to the tools and systems you use most frequently and work more efficiently.
Overall, there are many ways that a law firm can customize Microsoft Teams to better meet their needs and workflows. By taking advantage of these customization options, you can create a more personalized and efficient workspace that helps you better serve your clients.
Did you know RooksDM offers 1-1 Office 365 Trainings?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.