10 Things You Should Know about Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
7 min
Since launching Financial Services Cloud (FSC), Salesforce has continued to demonstrate the product is a top priority through the delivery of several substantial enhancements in its triannual releases. If you have not been keeping up on the latest developments with FSC or need a refresher on some of the more longstanding benefits that it provides, here is our list of 10 things every implementer and user of Financial Service Cloud should be aware of!
1. You’ve got access to all the generic sales & service features as well
While FSC obviously comes with a host of industry-specific functionality for subscribers in the banking, wealth management, insurance, private equity, mortgage, and other financial services industries, the good old-fashioned Sales Cloud and Service Cloud features are right there with it. You still can track the full sales cycle from Lead to Opportunity to Quote for an Account. You can still set up Experience Cloud so that a customer can login and submit a request for support by means of a Case, or via any of the other traditional channels that Salesforce offers. A truly well-executed implementation of Financial Services Cloud will blend all these different features together in a way that optimizes your clients’ experience!
2. Aggregation & visualization of complete relationships has never been easier
Long-appreciated as one of the top features offered by Financial Service Cloud, the ability to seamlessly construct “households” and relationships between previously unrelated entities or individuals fills a gap that had been around for years in the industry. The Relationship Map provides an excellent summary of this information, but the newer Actionable Relationship Center (ARC) is the holy grail of relationship data, allowing users to quickly traverse several hierarchical levels and see minute details about each record they want to investigate further. Of course, behind the scenes of the relationships, FSC’s famous rollup calculations aggregate client data such as activity history and financial accounts with balances to the upper levels of the hierarchy to grant users the highly coveted 360-degree view of customers.
3. You’ve got access to both B2B and B2C data models
Financial Services Cloud comes with a very flexible data model. It implies the standard for working with B2C customers is Person Accounts grouped together into Household Accounts, whereas the standard for working with B2B customers is Business Accounts and Contacts. You can blend the data model in this way, or you can define other rules that align with your business needs. The most important thing to note about this flexibility, however, is that you MUST empower your users with the ability to be consistent. This requires quite a bit of attention to detail to ensure the appropriate actions/validations are in the appropriate places to keep your data clean.
4. You probably will need to customize your matching & duplicate rules
Just like any Salesforce org, an FSC org will come with a standard set of matching and duplicate rules for Accounts, Contacts, etc. so that your data does not become riddled with dupes. This is historically one of the most pervasive and frustrating problems that financial services firms face today, so it is strongly recommended that with each implementation of FSC you review and confirm your organization’s strategy with key stakeholders, disable the standard rules that are provided, and configure new rules according to your specifications.
5. There are extra configuration steps if installing in a preexisting org
Often a customer may have already started a project or some other work in Salesforce prior to purchasing FSC licenses, which means that it will not be a fresh new instance with all the required settings in place. This is especially true if you are not currently utilizing Contacts to Multiple Accounts or Person Accounts. Thankfully, Salesforce (per usual) has provided incredibly detailed, step-by-step instructions with the necessary pre- and post-installation steps when going live with the FSC packages in a preexisting instance. Those resources can be found here and here.
6. Action Plans can now have dependent steps
Perhaps what has been traditionally one of FSC’s most frustrating features has received a massive lift in usability with the onset of sequential tasks in Action Plans. Previously administrators were only able to define Action Plan Templates that would generate all the required steps at once, rendering the feature relatively useless in the eyes of many subscribers. Now, however, an administrator will be able to intelligently organize an Action Plan’s Step Templates into the appropriate logical order, so that a backlog of tasks that are not ready for execution are not assigned out to users. With this functionality in place, FSC itself makes a case against additional licensing for third party applications that have exploited the perceived inefficacy of Action Plans in the past.
7. A different activity data model allows for private activities & better notes
Look no further for a perfect example of how Salesforce has improved upon its generic CRM functionality in favor of features to solve industry-specific pain points that have plagued financial services users in the past. Interaction Summaries extend the traditional activity functionality allowing for a more “running conversation” style of call notes to be recorded, as well as action items. Additionally, given the intense privacy restrictions around certain sensitive conversations that take place within the industry, Interaction Summaries are compatible with Compliant Data Sharing, which is perhaps the most robust targeted sharing functionality offered by Salesforce. Most of the above can be automated either with code or declaratively to make the transition between data models seamless when also leveraging event syncing features like Einstein Activity Capture.
8. A different opportunity data model allows for more control over sharing & again, better notes
Financial Deals can now be tracked as an extension of the generic Opportunity object, which often is subject to the parent Account regarding sharing and visibility. This will no longer be a limiting factor for an FSC security model, as Financial Deals are also compatible with Compliant Data Sharing. The attributes of this object end up being much more useful to financial services opportunities. Financial Deals also plug into the Interaction Summary data model for the ability to keep a working list of the most relevant information about the deal.
9. Make your clients’ goals your goals, and celebrate their successes
We have already explored several FSC-specific items that enhance the user experience, but Financial Goals, Life Events, and Business Milestones are some of the highest quality components in the user interface afforded by FSC. Did your client mention in their last meeting that they want to buy a house on a lake within the next year or so? Create a new goal for them to purchase a $1 million lake house with a target date a year out. As their fiduciary advisor, work with them to determine how much of their savings can be set aside today, and what percentage will need to be achieved over time to reach the goal. This time next year, create a new Life Event on their personal timeline to celebrate the purchase of their new home and send them a card to congratulate them. FSC can personalize the most routine activities, all with a brilliant display front-and-center for your users.
10. Don’t forget about one of FSC’s most underutilized features
Almost unanimously FSC subscribers will request the ability to see transaction data for their customers’ Financial Accounts within Salesforce. Almost unanimously the answer to that question is data virtualization rather than killing whatever storage is available to them with a single table. Financial Account Transactions generally represent the largest volume of records for financial services firms, and with volume comes the opportunity to draw insight. Often the reason behind the request to see the transaction data in Salesforce is to be able to indicate to relationship managers when a noteworthy event takes place within one of their customer’s accounts. Enter the Alerts API, which allows FSC to tap into transactional data without storing it, creating an appropriate record and visual in Salesforce. You can also trigger additional actions based on the attributes of the Alert record created.
