Lawsons Network onboards global clients 7x faster with Salesforce and Futureform
Lawsons Network is an international Wealth Management firm that serves as a plug-in-and-go network service for Independent Financial Advisors (IFA). Since conception of the business at the end of 2021, their value proposition has centred on their technology and the experience they provide to their members. In order to scale the business, they needed to invest in the right CRM platform combining ease of use and security while also being customised to the unique needs of their global industry and IFA-focused operating model.
We spoke with Sarah Oglesby, Onboarding Director and Jennifer Toon-Davenport, Membership & Acquisition Director to learn more about their vision for technology within Lawsons Network and how Futureform helped them maximise the power of Salesforce.
Key Benefits:
Technology to scale membership network
The Wealth Management industry can traditionally have clunky back-office systems and the pandemic helped accelerate the digital transformation path of many Financial Services organisations including Lawsons Network.
“COVID brought a real change in the industry,” says Jennifer. “The system we needed to build had to be adaptive to all members and built for doing business globally whether that’s face-to-face, in an office or remote.”
Lawsons Network required a CRM to help them grow and expand their IFA network and deliver on their promises to their members. They needed to get up and running quickly so a CRM built for Financial Services was paramount. With data security never being more important, they also required a solution with airtight data protection policies in place.
“It was really critical for us that we found a solution that offered automation and a streamlined, cost-effective approach that was scalable and had the security element behind that,” says Sarah. “It also needed to be really intuitive for someone who may be a bit nervous about using technology in their business processes. And critically, for our members to be able to work anywhere, any time, any device.”
With a global membership base using different currencies, languages and devices, they also required a solution that could easily be adapted across borders.
"When I met with a lot of other market leaders, one of the biggest drawbacks was that they weren’t multi-currency,” says Sarah. “We’re a global network, our members are offering advice to international professionals all over the world and we couldn’t have a CRM that only adapted to one currency, that was another critical factor.”
"When the template was presented to me, it had already covered many of the elements we were looking for. As far as implementation it meant we could work with the Futureform team to get up and running much faster than if we started with just using Salesforce and trying to adapt it to meet our needs."
-Sarah Oglesby, Onboarding Director, Lawsons Network
Best of Both Worlds: A Financial Services solution with customised implementation
Having worked extensively in technology, Sarah had witnessed the impact a completely bespoke solution can have on project timelines and opted to instead look at providers that could deliver an off the shelf solution customised to their needs.
“It wasn’t until I met Salesforce that I had that eureka moment,” says Sarah. “It’s going to give us that security and scalability but it can be adapted, we’re going to be able to plug in third-party solutions so that as we continue on our company growth, it can adapt as quickly as we need it to.”
Lawsons Network chose Salesforce Financial Services Cloud and Experience Cloud to meet their needs. Using Futureform’s Wealth Management template for Salesforce - a ready-made product that can be easily tailored to their specific needs - Lawsons Network was able to get up and running 70% faster than if they had implemented it strictly off the shelf.
“Everything with technology is about how quickly you can deliver and that was really important to us. We had members ready to go and we needed a CRM to support them as quickly as possible,” says Sarah.
The solution provided by Futureform included:
- Building out unique models for onboarding new IFAs (recognizing the need for customised approaches to different members)
- Automating the sales pipeline process
- Building out a branded client portal
- Setting up a knowledge base connected into SharePoint
- Improving the member dashboard
- DocuSign to help automate the document review process to ensure all compliance procedures were followed.
- Ortec Finance's Opal goals-based planning to allow the Network’s members to be very adaptive in their approach, showing cash-flow modelling to meet investment objectives.
"That’s the beauty of our relationship with Futureform. The team is really knowledgeable, professional, and technically proficient … the communication and the collaboration with Futureform has been superb from my perspective, but from the wider team's perspective, they speak their language."
-Sarah Oglesby, Onboarding Director, Lawsons Network
A trusted partnership to drive results
It was important to Lawsons Network that their implementation partner had proven Wealth Management experience and could get the project moving quickly.
“Financial Services itself is a very unique industry with its own set of different regulations and codes and then within that, what we do is very bespoke and a small sector within Financial Services,” says Jennifer. “It’s good to have a partner that really understands those compliance requirements and what different areas of Financial Services are looking for rather than just having a generic overview.”
With a small team that doesn’t all come from a technology background, it was also important that their implementation partner could help simplify the process and deliver maximum value for Lawsons Network’s end users.
“That’s the beauty of our relationship with Futureform. The team is really knowledgeable, professional, and technically proficient,” says Sarah. “Having worked with developers in the past, communication is often where a project falls down - the communication and the collaboration with Futureform has been superb from my perspective, but from the wider team's perspective, they speak their language.”
Lawsons Network has seen the effects of the Futureform’s implementation of Salesforce across the business, notably in how they onboard and pay their members.
- From an onboarding perspective, they are able to provide a fully streamlined journey for their members and can get them up and running in just 3 meetings - around 7 times faster than the industry average.
- They are also able to expedite the speed in which they can pay their members. Since the system automates the process, members can be paid within 48 hours - up to 10x faster than the industry average.
“We’re growing 23% quarter on quarter. Our retention rate is extremely high. It helps us look after our members and continue to grow,” says Jennifer. “We have some really exciting things coming in the next 12 months which we’re going to do a lot of work with Futureform on.”
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