Business Process: Why is it so important when outsourcing?

Business Process: Why is it so important when outsourcing?

by | Jun 6, 2018 | Learning & Development Activities, Outsourcing

Learn the most important tips for letting go of tasks and delegating to your staff

Businesses create processes  to improve overall operational performance and increase workforce efficiencies. Processes  are very useful in all areas of an organisation but oftentimes, they are poorly planned and structured. This causes confusion when different employees need to go through a process of a specific area of the business and there is no flow of the process. As a result, accuracy and consistency is highly affected.

Workflow VS Business Process

Most financial planning firms have some form of workflows. A workflow basically represents the approach on what needs to happen (set of tasks) to complete a piece of work (often specific to a client like a review meeting).

Meanwhile, a business process teaches us how to do each task in the workflow. Business process documentation is the process of creating materials containing manuals (ours are all online) and step-by-step guides of completing tasks and processes and provide tips and checklist to follow to ensure a consistent outcome for completing a series of task in a workflow.

Both of these work together to make a more efficient and systematic business operation. On our experience, firms usually rely on a lot of assumed knowledge on how to do tasks when they hire a staff. Therefore, it takes a long time to get someone confident and independent in completing workflows (not to mention a lot of handholding).

How to document your business process?

In VBP, we follow a standard process in documentation:

  1. Complete Workbook. The workbook allows you to think about your business process and create an outline of the process.
  2. Create Flowchart. By creating a visual flowchart or a swim lane diagram, we get clarity on who’s responsible for each step of the process.
  3. Client Training. All training sessions will be recorded for future references and will show a step-by-step demonstration of how the process is being completed.
  4. Edit and Save Videos. All videos will be edited. VBP will remove all unnecessary parts of the training video and retain only the important parts that are relevant to the topic being discussed making it easier and faster to reference in the future.
  5. Create manuals. In addition to the videos, manuals will also be created for the CSRs to easily browse through the manual if there is a particular step they need to review.
  6. Upload Materials to the Intranet. All of the training materials including your templates, reference material, links, videos, and manuals will be in uploaded to one centralised location–the client intranet. This will be the main resource of your CSR when completing tasks for you.
  7. Client Sign Off. After all of these have been completed, a link to your intranet will be sent to you for you to review the content.

Once everything is documented a process should have 6 key elements:

 

How does process documentation benefit your business?

There are 5 main advantages of business process documentation:

  • Tasks are completed exactly how you need them to be completed.
  • If you need to take leave from work, someone else can cover for you and help with your tasks.
  • Easily share task instructions with colleagues and new hires.
  • It increases efficiency as it’s easier to keep track of the progress of a task/project and identify any blockages along the way.
  • It adds value to the business especially when you consider purchasing, as it will be easier to integrate new business into your documented processes. In the same way when you plan to sell your business, having a structured and well documented process can add significant value to potential purchaser.

Some tools we use for documentation include: Zoom to hold client training or meetings, Snagit to record all training sessions, Camtasia to edit videos, Screensteps to create manuals, Lucid Chart to create process flow charts and Google Sites to host client intranet.

When a workflow is properly documented with clear business processes, the main benefit is, it is much faster to get a new staff member up and running as they have more confidence around the work being done.

Whether you are considering outsourcing or wanting to scale your business with internal staff, this statement holds true “Customise the Advice, Sytemise the Process”.

3 Quick tips to build and grow a strong team

3 Quick tips to build and grow a strong team

by | May 31, 2018 | VBP Culture, VBP Milestones, Working at VBP

We have reached a new milestone!

Last March 2018, VBP has reached a new milestone—we are now 200 in our team! As we continue to cater to more financial planning firms in Australia, we also continuously (and rapidly!) grow our team here in the Philippines. Seems like yesterday when we were working as a team of 20. And now it’s four and a half years later and we’ve grown 10 times in number!

Being a culture-led business, growing our team and living our purpose are some of our main goals. See our Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG) below:

We have a clear purpose, goal and plan, which is vital in keeping everyone aligned. (We use a one-page plan and learnt all about these principles from Gazelles coaching and from the book Scaling Up by Verne Harnish.)

Every company should have a clear vision for the business and of the four focus areas: People, Strategy, Execution and Cash. By far, the most important for our company is the decisions we make relating to ‘people’.

So how were we able to build, and now grow, a strong team? We focus on 3 things.

  1. Find the right people. The first step is, obviously, to hire people. As we are in a specialised business, we make sure that we find the right people for our team. Our recruitment team has developed detailed job descriptions for our open positions and makes sure they gather important data and assess the candidate’s competency. Of course, we also value culture fit. Aiming for cultural fit doesn’t mean that we are into the same kind of people and character, it isn’t a deal-breaker. However, we also consider this in order to maintain harmony beyond our growing number and diversity. We have adopted our recruitment methodology from Topgrading.
  2. Develop their competency. The next step is to use effective training strategies in order to develop your employees’ skills. Learning should never stop. With our growing number of clients, it is important that we expand our service offerings as well, and with that comes more training and development for our staff to make them indispensable to our clients. We encourage our people to be self-leaders and help one another by giving support or assistance to others regardless if they work with the same firms/teams or not. We want our team to flourish and not become stagnant in their profession. We have adopted ‘situational leadership’ as our framework for managing our team. Each of us learns about this through the book Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager.
  3. Give them a reason to stay. Once you’ve built your A-team, it’s time to focus on how to keep them. Building a strong culture is our way of showing our staff that we care—through employee programs, engagement activities and different reward systems. We make sure they feel comfortable in our office, not feeling restricted from anything, whilst maintaining a secure and professional workplace. Little treats keep us happy—beer Fridays, free breakfast, table tennis area, board games, karaoke—these are simple yet effective things to make your staff feel at home and have a nice working environment. You can learn more about our core values and culture here.

Hear it straight from our team on how they feel about working at VBP:

As we now focus on our next milestone to reach 300 staff by 2019, we remain focused on continuing to develop our people’s skills, to commit to improving advice delivery processes (via better use of technology) and maintain our unique business culture. This helps us with the longevity of our staff and the stream of people being referred to work with us.

Take a look at our journey
NEW Service Brochure: Maximise back office outsourcing

NEW Service Brochure: Maximise back office outsourcing

by | May 18, 2018 | Outsourcing

Further improve operational efficiency and add more value to your services by outsourcing more key areas in your back office.

We are well aware that the most important resource of an organisation is their people. We grow our business by growing our people. And with that, we always aim for labor efficiency in order to deliver the best service to our clients.

Nowadays, outsourcing plays a vital role in growing people and increasing labor efficiency. It has been said and proven time and again that outsourcing reduces costs and increases productivity. Most often, it is the most viable solution for those who seek specialists for certain areas of their businesses in order to stay ahead in their industry.

So when we have established a competent team, our next goal is to make them even more productive.

How can we get more from our people and add value to our service?

For those who are already experiencing the benefits of outsourcing, it is also important to know how to maximise it to further boost operational efficiency.

Since 2013, we have been the expert in providing back office support to financial planning firms across Australia. But since then, we have also grown widely in terms of service offering to our clients.

Currently, we have 4 key service offerings: admin, paraplanning, bookkeeping and marketing.

Admin
Our financial planning admin includes tasks like gathering information and research, preparing quotes, form lodgments, preparing annual reports and SOA summary. Services for mortgage broking are also offered as well as other ad hoc services.

Paraplanning
We now offer a dedicated paraplanner for each client. One of our current paraplanners, Sam, creates SOAs for his clients including product research, reviewing Product Disclosure Statements and product comparisons.

Bookkeeping & Management Report
Bookkeeping services include monthly process reconciliation of all transactions production of monthly P&L, payroll, balance sheet and cash flow reporting as well as providing business intelligence via way of dashboards and management reporting.

Marketing
We focus on digital marketing with an emphasis on content creation for financial planners to showcase their subject matter expertise with prospects. Below are some samples of online and printed materials:

To see a FULL LIST of services, click below to download our service brochure:

Download Service Brochure
How we nurture good employee behavior – the result: 4 years of perfect attendance

How we nurture good employee behavior – the result: 4 years of perfect attendance

by | May 4, 2018 | VBP Culture, Working at VBP

Meet Mike, he is one of our employees who, for 4 years, has had perfect attendance—no lates (not even within the 10-minute grace period) and no absences and sick days. That’s just impressive, isn’t it?

Apart from addressing negative employee behavior, we focus more on recognising the best employee practices in VBP.

Rewarding employees for their performance is a given. Work performance is the easiest to assess because of the set criteria and key indicators directly linked to goals and expected outcomes. Recognising behaviors, on the other hand, is another thing and mostly overlooked by a lot companies but actually has a huge impact on productivity.

Employee recognition should not stop with meeting the required performance stats, but should also extend to acknowledging employee behaviors that consistently contribute to their overall productivity and efficiency.

It’s not just about performance, but behavior as well.

Recently, one of our staff, Mike Mirasol, received a recognition on punctuality and attendance (we call it PandA, inspired by Zappos). Mike received a 4-year PandA award.

The VBP PandA award is given to employees who achieve perfect attendance for one full calendar month— ‘perfect’ means no lates and no absences (excluding plotted leave). PandA rewards include redeemable free hours that we can use for whatever purpose, may it be to take a nap, take an extra hour over lunch, arrive an hour late or leave the office early.

Mike was recognised for getting 4 years of perfect attendance—no lates (not even within the 10-minute grace period) and no absences and sick leaves. That’s just impressive, isn’t it?

See, things like this are mostly overlooked, thinking that getting a perfect attendance for an entire month is easily achievable, not knowing that the employee has been consistently doing this since the day he started working with the company.

Recognising these little WOWs is important to us because this is one type of employee behavior that contributes to the excellent service that our company provides to our clients.

So how does recognising achievements like this benefit the company?

Well, simple–this results to happy employees. And we all know that happy employees are what we need to serve our clients better.

Appreciating your staff is perhaps one of the simplest yet most effective ways to motivate them. Recognition makes them feel important and relevant. Thus, pushes them to be their best in what they do, increasing productivity—do all tasks with accuracy, finish every task assigned and even go above and beyond of what is expected from them. Going the extra mile won’t be a pain since employees will be more pro-active and engaged with work.

So the next time a team member does great on a task, give him a pat on the back.

Advisor Tip: Take the hassle out of meeting your FDS obligations

Advisor Tip: Take the hassle out of meeting your FDS obligations

by | May 3, 2018 | Outsourcing

Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) is a crucial part of the advice process but can be a time-consuming process and the consequence of not meeting this obligation can be drastic.

VBP does various recurring tasks for clients and one of them is generating Fee Disclosure Statements. One of our financial planning assistants (FPA), Gelo, does this task for his client.

“I was trained to do Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) tasks by one of our firm’s planners via online meeting. The Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) is part of the Annual Progress Report that we send out to clients. The Progress Report is generated through XPlan with the complete details on the Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) including the fees paid in the last 12 months which we generate from the AMP Portal and then a thorough explanation on the Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) and who receives the fees.” Gelo said. They schedule this  task every 15th of the month.

Another FPA, Ann, does this recurring task for her client. She follows her own check list when creating and sending out Fee Disclosure Statements.

She does this task every month and uses Worksorted to automatically generate the document.

To this date, VBP provides support for this administrative task to over 20 clients/firms (each firm having multiple planners). Depending on their planners’ needs, our financial planning assistants generate Fee Disclosure Statements either daily, weekly, monthly or just when client reviews are due. They also either do it by bulk or individually per client review.

To generate FDS, our FPAs use different tools depending on what their practice uses. Some tools used include Worksorted, XPlan, PractiFI, COIN, AMP Portal and different adviser fund provider portals.

Most of our FPAs are trained by their respective clients in performing FDS tasks. But we can also provide training from our support team whenever needed. Check lists vary for each firm, some may not have any, but we always encourage our FPAs to have their own check list to ensure accuracy in fulfilling tasks.

If you are currently not getting us to help support you in FDS, you may want to consider this as an option.
If you are interested to add Fee Disclosure Statement (FDS) generation to the administrative tasks you want to outsource, contact your assigned Client Service Manager (CSM) now to arrange a discussion.