How Advice Toolkit drives greater efficiency with what-you-need solutions

With more than 50% of advisers put off by the downtime associated with switching software, Xplan Advice Toolkit’s fast setup and ready-to-use solutions can deliver efficiency gains quickly, at every stage of the advice process.

From the initial software onboarding through to client engagement, advice generation and implementation, Xplan Advice Toolkit is quick to set up and built for faster advice production.

An evolution of Xplan as you know it, Xplan Advice Toolkit offers industry-evolved all-in-one advice tools. These include centralised client data, streamlined wizards and interfaces, pre-setup templates, workflows and standard reports – all of which modern practices need to succeed. It also comes built with best-practice solutions to support a secure and compliant financial advice service.

Xplan Advice Toolkit supports a wide range of advice firms, but is perfect for wealth management firms and businesses after a streamlined and only-what-you-need solution; plus ongoing support, and up-to-date content and enhancements.

Is Xplan Advice Toolkit easy to set up?

Yes, the fully supported out-of-the-box kit can be set up in just 2 weeks. The onboarding is streamlined with minimal downtime and is far simpler than a custom option.

A dedicated specialist will be on hand to support your onboarding. Further assistance is offered to help you from day one – beyond implementation – thanks to Xplan Support.

Here are the key onboarding steps summarised:

• Step 1. We securely gather your information, requirements and needs through short collated forms sent to your practice.
• Step 2. We organise the implementation of Xplan Advice Toolkit, then handover to you along with guided training available via the Iress Learning Centre. This ensures you’re equipped with what you need to get started.
• Step 3. We support you on an ongoing basis with online training for your team through the Iress learning centre. If you need to add user logins, new risk profile assumptions, or help with any of a number of other tasks, we can help.

Once you're fully onboarded with Xplan Advice Toolkit, you can continue to focus on providing high-quality advice services to your clients.

What are some of the key features of Xplan Advice Toolkit?

Xplan Advice Toolkit offers best-practice, out-of-the-box tools that evolve with the industry, delivering a number of advantages for practices:

• Significant time savings - Xplan Advice Toolkit’s ready-to-go templates get you up and running faster with the documents you need, versus, say, custom SOA generation which can take 3 months (or more) and incur a sizeable cost. Time savings can be gained across fact-finding, ROAs, SOAs and review documents. Iress data shows how tech-led efficiencies are impacting client delivery. By leveraging the right technology, the time taken to review documents for existing clients dropped by 20% between 2021 and 2023, from 3.9 hours to 3.1 hours.
• Productivity gains - Iress’ out-of-the-box solution allows for more seamless and efficient advice delivery and removes the burden of ongoing updates and maintenance. Any legislative updates are built into the solution in-house, and whenever new calculators or tools are released these are updated. Practically, this means you don’t need to be across the latest industry changes or worry about updating tax rate changes, Centrelink rate changes, among others.
• Cost-effectiveness - The monthly user fee is competitive, straightforward and transparent: you won’t be hit with any hidden charges. This could drive cost savings multiple times. For example, with website administration included in the monthly fee for managed sites, you can avoid the admin charges for making any necessary updates. That’s separate from the thousands of dollars in costs if you hired an external consultant to manage your technology solutions and set up / edit your advice templates.
• Personalised branding - Your brand’s chosen fonts, colours, heading styles, disclaimers, cover page image, and more, can be presented within the toolkit. This wasn’t available previously for customers on Iress’ managed site solutions, and is an innovative solution to help you promote what makes your practice stand out against the competition.
• Clearer workflows - Xplan Advice Toolkit offers a visually appealing platform with a “bird’s eye” overview of what’s going on in your practice. At a glance, you can track new client opportunities, and see what phase existing clients are at. The standardised workflows also support better review processes, advice generation and implementation. It’s very easy to manage things in Xplan Advice toolkit, far more so than with multiple Excel sheets – removing the risk of error and handing you back precious time.
• Security features - Two-factor authentication is one example of the added safety functionality offered within Advice Toolkit. Also, Iress uses strict governance controls over the managed site to ensure client data, safety and privacy is upheld. Standard access levels are in force across the site, protecting data while you can focus on the task at hand.

What makes the Xplan Advice toolkit stand out from other models?

Yulia Tjhin, head of product - advice optimisation at Iress, explained: “What separates Xplan Advice Toolkit from bespoke solutions is the ease of use. It provides only what you need to generate good advice.

“Advisers don’t need to keep working through new updates – we take care of all that seamlessly. If there are legislative changes, for example, these can be fed into Xplan Advice Toolkit almost in real time.

“We often leverage changes from broader Xplan product developments, such as XTools+, WealthSolver or Risk Researcher, and feed these in for the benefit of advisers.

“We also collect each piece of customer feedback we receive from users. At the same time, we conduct industry research and stay on top of technological advances. We take those learnings onboard and refine the toolkit continuously to support advisers in the best way possible.”

Tjhin added: “By continually evolving Xplan Advice Toolkit, advisers can be assured they can take advantage of the latest industry opportunities. And, most importantly, remove the cost and time burden of extra admin. In turn, you can spend more time focusing on having great conversations with your clients.”

To take advantage of fast set-up and quick efficiency gains with Xplan Advice Toolkit, get in touch.