Come on and sit back and relax. You're
listening to the episode 246
of Wolf tech today podcast.
And as usual I'm your host Craig Go,
On the founder of Ezra group consulting and
this podcast features news,
interviews and analysis. On the trends and best
practices,
all Around wealth Management technology.
My guess for this episode was franklin Sung
from App crown.
And we spoke about how App crown is
a data integration and analytics platform. That sits
on top of Salesforce Crm.
What's interesting about it, and we talked on
it a little bit. Is that when App
first came out,
they position themselves as a Crm overlay,
But they quickly changed, but
that really didn't get out, at least not
to us, I know, Michael Key and I
when we do our app, we had App
crown as a Crm overlay for many years.
We just never knew what they really did.
So, I met Franklin a number of years
ago and found out what they did. And
realize that they will you aren't a Crm
at all, they just use Salesforce
as their core,
basically a a cloud provider.
And, a data source, data storage data warehouse,
which is very interesting,
but they could consolidate data from multiple portfolio
management systems,
from financial planning,
and Custodial platforms to provide a unified household
soul view, which we talked about in the
episode and as well as be able to
generate practice Kpis.
We also just talk about some new features
that they have released and small features. So
you're really going to get a lot out
of this episode about App crown.
But before we get started. Let's talk about
tech stacks. Now here at Ezra group we've
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Alright. Couple housekeeping items before we begin.
First check out, our sponsor, the invest in
others
charitable
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in others dot 0RG.
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to the show wherever you listen to podcasts,
so you don't miss an episode. Right. Let's
get this thing started.
Here we go. I'm excited to introduce our
next guest. It's Franklin Sung, growth advisor for
App crown. Franklin, thanks for joining the program,
man.
Thank you, Greg. For having to me. Appreciate
it be honest this.
I'm glad you could jump in on the
road. I know you're you're
not in your office at the moment. Where
are you calling in from?
Calling in from New York City,
our offices are based out in Long island.
But heading into the city
today, and, meeting actually a bunch of good
friendly R in the neighborhood.
We like friendly R. We do a lot
of that as well over here.
We're beyond based New Jersey, so not far
away from you. We're all experiencing this great.
July weather here in the on the East
Coast.
But, Franklin, let's just jump right in? Could
you give us the 30 second elevator pitch
for App crown?
Gracious, sir. I would say when you look
at App crown,
it is an application integration company,
that is trying to deliver
the crown achievement
of a Crm
and for a practice,
which is integrated, practice analytics,
and practice Kpis.
That was very brief.
Under 30 seconds. Well, I I've tried. I've
tried. You know, the the hustle of doing
this for 15 years,
you try and learn to condense it into.
Never. Sound. I get it. I'd see, you
mentioned practice Kpis. Why or... Well, obviously, know
why practice Kpis are important.
But how does App crown do it better
than the way, the ra would measure their
own Kpis without Ep?
Interesting. So
many ways that Kpis was born
out of performing a lot of these integrations
of multiple custodian,
portfolio systems,
planning systems
into the Crm like Salesforce sports for 15
years where we've actually put together a very
good sense
of
Api
indicate... Key performance indicators for practice at stern
Au levels.
So there are different Kpis for a hundred
million dollar Au adviser versus say 1000000000
and a billion
to 5000000000. And then another different set for
5000000000
and above.
We differentiated by actually combining
portfolio assistant data with Pi data from the
custody
systems.
So
we create a true
unify Managed household,
then we layer that in with more portfolio
data, and then planning data to create a
consolidated Kpi that helps advisors know which clients
are at risk of leaving them, which clients
on need to have that review beyond an
annual review, and which clients
are potentially distributing more out of the firms,
and guess what you don't have.
Beneficiaries paper the households over the age of
70,
and there's a lot of risk there, but
because the practice might have grown very quickly
in a very short amount of time,
both organically
or in it inorganic,
you want be able to cover everybody.
So explain to us the the benefits that
App crown has. So,
I thought every R we work with they've
got some sort of portfolio management system. They've
already got some kind of Crm.
Can't they see this data now?
Like, a multi custodial
couple of billion dollar R that we work
with? Why couldn't they see
households that might be,
distributing more out of the firm that into
the firm? Through their normal
household reports.
It's a great question.
I would say that
when you're an Ra and let's say your
custody.
Your client can go into Short portal,
have some discretionary in control over their
their assets. At the same time, when you
go into deploy system, let's say using Tamara
rack, Black Diamond, those systems don't have tax
Id in their platform.
So it may be hard to actually create
a true household view husband wife and see
exactly what the entire holdings is. Without going
to each aggregate or each portfolio model, you
wanna see just 1 simple view,
and that might be very difficult to achieve.
In a firm wide,
simple
1 report constantly updated
perspective.
So we make that easy and we consolidate
the number crunching in a very easy way
by using Salesforce as a way to view
that household.
And I would say outcome differentiates as 1
of the few vendors that can consume Pi
data at an institutional level. So we grab
it from multiple custodian sc fidelity, Raymond James,
Per
and Sc sci,
we basically create that entire single family view.
And we layer in that with the holdings
data, we layer that in withstanding instructions data.
So we bring in more data than
the portfolio system that tells may not necessarily
grab, but no fault of their else which
is not what a portfolio system does. So
we round out those
last mile
gaps of each and every system from portfolio
custody planning, and then we make that up
visible in the Crm like a Salesforce for
security purposes and the ease of visibility.
What you're saying is that a multi custodial
client
at a household level may not be able
to
bring in that type of data or consolidate
or aggregate the data in the way they
need to,
especially if you've got a complicated household,
at household we've we've we found in our
experience is very differently handled
from firm to firm.
Some firms kind very unusual
definitions of a household,
and that might be difficult to
deploy
in your... Just using a standard portfolio management
platform.
That's accurate,
very accurate, sir. I would say, you know,
then you layer in the complexity of planning.
Data points. And you may wanna say when
you wake up as a large
national product says, hey.
How is my team doing in New York
and
who are the client holdings that are not
performing from the sense of
being statistical outliers
in the negative way
was the last time we created the plant
was the last time we had that meeting.
So all those questions were is answered by
data points
that sits in multiple different systems.
And
you know, the portfolio system is powerful,
but it also doesn't grab all the data
from custody. So you need a combined effort,
and that's kinda where our forte is.
So you already have existing integrations with the
major financial planning applications.
Yes. That's
a blend of time,
and a blend of what, you know, they
would probably call Dun mu
in this sense of just being really early
on working with
Tony and Bob,
when they found Money got Pro in 2009,
and then and bipartisan and Tony Liu.
Indeed, indeed,
and Edmund Walters with the emo money and
worked closely with Edmond.
In 2009 2010
in a world where there was no Apis.
It was either Xml database or soap Apis,
and
I work closely with them to build it.
You can call it the first version of
an Api
to integrate data from Money get pro bidirectional
and emo money into Salesforce
years before Salesforce
financial Services cloud was ever invented or created.
You always to call that web services.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just following your footsteps, sir.
I mean, I... I'm you know, I'm just
looking the world and
find a great people like yourself. But, yes.
Indeed. Alright. So let's move on from from
that. So that's all super interesting I I
think a lot of people don't realize that
Ab crown has those capabilities.
Because a lot of firms see you as
an a Salesforce
overlay, when you're really,
more of a data management platform that just
happens to sit on top of sales force?
That's correct. That's correct. And
this this part is on the overlay discussion.
A result, I would say early years, a
20 20 year old version of myself. Mind
you and efforts,
started working in the Ra segment
working in those in the... With the folks
that I mentioned, I was in my twenties.
So I'm 37 now,
little bit older, a little bit wiser. I
did not know how to categorize what we
did.
And it was only recently I was in.
In the last 5 years to your point.
We're really using Salesforce as a container.
And it's a containment strategy
where Salesforce has those Pi protections. Which has
become more invaluable in a world of cybersecurity
attacks that you wanna have a very safe
enterprise.
Platform to view sensitive information. So we're basically
using Salesforce to view that and create the
household.
We do the heavy lifting in the middle
in the back office to translate
financial count, data models into that household data
model,
where Crm tends to be the best 1
to view that. Now caveat that with I
could easily send this to Wealth box too,
should they become and want to become an
enterprise platform,
to view the at that kind of sense
of data, and have those protections. So it's
not necessarily exclusive to Salesforce.
It's simply that salesforce is just still flexible
and the
entity a platform to receive that to kind
of data.
I understand. Alright. Let me once the next
topic. You would said you wanna talk about
0 touch technology.
Can you explain what that is and how
you're delivering this to advisors.
So 0 touch is
terminology that we're coin
where
you're essentially
asking your end investor client, it could be
an Lp.
It could be an R,
you know, n he wealth customer or general
mass affluent customer to gather Ips data points.
And 0 touch basically means I'm extending Crm
to send that data point to them, so
they can fill it out.
Or like I said, in multitude of reasons.
It could be for Ips, Ky c or
accredited investor information status will qualify purchaser status.
For multitude of reasons.
And by completing that, what it looks like
a digital form to the end person, once
they press submit, actually updates the Crm automatically.
You'd never have to go and copy paste
the field. Never have to go lock into
Salesforce.
Edit the field and update the field, which
takes tons and tons of time. So if
you wanna do this for 300 households all
in 1 shot, you know, you can do
it with 0 touch and we actually helped
an help,
advisor, a rep advisor move to Lp financial.
And over the weekend, repay over 500 households
within the matter of 1 to 2 hours.
Using this client data gathering technology that you
have,
where an email sent to the client, they
can fill in the form in their email,
hit send and the data goes right in
Salesforce.
Exactly. To that record, to that specific thing
and then from there, automatically kick start the
next workflow.
So what what might the next workflow be?
Can you give you an example of how
that works?
Sure.
You know, if you were to say, the
next workflow is
a accredited investor status and this
client is looking to
become involved in a private fund opportunity
through the investment advisor representative, the R
So the high net client completes this
finishes it. Press submit salesforce automatically updates it.
And the next step is then to automatically
send from salesforce back to the client, the
fund
private offering memorandum, the P,
and then
automatically let the adviser and... Or client service
team know to reach out and schedule follow
a meeting.
We don't want those
tests to fall through the cracks.
Yeah. I would say, most likely,
it's good to be on top of all
things larger and small. Yeah.
Let's take a break from this interview to
talk about the invest in others charitable foundation.
Does your firm give back to the community
in a meaningful way? If it does, you
should apply to the invest in others charitable
champions list.
What is this charitable champions list. It recognizes
financial advisory firms that give back to the
communities by promoting a cultural phil
amongst their financial advisors and employees.
Now, not only is a chance to share
the impact that your firm has had on
the community,
but
it also
recognizes,
it is recognized by the invest and another's
foundation. It can bring credibility.
To these film philanthropic programs that you're running
through peer recognition,
improved employee morale, and also it can service
a talking point with clients and prospective new
hires.
So if you wanna learn more about the
invest of this charitable champions list, go to
the website, invest in others dot 0RG.
And remember there's a the deadline for applying
is July twelfth. So which you now in
July twelfth, go to invest in others dot
or g and apply. For your firm to
be recognized as a charitable champion.
I like it. I like it a lot.
Are there any other
functionalities
that you have deployed with the 0 touch
technology?
Go ahead.
Thanks, Craig.
I would say that the 0 touch technology
and ARM
and a
context. Is very helpful because the buy side
can communicate with the sell side and share
sends information
before it becomes a data or deal rule
situation. And all of that is captured,
not through a text messaging,
not through emails to which it get fall
through the cracks, but it's archived b through
the 0 touch technology,
and then
saved inside of Salesforce to key tracks of
how the communication with this perspective firm that
where maybe to acquire a merge with is
going. And that can that be dis
very easily through the Crm
to the partners and stakeholders
for internal
committee discussions,
and create basically
a deal summary of how this
relationship is going and how the deal is
progressing. So
go touch. So facilitates secure communications it that
way.
That's cool. I like that. I think that
the has a a lot of potential
use cases
that a lot of... Wealth, management firms should
be looking into.
Alright. Let's talk more about some of the
integrations
that you have built and that you have.
Some of the more popular
R
platforms
include Tamara, Black Diamond and Orion, and you've
got integrations from App crown,
to and from
these systems.
Can you talk a bit about the the
Black Diamond in Orion integrations and how they
work and how
affirm using either of those platforms would benefit
from adding app crown is the mix?
Sure. Sure. We'll start with black diamond.
First, for black diamond, that system may not
have tax Id in their system. So it's
very difficult to create a true household
from black diamond.
So clients can utilize to bring all the
black diamond of data in into Salesforce and
do a crm to really view how the
whole entire household
looks like how the holdings look like at
run portfolio,
analytics, on top of Black Diamond model portfolios.
You can even track model drift. Followed with
the Crm tied to Crm workflow to let
the team class service team know. And then,
of course, when combined with Crm,
meeting notes for pre and post meeting management.
Well, hey, you know, integrating with Black Diamond
and bringing more holdings level,
physician level data,
it becomes very, very profound. On the orion
ryan data,
Ryan is same with financial planning.
Work closely with Eric Clark and
the team in Omaha, back in 2009,
And with Orion, we have probably a very
comprehensive bi bidirectional integration to bridging all of
Orion reports
and all of the historical,
orion data
of management fees
into Crm. So we actually have a lot
of Orion clients who use us to immediately
download literally
the entire history from the start of day
of working with the orion, the management fee
to understand what the last 12 month the
earnings like, So when they wanna value themselves,
those using Orion in outcome does have
a little bit of an edge from the
data management data analytics solution. So and then
how the practice has evolved from the start
of date. We can also
pass Pi data into Orion account registration. So
usually, when you create a new account Orion,
the registration of first name last name address,
all of that is really up to date,
but over time, they may not be thinking
well with custodian.
After it has a bidirectional capability to take
custody data, Pi data and push it into
Orion automatically on a daily basis. So we're
essentially scaling Orion in the most best breed
possible manner in a data strategy that we
created with clark and team back in 2009
as persisted until this day.
And that's a long time. That's 15 years
of of working with Orion.
Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, it's been 1
of those,
long term friendships and partnerships and you know,
trust me when I say it with Sap
to see our go, because, you know, from
me is you know, looking out to these
guys and you know,
many of which have have gone and moved
on
70 va.
And that doesn't affect
what you've built.
When this turnover at the company or does
it?
No. No. It doesn't.
Our Apis remain updated.
We're certainly investing more into bringing that data
out of Orion.
You know, 1 of the key things we
talked about integration a lot. I'll say this.
We never replace or bring all of the
systems
into Sierra.
We bring the key critical data points.
Into Crm. So that way, it either gets
analytics done or gets the customer to go
back to the respective system. Go back to
Orion to get more data, go back to
it, you might to get more planning data.
And that's actually
philosophy of integrations that let's less talked about.
But critical. You know, as a switzerland of
integrations on our side, because I can integrate
multi portfolio systems,
multi
you know, source it there from custody planning,
like, we've been talking about for a few
minutes here. But philosophy is important. We integrate
and considerate way that,
empowers our partners to make sure that they're
still the centerpiece, and that centerpiece of attention
is not lost just because we're integrating that
Crm.
Actually something that we Edmund Walters had talked
a lot when he was with the money,
of why and how he money should integrate
to Crm.
And if I might say, emo money has
done a pretty good job with their integrations.
Would you agree? Yeah. I I would say
Emo money is probably
1 of 1 of the leading
planning systems that we're seeing.
Now, with this
collection,
empowering your partners,
making sure they're still the centerpiece piece.
And being an a neutral integration partner,
how do you
scale this? So if I'm a client that
I'm using
Orion,
and I'm, you know, I'm getting into a
very large number of accounts.
How...
What's the ability of App to scale to
support this?
Like,
I would say that,
you scale this by
simply going to Orion setting menu, and you
just
create a user for App. So within
Tamara rag, Black Diamond
Orion today. If you literally just go to
the setup and you just app at App
on. That's the only setup you need.
The the fortunate
aspect of working really
early on with these partners is that we've
set up all the different perm mutations of
how the integrations could go. And
15 years into this,
I would safely say we've covered about 95
percent. There has not yet been a situation
where we've seen and say, about this integration
completely.
And the way that you're seeing this data
is completely new, you know,
original. So
the the upside of being in this space
for 15 years is we've mapped out a
lot of the perm mutations and the setup
process incredibly simple.
I think that's
on a
overlooked aspect of integrations
is that you've got these pre built with
a lot of major vendors over the years
where it is just going to a config
screen and clicking a button, and then it
turns on your connectivity.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's it integration is
also an expensive
proposition. You know, if you're gonna build the
integration, you don't wanna keep building it ad
hoc, you the and custom developed each and
every time.
It would never scale. So we had to
create
essentially
mapping and pre built integration packages
on our data processing side, which is what
we've done, and we've gone through the painstaking
of time.
15 years of perm mutations of which outcome.
So we can tack on, for example, any
statistical
combination of
Orion when it get Crow, sc fidelity, Orion,
emo money, Schwab purging Fidelity. So all of
those different settings
we've done.
And some of these firms even provide support
when their clients say they want to integrate
the that crown.
Their tech support people can handle setup.
That's a great highlight.
Thanks for bringing that up. 1 of the
things that most proudest about
with this integration game is schwab.
You can actually just call the 1 800
line,
anywhere
in the Us. Just literally the call the
1 underline,
the Schwab adviser services and say, I wanna
have on integration, and they're data team will
know what to do, set it up for
you,
trial master forms,
all the dataset set,
will be cut,
by describe data team, and you're good to
go within 2 days to process
all the straw masters. I mean, we have
a client of ours
that has a hundred and 50 straw masters.
Obviously,
large multi dollar ra, and we process all
of that and household all the trimester master
accounts into a household view in Salesforce within
24 hours.
Which I think is cool.
That's really fast.
24 hours.
Yeah. Yeah. We try we try.
So what about...
You mentioned before go wanted to hit on
data models?
You mentioned data models briefly when you were
talking about
practice Kpis. And that's something that's overlooked as
well in that it's it's not easy to
build a data model more of our larger
clients have asked us for help with building
custom solutions, usually custom dashboards,
reporting
in other other tools. But they need to
have the data model for whatever platform portfolio
management or Crm other platform they have in
order to
understand the information and be able to manage
it. And you said you have data models
for all of these platforms. How did you
build that and what's the advantage you think
that provides for you?
I think the data model for integrating, the
combinations is very powerful,
And it's probably
less appreciated even
my part only until the last 2 years
when I'm seeing a lot of R i's
by a lot of firms. So 1 of
the larger, more aggressive
acquire out there,
affirm such as Korean, have reached out to
us and say, hey, listen, we bought all
these firms together.
And
we have,
you know, 2 instances of Orion, 3 instances
black diamond.
And we need consolidate all of this.
And I look at the latter request, and
I think, well, that's fascinating because
from my side,
it's a
quick exercise of
creating the configuration file and you're done then,
let's say,
20 minutes technically once I finish the file.
Versus on their side, they're just coming into
this game and try and realize they have
consolidated.
And for them they're looking at a large
consulting bill,
tens of millions and maybe, like, 3 or
4 years of effort or 5 years of
effort. And I look at that, and I
say, well, you know, speed is time value
of money. So the question is, you know,
for the adviser, what do you wanna do?
Do you want to
make this A56 year project? Do you want
to really grow this and build it in
in house development team? Or do you really
just wanna integrate it very quickly continue acquiring
eyes?
And so
it's interesting.
I think it's valuable really more so for
these advisers
who have multiple different advisory practices and now
they really need to consolidate
the empire, kind of learn from Alexander the
great and consolidate
you know, the the acquisition that they've done.
I bet people listening didn't not expect to
get a history lesson.
Probably not probably not, but... So, Franklin, I
think we're just by out of time. So
for the listeners, where can they find more
information about Crown?
I really gracious.
I would say
go to the On website,
fill in the form. It hits our our
team in New York here for staff of
30
across Long Island, Really
are New York,
full time employees. So, you know, we're all
very keen as New York Chris to get
back to our clients.
And that's app crown with 2 p's, APPCR0WN
dot com. Correct?
That's correct, sir. Great. Frank. Thank you so
much for being here on the program.
Thank you for the invitation. Thank you, sir.
Hey. Hey, It's Craig again. K my top
3 takeaways from this episode.
App got a lot of great features of
functionality.
We talked about their data gathering, capabilities with
0 touch.
Allowing to send digital forms declines to gather
data like Ky, a accredited investor status, and
etcetera, etcetera.
Enables automated workflows like setting documents and scheduling
meetings based on form responses, and it's useful
tapering hundreds of, accounts efficiently during their transitions.
App integrates with numerous portfolio management systems and
has pie directional data integrations of both Orion
and Black Diamond, and they've been building these
integrations and data models for these platforms over
15 years.
And finally, some of the things that they
can generate
with all the data they're gathering, our practice
Kpis and analytics. By combining portfolio data, planning
custodial data, they can feed these different
analytics reporting and dashboards.
1 of the things they can do is
identify at risk clients,
for example, clients that are withdrawing funds from
different accounts made across different custodian, which from
platforms,
which you couldn't normally get unless you had
1 centralized system,
and they can provide,
what Franklin described as a unified managed household
view.
Right. You've made it to the end, open
in the episode of the Wealth tech today
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