If your financial services organization is staring down a new digital transformation project that includes the adoption of a new CRM tool, you will likely have come across the following tools: Salesforce (namely Financial Services Cloud or “FSC”), Redtail, and Junxure. Each company does a great job of making their product sound like the answer to all your problems on their websites, and in discussing with salespeople from each you will likely get the same sentiment. “We absolutely can do that!”

The reality is, sure, anyone can do anything with unlimited resources. For most companies, however, it is just not feasible to throw a substantial budget at a nebulous black box without understanding more about the detailed pros and cons of their choice in tool and what the limitations might be in the future.

Enter this article, which will help you demystify your options and help formulate your transformation strategy.

• For each of the three tools, we will review the following, while also directly comparing specific features of each throughout:
• Strongest Feature
• Flexibility
• Integrations
• Potential Costs
  

Junxure

The most basic way to think about Junxure as a CRM is as a “to do” list. While it is absolutely an oversimplification, it is its primary selling point: automating complex workflows. Don’t Redtail and FSC have the ability to do this as well? Sure, they do (If you are familiar with Salesforce, this is not to be confused with their process automation tools, however). FSC offers a tool called Action Plans, which we will explore in greater depth later, that most directly compete with what Redtail and Junxure both refer to as Workflows.

Junxure is the best tool for this purpose – its data model is incredibly service-centric and supports the “client obsession” mantra well. Couple this with your standard CRM functionality like maintaining contact information and relationships, opportunities to grow the business, and the ability to track the assets and liabilities of your customer base, you have a very compelling tool at a completely reasonable price.

What’s the catch? Junxure positions itself as a “turnkey” CRM solution for financial services. Yes, you can build workflows and fields according to your own unique business processes. But overall, the tool is not very flexible beyond its singular purpose as a CRM. This may or may not have implications for you depending on how “integrated” you want your employee experience to be.

Speaking of, Junxure does offer some nice, easy-to-configure integrations with tools commonly used in the industry. Calendly, ShareFile, Laserfiche, MoneyGuidePro, and Schwab are just a few. If you want to integrate a tool outside of the short list, however, you are likely looking at a quite costly situation for setup and maintenance. Additionally, if you are looking for integration with a mobile app for your team that is always on the go, Junxure does not have a dedicated app but rather recommends adding a bookmark to your mobile home screen to use the device-optimized format from anywhere.

All in all, if you have basic CRM needs specific to financial services, are being cost-conscious, and are pretty much only using your CRM while at your computer, Junxure is a viable option at a sticker price of $65 per user per month. As a “turnkey” solution, you might never have to pay anything beyond that, but the tradeoff is that you are likely working a little bit more in silos with other systems.

Redtail

Redtail is about as vanilla of a CRM as it gets (not in a bad way). It has all the “bread and butter” features that you would expect, and its strongest draw is probably the fact that you don’t have to look further than its price to be interested. It is just $99 per month for the system if you have 15 users or less. Such a pricing structure makes it economical for small firms or those just starting out – and quite honestly it is common for Redtail subscribers to migrate to Salesforce at some point in the future when there may be more appetite for a technology budget.

The tool’s data model is not very conducive to your customizations, even down to the field level. It does have decent integrations with common tools in the industry, but many require third party involvement, which always has a chance of negatively impacting timeline and budget. There is also a mobile app that allows a user to perform most of the same activities that they would on a computer.

Ultimately, Redtail is only going to be an option for smaller shops without a lot of intricacies that are looking to be as lean as possible with overhead costs. It will absolutely get the job done for you for the long term if you do not plan to put a lot of effort into substantial growth, but if your goal is to scale, Redtail is likely not the tool to scale with you.

Salesforce FSC

Finally, Salesforce’s response to industry-specialized CRMs in the financial services space, FSC, has become quite popular since its launch in or around 2016. As mentioned, Junxure has it beat on the workflow front, as Salesforce Action Plans are generally found quite cumbersome by users and result in yet another area to track “to dos” within the same tool. Redtail has it beat on cost effectiveness, as Salesforce can cost you up to a whopping $300 per user per month for the base FSC product. All else considered however, FSC’s strongest feature that sets it apart from Junxure and Redtail is its flexibility to do so much more than a traditional CRM.

As a Salesforce subscriber, you have complete autonomy over what happens in your system, and even outside of it to some degree. The ability to customize the data model to your needs and implement “if this, then that” logic with almost everything means that you are only limited by your imagination and your budget. The major implication with its customizability is that you will likely need the assistance of a Salesforce expert (consulting partner or in-house hire) to design and build your tool in a scalable and sustainable manner.

Here is a real-world example completely unrelated to financial services: Imagine that your firm, which you started as a financial advisor, has now grown to a team of twenty other advisors and twenty client service associates. Business is booming, and you are making a push to double your headcount within the next twelve months (forty new hires). Salesforce is so flexible that you could create an applicant tracking system on its platform – job openings with relevant information like hiring manager and salary (hidden from those not in the “need to know”), applicants for possibly more than one opening, and interviews, and you could even grant targeted access to the third-party recruiting firm that is helping you. Once a candidate is hired, automatically create their user, sending them a Salesforce welcome email and assigning them the client portfolio that was associated with the job opening. I repeat, you are only limited by your imagination and your budget.

Integration-wise, rumor has it that Salesforce is the creator of the original app store, which is now called AppExchange. It is quite a remarkable ecosystem, as anyone can build an integration with or develop a tool on Salesforce and make it commercially available for use. Several of the tools common to financial services are available on AppExchange, as well as so many more that are just common tools used by any type of business, which is exceptionally useful for operational functions like marketing, HR, accounting, etc. Salesforce also has the most robust mobile app of the three tools, which can be catered to focus a mobile user on the activities they care about while out and about.

If flexibility and scalability are your organization’s top priorities in a CRM, Salesforce will be the tool for you. This will often come with a project to build your platform to spec, so it is important to recognize that there are additional investments of time and money beyond the sticker price that Salesforce charges. Even with an external team developing your system, you will likely need at least one internal resource with vast institutional knowledge to interface with a consultant. It is a good idea to thoroughly vet the credentials of the delivery team assigned to your project as well (with project-based evidence of past success on FSC) and to encourage your team that will support Salesforce in the long run to engage in self-learning via Salesforce’s tools like Trailhead and certifications.