Reporting best practices

May 23, 2018 by Nathan Lukow

About the author

Nathan Lukow

Account executive

Nathan is an account executive at Advicent, the financial planning technology provider of choice for nearly 100,000 financial professionals.

Modern technology is often over-packed with features. If the tech is any good, at least some of those features are genuinely useful and have daily relevance. For example, I own an iPhone that I use every day and would be completely lost without. It wakes me up in the morning, gives me directions when I am in an unfamiliar location, allows me to check bank account balances, and puts my work inbox in my pocket no matter where I am (maybe I could do without the last feature).

While I obviously get a ton of daily value from my iPhone, there are available apps whose existence is genuinely puzzling to me. One of these apps is the digital abacus. I have no idea why it exists, especially on a device with a built in scientific calculator, and I would guess that it has not been particularly profitable for its developers.

However, somebody thought a digital abacus was useful enough to develop and make available to the app-buying public. It is one of over 2 million apps available in the app store, even garnering multiple positive reviews in the App Store.

Good technology scales to meet the needs of individual clients

The point that I have taken so long to arrive at is that just because an app or feature was relevant to someone does not mean that it is relevant to you and your current situation. NaviPlan has a vast array of report pages available, and it can be tempting to want to include all of them in the deliverables you are putting together for your clients. While they are all far more valuable than the aforementioned abacus app, they were each designed to illustrate your value as an advisor to different types of people in different stages of life.

Including every available page in the reports that you are putting in front of clients is never the right move. The 56-year-old engineer that looks at spreadsheets all day is going to have different priorities and interpret information in a much different way than the young couple who want to know how to make sure that they will be able to send their kids to college. The most important lesson here is that your planning tool allows you the flexibility to give each one of your clients, as different as they may be, a report that’s relevant, meaningful, and actionable to them.

To learn more about how technology like NaviPlan can meet the individual needs of your clients, click here.