AdviceTech Podcast #35 – Xeppo – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello and welcome to the ensemble advice tech podcast with Peita Diamantidis. And the guest joining me here today to deep dive into Xeppo has a degree with a particular maths bent like mine. He’s got a Bachelor of Applied Science in mathematics, love the mess geeks go OS has been CEO and director of a variety of deal groups. So it’s been around in the game for some time. And he’s ex plan consulting business ended up morphing into what he is here to chat to us about today. Thank you so much for joining me on the show, Paul Campbell.

Paul Campbell
Thanks, Peita. Great to be here.

Peita Diamantidis
You’re very very welcome. Before we dive into Xeppo and data, and you know all that sort of stuff, then let’s take a moment just to sort of ease us in get to know you a little bit better through your use of technology. What’s your most used emoji do even use emojis?

Paul Campbell
Sparingly, so it’s probably a thumbs up or thumbs up or the Laugh Emoji? I’ll try and, you know, avoid don’t use them too much. But yeah, they’re there. They’re quite helpful. But the thumbnail that’s a good way of saving typing, I

Peita Diamantidis
think it is it is. And although I read an article in the last few months, that was about the difference between, say our generation and then millennial and Gen Zed, and particularly in Gen Zed thumbs up is seen as passive aggressive, would you believe so? Which is something I didn’t know either. So I wonder what else might emoji say? Like? Maybe I’m speaking a language? I don’t know.

Paul Campbell
Yeah. Well, I’ve learned something today, if nobody else does. So that’s good to know.

Peita Diamantidis
It’s crazy. So then let’s move on to your smartphone. You know, we’re all permanently attached to them if you had to wipe every app off them and just keep three, which one? Which three, would you keep?

Paul Campbell
Yeah, good question. Start with weather zone. I’m always wanting to know what the weather looks like. Probably because of what happens in the other two apps, which is wiki camps. Love my travel, we love to tour around with our caravan get into the Outback. So wiki camps is a great way of finding where to stay on a really, you know, just winging it heading out to the middle of nowhere. Yeah. And as you can imagine, the weather zone goes with it. And my third one would be my golf app, in terms of love my golf, and it’s a great lap to keep scores get your distance. So yeah, that’d be my top three, I think, look,

Peita Diamantidis
it was my dad was just saying the other day that they’re now doing, which I didn’t know doing it all via app, you know, rather than the old days with the tiny little pencil that never works, a little bit of paper and all that sort of stuff.

Paul Campbell
The Golf apps really interesting actually the with the Apple Watch connected, it’s actually doing all your biometrics, it actually gives you feedback on your golf swing, it’s going it’s getting quite scientific as to what it’s tracking. It’s really clever. It is it’s really cool. So that’s interesting technology, and taking golf to higher level tells you how bad your swing is, which.

Peita Diamantidis
No, that’s not what I did. Arguments when people yelling at their wrists with their Apple Watch. It’s bad. All right, let’s dive into Xeppo, shall we? So we’ll start at the top. I’m assuming most people have at the very least heard about you guys, but just in case they haven’t. Let’s start with the high level in the advice tech space or FinTech space, you know, what category? Do you guys sort of fall under? Who you normally line up against? You know, you know, so where do you fit?

Paul Campbell
Yeah, we’re kind of probably what we built set out to kind of try and bring data together. That was the starting point. So we would talk to a lot of wealth tech business or wealth businesses rather. And they would generally have an accounting or self managed super fund or mortgage broking angle as well. And so we started seeing a real gap in the ability to create a single client view, like how do I actually truly understand who my client is? And what it means to me? And where are the opportunities? So in many regards, we’ve kind of taken on a pretty unique challenge, which is trying to find the data dilemma. So there are people that kind of do bits of it. But in terms of the breadth and depth we go to at the moment, there’s probably no one that actually focuses on it like we do. Yeah, there’s lots of overlap with other components. But again, its core, I think, at the moment, we’re probably pretty unique in that regard in terms of particularly that integrated vertical markets that we try to tackle. So it’s all about that single client view for us.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, so let’s talk about how that came up, then this clearly for you to want to do that. Which, I mean, some of us would think you were mad to even try. I mean, what the hell foods to Murgatroyd like, it’s hard enough to get, you know, to apps that it can in any way connect on terms of data. So I’m curious what the trigger point was, like, what was the work you were doing that sort of caused you to go alright, we need to do this a different way. We need to approach this a different way.

Paul Campbell
Yeah. So when we first started 10 years ago with the the advice side of things, we would go into a lot of big firms and we would see that they’re running accounting and planning in the Same firms. And so we just send them look, you know, how are you? How are you running a business like that where you’ve got multidisciplinary challenges, you know, just curious for us, we were just saying how you doing that. And the phrase holy grail came up a lot where they would say, look, we’d love a single view. That’s the holy grail for us. But that just doesn’t seem to exist. Interesting. And we heard it enough title. Sorry, my lights have gone up. Sorry about that. Very economical focus. Technology. I’m not moving around enough. But the we heard it enough times that we came back and said, you know, there’s actually something here, there’s a real gap that no one seems to have wanted to tackle and to your point, now that we’ve done it, we know why. And so we ended up then going to a large integrated firm in Adelaide called perks. And we talked them about the idea and they said, Look, we love this idea, let’s work together to actually tackle this challenge. So it was quite an adventure, because we didn’t even know if we could do it. So how do we bring in accounting data, self managed, super fund all that stuff. So it was it was quite a project. And it’s been quite a journey.

Peita Diamantidis
And I’m betting too, because what’s interesting is the Xeppowas a concept actually got flagged to me first from within a dealer group, right. So that’s, that’s was them, because they’re like more, we need better insights into all of this data. So clearly, it morphed beyond the silo offering of a holistic practice, you know, so trying to get across the silos within a practice in has evolved beyond that. So, and I’m curious about the different layers of users. So there’s, you know, the, whoever the individual, you know, interacting with a client is, so that can sort of see into the different things that are happening for that client, maybe across different services is clearly the business. Yeah, across. And but also, then potentially, you know, overarching, might be a dealer group. So, so talk me through how each of those layers work?

Paul Campbell
Yeah. Again, when we got all the data together, that one of the it was a bit of a so what moment? So they went, Oh, this is fantastic. Now, now, what do we do with it? Yeah. And it was probably like having a smartphone with no apps back to your point. So they said, this is fantastic. But without any enablement, it really doesn’t. It’s got a currency. So we kind of got there in earth. Okay, we’ve we’ve done a, we’ve done a lot of good work, but what do we do with it? So. So then we went on a bit of a journey to figure out how to make this data, you know, valuable to the asset. So in many cases does not very sexy, right. So it’s just, everyone kind of knows it’s there. But I’ve been so preoccupied with other challenges, they haven’t been able to leverage it. So I think with my background, predominantly being wealth, having been a licensee, I kind of put my own hat on and said, You know what, I would love to be unable to use the data that’s locked up in a lot of revenue and client financial advice, tools, and actually get better oversight of my business. So yeah, so really having that knowledge was a matter of working with a lot of our licensees and said, What do you think about this opportunity? And they said, Oh, that’d be brilliant. So we kind of then got quite focused as a project on how do we enable licensees and there’s some really complicated use cases, you’ve got licensees who are now opening up their their architecture that allow a variety of tools to be used. And while that’s great for the practice to have choice, that creates some real complexity about monitoring and oversight for for a licensee. So that’s really brought us into the fold, where we’re now able to aggregate data across a number of different solutions, and start giving the licensee a lot more oversight, and also for the practices to actually use that data, regardless of what what applications they’re choosing to use. So it’s an important

Peita Diamantidis
shift in dynamic, isn’t it? Because what I think none of us really, honestly realized or even were aware of is because of the what you just described previously, and, therefore restriction on tools we could use, because that’s about compliance and oversight and things like that, in the end, the client, what the client might desire, and I’m not sort of talking about client needs as much as I am the experience, right? What experience they might desire it, we just struggled to even consider, like, it just was so hard, because it came from a different angle. Whereas if you guys can be tentacles through all the different options, then then you could create Uber wonderful client experience that then can be brought together. You know, and I think I like that shift in focus.

Paul Campbell
Yeah, I mean, mandate data, not product is something we talk about. And also, I think we sort of feature a futurist at the professional planner conference many years ago and are still running a licensee. And they had a great diagram that really hits home for me where they actually put the clients in the middle of this journey and said, That’s the client start or not anybody else. And that really struck a chord with me saying how we how do we actually enable that? How do we allow everybody to participate in the value chain, but keep the client at the middle of it? So for us that that was the opportunities, like how do we start gathering this data, allow the firm to manage the data on behalf of the client, but allow the client to also directly participate in the process as well. So really getting that data, open architecture platform, which is quite, what’s the word? We’re non proprietary, we’re happy that we’ll play with anybody they want to play around. So yeah, that’s been, that’s been challenging. And some people say they want to play and do. Yep. But I think they’d be they’re all coming together or starting to realize that they need to work together. Yeah. And it’s, it’s okay to have some overlap, because everybody, everyone has some competitive advantage somewhere.

Peita Diamantidis
And, you know, I think all of this is shifting, and some of it in a more rapid rate than we might have expected, because of the change in the dynamic of the industry. You know, it’s, it’s not CBA financial planning is one of the major consumers say, of certain products, and therefore defining and when I say product, I mean tech, and then defining where that tick goes, I think that, you know, boutique advice, has all these sort of things have changed. Therefore, what is a possible and B, what’s been demanded of tech? Right? Yeah, that’s shifted.

Paul Campbell
Yeah. And it’s a really interesting environment, right? Because one thing is that the advantages of us having a massive amount of data with means of client records across the industry now, we actually have also started doing benchmarking now. And so we’re seeing the average number of clients per advisor is about 125. And if you go back, you know, 10 years ago, I was probably more like, 400. Yeah, and they’re good or bad days, right, they’d have to see a client, they just sent money. And we’ve seen 12,000 advisors leave the industry, so and they’re not about to come back anytime soon, with the barriers that are coming in. So the whole name of the game now is capacity and efficiency. And the key to that is how you can leverage your data to to make your business more efficient. How do I get data from one system moving into all my other systems that are having to rekey them, for example, just simple things like that. So it’s becoming very relevant. And I think, you know, it’s, we’re built something probably, now people are actually starting to see the real value and data, more so than ever.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. And I think data is an interesting one, that the public, I think, probably have always assumed we had easy access and visibility, this stuff. It’s like when you ring a bank, right? Like you can’t under What do you mean, you can’t see that thing? I’ve got it all with that institution, you know, and, and the public’s, like, of course, you got what? Ah, no, actually, we can’t. And so I think part of this is almost keeping up with expectation rather than moving forward. You know, with this, it’s almost like we’re getting to the point where we actually can meet what they always thought we should have been able to do before.

Paul Campbell
I mean, if you map out how many times you’re keeping the same information across those systems, right now, it’s still still crazy. We’re still, you know, you go through the advice process, your launch the business, you have to rekey the data, we’ve got to fix that problem. That’s crazy that you know, and I think it’s important, the client is aware of what’s going on, particularly all the data security issues, yes. It’s gotta be to everybody’s benefit. And, you know, I think it’s really starting to play out. It’s kind of our time, I think,

Peita Diamantidis
let’s talk about that. For as a concept, there’ll be some listeners who this is not as much as if I was new. But this sort of data in a single view, is a little new. And so when we use the word data, we’re not just talking about numbers, right? Yeah, so this is much more than that. And and potentially more than just feel. So talk me through what we’re really talking about here in terms of what you guys can dive into. And then you know, sort of all together,

Paul Campbell
we’ve got this philosophy of no run group. And so know, is really about turning that data into insights and actually allowing them to understand where they are today. And so you know, what is what is the information? What is the data telling them about their business about where their pain points are, where they’re efficiencies? What are the clients got, you know, that can for integrated, firmer to service opportunities, like this client is not getting services here. Advisors are using it to review their books, look at their fees, review client service, offerings, all that kind of stuff. So for us that no is really about, you know, you can’t really go forward without having a good fat fine. Yeah. So turn that into insights. And the tools like Zeppo is not doing that that’s Power BI, we really embraced the likes of Power BI, but use whatever you want. But that’s the data open architecture where we can say, right, we’ve got all the data here. Now let’s use something like Power BI to really bring that to life for you and interact with your data. So let’s kind of start that’s what we start with many firms. It’s just like this until you unlock until you what they were at. And that’s working for financial planning firms as much as it is well firms. And then you get into the run, which is okay, now that I know what I know, how do I how do I go forward from here and that’s really about connecting the data. So for us, that’s where we start allowing data to move efficiently between In a financial planning system into a Word document into a signing document into a marketing tool. And so we can look at things like data automations. So if one of things we’re really keen to do is, rather than having people do manual tasks, if we can see that data is telling us something, why aren’t we just doing it automatically. So we’re really moving to the Data Automation stage where I can say it’s somebody’s birthday, I’ll just send them an email from you and say, Happy Birthday as if you did it, right. So we can really, you know, revenues, oh, this client stock didn’t get paid, you didn’t get paid for that client this month, what happened there, and let’s tell you about it. So.

Peita Diamantidis
And when it happens, I think that’s the other thing is, and one of my greatest frustrations is the bet, you’ve got to remember to run the report, check the report, find the exception, and then act on it like Oh, my goodness, like.

Paul Campbell
So we’ve just launched this idea of a Xeppo virtual system. And the whole idea is that this virtual assistant actually just monitors data and acts upon something you’ve really asked it to do like you, you’re onboarding a new client, can you send out the FSG, and the assistant will just do that. But as to your point, it’s just monitoring and watching the data, and doing things that normally you’d have to have someone like, the reporting is great, but someone still had to go to that report and look at it. So why not actually have the the automation tool, look at that and say, I’ll let you know, when I see something worth saying. They’re all about trying to create efficiencies for a better experience for the client. Because if I can see the reviews coming up, I’ll just kick off the review process. So there’s a whole bunch of things we can do. And you know, we’re just really starting to untap that as technology gets better, yeah, we’re looking to move that data around.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And it’s, it’s, um, there’s so much of that we do manually even for like, I would call us a highly automated practice in benchmark against most, you know, we use the ticker. But there’s a lot of that it’s that triggering stuff that’s manual, you know, it’s that stuff. And I mean, the difference would be if to, you know, to remember to fill your car, you didn’t get a light or you didn’t get a doll, you had to either pee into the actual fuel tank, or it just runs out, like that’s the equivalent, like, this is insane. Why are we doing this? It should just be blinking light. Oh, okay, or blinking light, and it already gets filled? Yeah, you know, like, and we’ve

Paul Campbell
also, we’ve also got the concept of almost like a chatbot, where I can actually say, can you send on my active clients and updated FSG, please, right, it will just carry out the process. So to your point, it’s all about trying to automate those tasks that take in so free your staff, because if I can free my staff up, I can get them to cope with you know, more growth service, the advisor, or the clients rather, and do things better. So and then the other thing is then moving that data, so we can now connect to hundreds of applications. So markets, rather than you having to manually update a muchness will just build the marketing and maintain the marketing for you in MailChimp or Active Campaign, whatever you’re using. Let’s just move that data into those those apps. So I think the net wealth advice tech report talks about our most firms have about 15 applications in play. Let’s let’s get them all talking to each other. That’s where we’re heading at the moment.

Peita Diamantidis
And so a couple of things, this is spoiling a whole lot of questions. But I think saying we should cover off. It’s easy for practices, even like mine that are smaller, we’ve got our own license, then to go all but this is for the big guys. Is that the case? Is this only for multiple, multiple decision pulling, you know, over 10 advice practices?

Paul Campbell
No, it’s I mean, there’s always a price point where you sit on that data. So that’s for us, for us is that if if I can, for example, pick a number to $1,000 a year you can do this kind of technology that’s cheaper than having an admin do all this. It’s all gonna be aligned to that. What efficiencies are giving me? But no, we very much think it’s about giving that scalability to a firm like yours, where it starts giving you peace of mind, you know, we’ve got KSI tools where we’re watching and looking for all those KPIs that you’re obligated to me. If we see a fee for no service risk, we’ll we’ll tell you that. So you know, those things are things that are scale issues. So the bigger more complex it gets, then I guess the it’s it’s like anything, the bigger the payback, but we very much self see, we know we’re working with one of our knife ourselves as much as we are with multidisciplinary as we are with licensees. So we’re very much trying to cater to all those three segments.

Peita Diamantidis
And you said it before, but I do I think going forward for the next few years capacity is the thing we’re going to be focusing on, that’s what it’s all going to be about. And it’s not necessarily something that historically we’ve really spoken about, you know, like productivity, yes, but sort of in a business sense. But the capacity of an individual and even being able to get a sense of that, you know, are we in the green zone, the yellow zone or the red zone? That’s, I mean, that’s always been super hard to do. And you have to really have a handle on your I mean, we’re sort of really proactively watching that stuff. But even then, it’s very hard to get that sense.

Paul Campbell
Yeah, and that’s that no one grow right. So so what Where are you? What’s your budget? What is your capacity at now? How does that compare to the benchmark he hit or behind? And then where do you want to get to? So we’ve kind of got an aspiration where we want to align our thinking to, at a minimum, we want to allow you to grow, add 50 clients per advisor. Yeah, as a capacity without increasing cost. And I think one of the things that we know technology’s not necessarily been succeeding is that people are trying to cut software costs on what’s happening. So

Peita Diamantidis
I’m going to share with the listener here, this is hysterical started going out, while you while you’re listening through audio only to record these episodes, we actually have visuals as well, so that we can eyeball each other, which is great. But once in a while, palsy goes completely dark, which is fantastic. So I’m getting, you know, sort of audio and a show, which is just fabulous, which is very environmentally friendly. Exactly, exactly.

Paul Campbell
But yeah, what I was saying is that, we’ve got to focus on that we’ve got to be aligned to that efficiency growth, because that’s really the only way I think we are able to grow at the moment. So we’ve got to get the advisors being able to see clients more effectively and not being caught up in other things. And this, and if we make them efficient, then what happens downstream, it’s, you know, I use the analogy, it’s like building a four lane highway, and then you get to the end of it, you still want to merge in the congestion, you just move somewhere else, right?

Peita Diamantidis
Oh, absolutely. The feed into the product provider. Like that’s just, that’s our wall. Actually, for us. There’s a lot of product if we manage to extract in, in the advice operation, but when it hits implementation and the providers or

Paul Campbell
until talking about that since 1996. We we very much want to do lodgement, once you’ve done that process, you know, we’ve got to work with the platform administrators need to realize that the lodgement doesn’t start at their product, it starts well, before that. Yeah. And one of our goals is to allow product posts, the lodgement data, the data straight into the lodgement platform. So and we know that’s a big one, it’s just a matter of getting everybody on the journey. But yeah, so it’s, it’s all those things we have to solve now. And they’ve never been more important, because, you know, finding good staff are finding staff at all, it’s getting harder across all levels.

Peita Diamantidis
And every industry, it’s not just everywhere.

Paul Campbell
So we’re kind of the enablers to that. We’re not necessarily got all the solutions, but what we want to do is connect to those solutions that digital signage probably the biggest evolution we’ve seen in recent years compared to anything else. So you know, things like the the virtual assistant for us are things that are directly trying to remove, like, rather than talking about CRM, so that no serum, yeah, yeah, to actually do some of those tasks without you having to do

Peita Diamantidis
and look, you there’s a lot of quotes, like you mentioned about the number of clients per advisor. And the problem I’ve always had with those is in my mind, that they were measured based on old school ways of doing things. And like, I don’t think that’s actually what the capacity is, if you’re optimized on a whole lot of things, if, if that happens, I feel like that figure can change. But there’s a journey. Right? And we do have to, you know, there’s layers to that. And depending on the service type, of course to so it depends on the way you’re engaging. But if you want to,

Paul Campbell
yeah, but I think, you know, we’ve been pretty fixated on advisor count recently, I think we actually probably look at number of active, a number of clients being given advice. That’s because if we’ve lost 12,000 advisors, and average 125, or 201 and a half million advice clients, I don’t think hope it’s not that bad. But that tells you what’s happening, and how do they get back into the market. So we talk about digital advice. That’s a whole different discussion. But those people want advice, they want a relationship with an advisor. And at the moment, they’re queued up out the front of people’s offices. So the opportunities never been better. Yeah. But the advisors got to be able to touch it and get to it. So thanks to us needs to be a priority for that for tech players like us.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. Now, in terms of, you know, people considering this for practice, then I’m betting there’s some sort of insider tips you could give. It’s almost before you even embark on this. And one of the things I guess I’m curious about as I think through, you know, how you can really get value out of having all of those insights and then being able to act on them is, for example, if if an advisor isn’t looking at their processes, a whole lot of micro tasks, and they’ve still got this big, provide advice, implement advice review, like if they’re looking at in a chunky way, I’m betting that it’s much harder to really get these sort of little automations happening and get this data is that valid is the sort of depth of which you understand and I’ve really sort of mapped out your process is going to make a difference when you engage with you guys.

Paul Campbell
Yeah, I think it’s probably more it’s as much as how much you prepare to want to make it work and invest your own resources. Yeah, into this so any tech can work if you want to make it work. Yeah. And I think probably the biggest failing we see is that they buy a piece of technology and think it’s just gonna Solve the problem,

Peita Diamantidis
plug it in, we’ve plugged it in, why isn’t nothing happening?

Paul Campbell
It’s, it’s still a car, you still want to drive it, you still want to be proficient driver. So we always say, what’s the day success factor? And we always say, having resources within your business focused on making sure whatever you’re going to do with technology you commit to.

Peita Diamantidis
And does that mean, you, therefore would suggest all the ones the success stories, or when somebody in the practice and not necessarily the principal, or somebody senior, somebody sort of takes a bit of ownership for the project?

Paul Campbell
Yeah, he wasn’t a champion. And again, that’s true for any piece of technology. So yeah, someone’s got to be KPI. We’ve got to be really clear on what you’re trying to achieve. Why are we doing this, and how you’re going to measure success, and how you’re going to get a return on investment. And I think that’s our learning work, like our learning also is that we’ve got to be with you along the journey, it’s got to be a partnership. It’s not just about us putting the technology and walking away. It needs to be a real partnership from start to as long as you’re there, that’s, that’s something that we’ve kind of really understood better in the last 12 months is okay, because your needs will change. When we started here, the journey was, these are your problems. But in six to 12 months, those problems will change. And you need someone like us there to say, Well, okay, what do we do about it? So it needs commitment on both sides? I guess, getting and still it still comes down to people as much as the technology is is the enabler? Yeah, look, I

Peita Diamantidis
think I mean, I can see that even with new tools, like, like a product, Rex, you know, Nick’s done a great job of solving a unit problem. They’re like, Ah, it’s so awesome. But he’s rapidly responding to what all of us are going to be good if you know, like that sort of interaction and being willing to give that without, it’s not a complaint. It’s just a mate, this is awesome. But if I could also do that, that’d be fantastic. You know, that sort of dynamic, I think, only improves the outcome. That money.

Paul Campbell
That’s a real tech problem, though, is, when you first start out, it’s very easy to do that. And then the layers get bigger and bigger and bigger than ever more for every product faces that challenge of Yeah, making sure you don’t over engineer as well.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, I think the other thing, too, I noticed, and maybe this isn’t a fair reflection on tech, as much as it is tech within providers, for example, is they then end up having a pathway so long, in terms of you know, the list that you almost like once in a while, I feel like saying to them, I think you should just delete the next 12 months of whatever you’re going to do and jump like, like just just leap into the next life because it’s, it’s taken too. And that’s not a judgment of how long it takes, it takes time. But sometimes you’ve skipped the need, you know, and now we could, you know, go right past something and straight into I don’t know, two factor all sorts of other things, that could just be a problem.

Paul Campbell
And I guess one of things we’ve kind of said to ourselves is we’d like to be the smartphone of industry, in other words, la to snap in other apps onto your data, with agility. And that’s probably because then as as products maybe don’t necessarily solve that problem, as well as it used to, it’s not as hard to bring in other solutions that may be innovating. And I think what we’re seeing is incremental solutions are more practical than wholesale, like you would call the monolith that we used to deal with, across all the industries. We’re more looking toward towards simpler solutions that solve a problem incrementally. Yeah. And, you know, I think that’s where we’re heading or if not already, so there’s, I think, as you’re saying, post the institutional framework, we’re seeing some fantastic innovation like product, Rex’s. But how do I bring that in without doing a whole new data migration? So, right, you need that common operating layer where, you know, it becomes easy to snap in, snap out that makes it very competitive. So that’s good. Yeah. And as you say, at some point, you go, you know what, this is not working for me anymore.

Peita Diamantidis
Right. You know, and I’m a big, I mean, I love to have that sort of environment where you can plug something in, it gets value, but then, you know, maybe it doesn’t keep up with others, like you say, I mean, you know, sometimes those first two markets aren’t the ones that end up being the ultimate Invicta, okay, great, well, we can plug something else in so that that concept where there’s the hub, that’s got some keeps that consistency, and then you bring these things in. I mean, that’s what for me, that’s the Holy Grail.

Paul Campbell
Well, that, and that’s what we’re trying to achieve. I mean, it’s never perfect, but it’s probably more the product comes to you, then you get to the product. I think that’s probably a bit of a 180 degree flip that we’re really keen to say, well, you can actually say comply with my data. There’s a whole thing you need to be really careful about making sure that you do own your data. And then that varies across the different providers, where some will actually take with you that it’s their data. So there are some and then in some cases that’s quite justified. If it’s like their IP, but something you need to be mindful as to how much you can play with what you think is Without as well.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Yeah. Which is a good tip. Yeah, exactly. Now you we were talking then about how things can evolve and change, and therefore the needs. And one of the thing, that’s one of the things coming up a lot more is client portals. You know, they’re the new black for 2023, for advice. So that’s something you guys are looking at, and how data will feed in or out of those and how that will work in conjunction with, you know, the other tools in the practice.

Paul Campbell
Yeah, so we started to build a client portal years ago, and just went off this is this there is so we’ve integrated with the likes of money soft in the past. One of the things that one of the key reasons I guess we’ve partnered heavily with, say the likes of net wealth is their whole of wealth client portal. So we’ve been working with them. So they can actually take that data out of Xeppo, regardless of what platform the client may be in, or whether they’re just an accounting client, right? And you can now use their client app to to engage with your client. Yeah. So that’s one example. It’s, it’s just something that’s online, but we would take the view that that’s something that if other, they’ve invested in that connectivity to our platform, and we’re always others, if others want to do that, then, you know, we’re open to that. So I think we want to client portals ours, especially to them themselves. It’s you know, there’s there’s certain lines we go with, this is now a specialist area, let’s just facilitate data to that and let them pick what they want to use.

Peita Diamantidis
Correct. And and if you know, from the clients perspective, what they used to in terms of interactivity of apps and and the things they can do. I agree, we need to, you know, let experts that can do that will produce a portal, and then we can, you know, blend into the practice, as opposed to these, often it’s an add on, you know, often it’s just sort of, or they can sort of look at this one thing, and like, that’s not a portal, it’s just a window.

Paul Campbell
And I think the one thing that we’ve talked about client engagement for many, many years, as long as I’m getting older, decades, but it also you got to think that it’s just another, you’ve got to commit to a client portal, if you’re gonna go deep or gonna go light. And that’s why I think you need to choose what is it just going to be for fact, find reverse? Or you’re going to go full, whole hog, the likes of a money, soft, full, comprehensive solutions that are very, very good. But you got to commit to that, right? Like any product. So people need choices to decide, what is their requirement? And those should, then again, as we were saying earlier, you’ve then got to commit to it.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and I completely agree with them. You know, we’re going in the path of choosing one that’s a communication hub, like this is how we will communicate in every single way. Like it’s, it’s not a all maybe once in a while thing, this is no, no, we if we shift to this, this is how we do things. And for anybody that doesn’t want to use that it’s an exception. You know, it’s a massive exception to do it. But to your point, that’s the decision we’ve made for a virtual practice, and the types of clients No, so

Paul Campbell
there’s a really good taste case study where there’s a large firm in Queensland have built their own client. And we we have our own conference, and they we got them talking about it. And at the end of the day, what we talked about how they use the app, it became a change management discussion, because they embedded the whole thing into their whole process. So they’ve mandated it from the advice of the admin to the client, that whole experience became totally integrated with their advice process. And given us Yeah, and it works really well. Yeah, as opposed to just having an ad on the side saying, Oh, it’ll get used.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think, you know, the other thing there is the difference between, you know, a communication versus a data feed. You know, they’re different things, too. So, all of that is, is but I like the idea of having the glue, which clearly Xeppo can be, that will help facilitate that no matter where it’s coming from, or to, hey, now have this one place that all this one thing that can sort of be the connective tissue for

Paul Campbell
like things like SharePoint, right? Yeah. What is using Office SharePoint for us as we documents naturally sit? So we interact, we can reread the documents, we can generate the documents that needs to be integrated with the client app, I don’t want to be managing documents twice, right? So they’re the kind of things we’re wanting vendors to think about, like, you know, think about the workload that gets created by having another document portal. You need it, but I don’t want to be double handling documents. So how do we move data documents around efficiently to create efficiency?

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, so that sort of brings to mind actually, you know, on the business you’ve got and the users you’ve got currently. What were the clearly it’s not a oh, gee, I just like the sound of Xeppo. This is not one of those little give it a world apps like I mean, there’s other ones that I suggest to people on like just give it a whirl. This is not in that category. This is something that you know, is solving a bigger problem. What are some of those drivers that you’ve seen, like something in particular That’s just caused somebody to go this is worth embarking on this process.

Paul Campbell
Yeah. So I think some good examples would be integrated is an obvious one, I just want single view of the client array, they want a better client experience. They just don’t know what they don’t know. Yeah, why better, they want better data. And so, you know, we bring it all together, we can show them the discrepancies very, very quickly. So it’s when people realize that, I think just generally, when a firm realizes that the data is the key to the future, they’re the ones that work really well, actually, they can, they realize it’s not sexy, but they realize the ticket to the game. So they’re prepared to invest in the in the boring stuff first, to then get the leverage and the scale that comes out of that. Yeah. So I think that’s how I probably characterize our most successful firms is that they, they realize that it’s not just about a solution, it’s fundamentally driven by them getting custody of the adult data, and putting the time into it, and they’ll get the payback. So it’s a bit of a longer burn, but it pays back or in the longer term.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, and I think I mean, I can see absolutely see a use case where, you know, there’s a number of practices that are going to be revisiting their fees, right, and how much they charge and how that works. Well, you know, in parallel to that, then having confidence, or understanding or insight into a per client profitability, like to be able to actually see, right hold on this one, you know, because of the way we work, because of it may be because the individual, but it also may be the service you providing, wow, that’s got that margin, whereas this one only has this margin. I mean, that is so powerful.

Paul Campbell
It is and that the other thing I’d add to that is it’s living in our world, that happens every night. So typically, at the moment, that’s a project where I’m going to extract the data, shape it, manipulate it, maybe have a consultant shape it, yeah, and I look at it, make decisions, and then it’s dead, and they have got to revisit it. So our view is the efficiency then becomes well looked at as many times as you like, it’s going to be as of yesterday, so you can actually see the impact and track it through as well. So benchmarking for us as live benchmarking, we’re not relying on a survey that happens, and then it’s pretty much six months old, right, the benchmarking becomes retirement, so you can actually look at how you’re going. So I think it’s just bringing the timeliness of data back to so that is a big deficiency. And sometimes providers don’t realize the amount of time their admins are spending, building charts and reflecting all that,

Peita Diamantidis
oh, yeah, cuz I, there’s so much talk in our industry about the cost to produce the advice, you know, that the advice, pointy end, I honestly think that going forward, where a whole lot of value is sitting, that’s just not being realized is in support and admin, I just think there, there’s just so many things, and it’s not their fault at all. In fact, it’s quite the reverse, I think, you know, if we unleashed them, they’d love it. But not only on, you know, doing the right tasks at the right time, multiple data entry, all that sort of stuff, but also being able to watch and see, well, hold on, why is why is there so many of those queries are because we’re having to call back that provider four times to get a result, you know, starting to be able to see some of those red flags of where we’re almost subsidizing the the institution’s because of the way they’re working? Well, you know, I would love that insight, because I’d start to bang on doors, you know, I start to make some noise about it. Whereas right now, if you do that, it’s anecdotal, you can only really say, Oh, gee, I sort of know the this is happening this many times and the team, so they waited for an hour and a half or whatever, but to be able to actually give that a bit more substance. Through that sort of, you know, watching that live data is really powerful.

Paul Campbell
Yeah, so we’re going to do the know phase, as I call it, it’s all about those understanding points. So we’re, we’re keept would dive into that more and more bringing more data to the table so they can start seeing those metrics. Yeah. Because that’s half the battle is actually yes. Okay. I don’t know what I don’t know.

Peita Diamantidis
Right, being aware? Absolutely. Is there any area of, you know, for the users, people that are currently so do have it integrated in the practice that if you think, wow, they haven’t even gone this far, like, there’s even more value and he sort of areas that you think, you know, there’s some more gems out there that they could be going further with?

Paul Campbell
Yeah, I mean, probably first one is particularly integrated firms not unlocking referrals across teams. So they quite often they’ll start that journey with us. But there’s barriers. Again, it’s cultural in many cases. But to me, that’s one of the great opportunities where if I can see a client circumstances change, or maybe they just had their birthday, so all of a sudden TTR is irrelevant, right. So I don’t feel like they’re acting on the data and taking those opportunities. Because they’re so busy that I need to Yeah, but I think that’s one area. And I think probably I think it’s probably was asked to actually help educate them to take this opportunity. So I don’t really think they’re the problem. I think our challenge is to communicate those opportunities. So I think in the most, they’re getting into it, it’s keeping it current. It’s, it’s coming back to us the challenge. Yeah, it’s Yeah, it is what moment that we’ve we’re constantly having to make irrelevant, and we just keep trying to bring in new technologies to make those those points fill

Peita Diamantidis
those needs. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things and, and, of course, this is like a multiple evolutions down the track. And once you’ve embedded this, and you’ve squeezed out every other bit of value, you can, where I can really see this going is, is with true insights, then instead of just, hey, we’re going to have a webinar coming up next month. And this is the topic, it’s, we’re having an invitation only targeted at the ones you know, that need that because there’s a gap. And it’s, you know, the invitation that goes out as personalized, there’s a call, it’s personalized, like, it can really start to narrow down. So instead of a conversion rate for an invitation to those things, which can be like one or 2%, it could be 80%, because you’re only sending it to the ones you know, it’ll give immense value.

Paul Campbell
very targeted, we can we can actually help them do that very, because we get so much data and they can be so point pointed on that. And the other thing that we haven’t explored, which is it’s there for us to do is what we call predictive analytics. Yep. So we can take your data and actually start talking about expected client trends like right, this behavior probably says that there can’t might be a risk or there’s opportunities not picking on so the more data we get, the more we can use the the AI engines that exist within the likes of Power BI to start getting there. We haven’t done that yet. But still got plenty others to get to. But that’s the kind of stuff that’s on our roadmap where, okay, let’s start giving you a data. That’s all seen there. And it can probably tell you stuff that you didn’t realize,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, yeah. And so I mean, you I mean, at its heart, your tool is sort of about integration isn’t or certainly about data sharing. And so I’m imagining there’s a big long list of things that therefore, you guys talk to or peer into? How does that work? Like? How do I, you know, if there’s a practice that comes to you, and they happen to use this new thing that you guys haven’t worked with before? How does that work?

Paul Campbell
Yeah, it’s a real challenge. Because there are so many systems we have to prioritize them is no different than the other development company. So we we built off our own back the ones that we got market size estimate. The API’s exist so people can build their own. But that’s easy to say, like API’s just create Mexican standoff standard. So we’ll go we’re gonna API and the other vendor will say we’re gonna API and then nothing actually happens. Yeah. So we’ve just got to prioritize. We have got new technologies now that actually allow for more rapid integration capabilities. So now that we’ve got that we’re just starting to look at how do we use that better? Yep. But yeah, it’s like, it’s a challenge. It’s not as it’s solved. And so we very much let the client demand drive our priorities. We never said I was gonna build it, because it’s cool. Like, you know, we started with likes and explain the zeros, the APS as the classes are, well, because we knew they were, they were in demand being really well used. And we are like doing financial services, we’re just at the moment, pretty much connecting to the broad range now, because the demand starting to get there. So yeah. So more and more connections are coming. And they’re, they’re working with us. So. Okay. And part of that’s their willingness and part. And that’s also the larger licensees that have opened up there. Architecture. Yeah, pretty much saying you can play but you’ve got to connect to our data source, right. And therefore, that allows the licensee to allow them to play in their group. But on the basis, they get the data so they can manage and meet their licensing obligations. So it’s a bit of a triangle going on there where it’s kind of self serving.

Peita Diamantidis
And I mean, it makes sense that it’s the you know, say for example, you’ve asked tools, what about the more generic CRMs? Like, have you guys gone down the path of any I mean, what’s one off the top of head Salesforce, so you know, others that are sort of the more generic ones have? Have they come up as well?

Paul Campbell
Or they come up with we built a basic CRM and our solution? We did that because we originally just use dynamics. Because we didn’t see why would we build a CRM, our clients actually took us on that journey. And so that’s kind of been good and bad, because I think other serums in Pacino’s has a bit of competition. But we see that as a very simple option. We’ve connected to a couple of other serums, but it’s probably the one area where I think we’re still gonna come to gather with those other serums to say, look, you know, CRM is choice as far as we’re concerned. And there are things our CRM intentionally does not do and and the Salesforce is the world, if you will embrace that kind of product, but isn’t it we’re never going to compete with that. And we integrated with those not not so much to this point, but we’d like

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and I And ultimately, it’s probably Well, for me, what I’ve seen is been a bit of a restriction of our use. I mean, you described a Client Center center or client centric approach. Those tools are the ones that are outside of our industry, you know, always tried to have that at the very least, whereas, you know, the tools within the industry sort of has an almost, I guess, advice processing trick, correct? Yeah, that’s where the, you know, the center is so so yeah, I can see the positive to some of those coming in, because it’s sort of forces that shift.

Paul Campbell
Yeah. So So seems really interesting one, right, because I think a lot of people are embracing alternative serums. Because they want more in that area. Yeah. But CRM itself is, is a really hot area to play because it’s it directly affects everyone in the business. It’s all about your processes. It’s all about those components. So it’s not an easy thing to change from whatever you’re doing now to wherever you go. Yeah, so data helps done under underestimate the time and effort and commitment you need to make to make to do you need to embrace it properly, like we were discussing earlier.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. So looking forward, you know, there might be some, you know, things are coming up on the development path. I’m curious about those. But I’m also curious about the way you’d love it to go, you know, we’d like this sort of wish list that’s a bit further down the track as well, for

Paul Campbell
a quick question. Look, just more connections, more velocity of data, that’s probably the high level we would love to see. straight through the platform. We’d love to, you know, more interactions with the other products in your ecosystem, so that when I make a change, I know it’s just going to flow through nice and efficiently. sending data to other systems is sometimes easy, and sometimes quite problematic. So you know, that’s probably just the general statement, like, more data, more connections is kind of a priority. It’s not easy, it’s quite a complicated thing to do. Data security, all those types of things have to be thought through. So that’s probably the high level aspiration. And probably, you know, just more automations so we talked a lot about data process and document automations. How do we do more without you having to do anything? Yeah. So that’s probably this the kind of goes hand in hand with that first statement about more connections, but we want to create that capacity. That’s, so that’s a generic statement, like, it’s because it’s quite far reaching. So it’s a it’s a big challenge, but you know, just better interaction with Office 365.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah,

Paul Campbell
those core systems, your marketing tools, your platforms, your life providers, that kind of stuff prices are we’d love to play.

Peita Diamantidis
And there’s just so many ways, if you can get that far, there’s so many ways that can evolve. Because even even, you know, okay, we’ve created this thing, it’s got to get posted out, it can auto go to the mail house, you know, like there’s some things that, that we all just see as a given that we all have to do, which actually you don’t, it’s just requires so many layers, like you say, of analysis, development attention, you know, to get there, but it’s possible, you know, Truly this stuff is possible, it’s just gonna take some time and some work to sort of get to that point. And so it’s exciting to have sort of a, a, you know, an offer that can help facilitate that without it being quite so horribilis, although still is going to be hard, you know?

Paul Campbell
Yeah. But as easy. We would.

Peita Diamantidis
That’s the thing. Right? And, and it’s an interesting restriction on the industry. I, I, you know, innovation is such a funny word. And I think I always sort of bring it back to the fact that, you know, outside of our industry, there’s other things, people doing things far in ahead of where we’re at. And I feel like we’ve got to remind ourselves of that all the time. Because I can the I can, I can say all what we do is really advanced, you know, maybe it is in our industry, but I hate when you go outside of it. I think

Paul Campbell
it’s changing because of now that the institutions have they’ve pretty much controlled innovation in many ways, because the practices waited on them. Yeah. So I think innovation is definitely speeding up in many parts. So we’re seeing some good stuff happen. And then the other bit I add is Don’t Don’t forget what we do, as financial advice is actually really hard. And don’t beat yourself up too much. Because actually, it is if it was easy, it would it would be online, and it would just happen. Right? So Right. There is a balancing act of what I’d say well, good quality advice is about sitting in front of a client and that one hour meeting is always gonna be a one hour meeting on gospel. So yeah, that’s a bit of pragmatism.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, but I think what’s exciting about this stuff is, is I think we can turn fear of call it Robo or AI all the sort of things that people can potentially be fearful of if they were impacted and industry into excitement because it lets us be more human. Like, if these things can be automated, if they could, this can all happen magically. Imagine the time you can spend actually being human with Congress. I think that is exciting.

Paul Campbell
And that’s our we talked about it internally, they’re probably sick of me talking about it’s all that capacity we’ve got, if we’re not giving the practice some kind of efficiency return yet. And why are we even bothering because that, in fact, I don’t have time to do any of this. So we need we need to fix that challenge that that to us is the number one issue in the industry today.

Peita Diamantidis
Awesome. Is there anything we’ve missed? Anything we haven’t touched on?

Paul Campbell
Now? I think you covered it pretty well actually. got right into it. But yeah, it’s it’s not easy. Nothing’s easy. Technology is always a challenge. But I think we’ve, as you said, We’re crazy to take on what we have. And I think it’s Ali. It’s been a long journey for seven years. And I think we’re already starting to see what’s happening now.

Peita Diamantidis
Exciting. All right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about Xeppo, then the website link is in the episode shownotes, along with Paul’s LinkedIn details, I’m sure if he reached out, he points you in the right direction of what body internally could answer your queries or engage on the sort of thing you might be attempting to do. But look, thank you so much for joining us. And for sort of really, you know, bringing to life a tool that in the end will be able to give us a really three dimensional view of our clients and our businesses. You know, I think that’s exciting for it actually, to stop being just this really static thing. And you know, one moment in time of data to turn that into something, an organism living and breathing is really exciting. So congratulations on the efforts so far and please keep up the good work. Not at all.

Paul Campbell
It’s been a great time talking to you. I really appreciate it.

Peita Diamantidis
Wow. So are you in a practice that currently uses Xeppo? How are you aware it’s there? How much do you interface with it or AWS can see the value of producers, I think most of us would be fascinated for anybody that’s in one of those practices or even run one practice using zippo, I would love you to share on the ensemble platform. This is, you know, the next wave, it’s the next thing that we’re all going to be focusing on data and the way we can really utilize it and can use it as connective tissue in our practices. So please, please share your ideas and experiences and tips with other advisors. And as for sort of my thoughts on this, you know, it’s interesting, I think, you know, advisors will often reflect that, hey, you know, for accountants, you know, tax returns, when you do your tax return, it’s always looking back, it’s after the fact. And therefore, it’s difficult to improve anything, because it’s sort of a bit too late to make any changes. What’s interesting, though, is that very approaches often how we’re sort of running our advice businesses, right, we, we might do an analysis at a point in time, it might happen at the end of the year, or, you know, that sort of timing at one point in time we check out what’s happening, and we decided, you know, what, to optimize or to improve productivity, let’s change a process or add a step. But then, once we do that, we’ve only sort of got anecdotal evidence of the impact, and maybe only when we look at it again, in 12 months, do another analysis, will we see whether there’s, you know, any improvement, or what sort of actual value that decision made? You know, imagine instead, you know, a world where we could even do a B, testing on process changes, or engagement techniques, or, you know, trial, a change to an internal process to see if there’s an immediate impact, like really being able to test and tweak to result in optimization, whereas currently, you sort of have to make a decision implementing you’re stuck with it, right. So, so I think, you know, live data is, is what we all need to be able to have that approach. Ultimately, it’s a journey. I’m not saying it’s exists right now. But, but you know, what a start if we can get that live data and tools like zippo, that sort of collate all of that data across across multiple sources are the connective tissue required to get us there? You know, I know, I’ll be closely watching zippo, and what they can do. You know, we’re a practice obsessed with processes and effectiveness and particularly using tech to automate things that a human simply isn’t required for. But we’re doing it anyway. And you know, data being both accessible and visible, and transparent, and all in one place can amplify those efforts considerably. So without a doubt, going to be keeping a close eye on what they’re doing and how they’re progressing. Now, as you know, there’s only one skill we need to become bionic advisors. And that’s avid curiosity. So to help you build that habit, today’s curiosity corner app that I’ve just wanted to share with you is Opal. Now, none of those Sydneysiders I’m not referring to your Opal Card use to pay for public transport. This is actually an app, you can find it at OPL dot S O P A l.so. And their tagline is find your focus. Now, it might seem counterintuitive for a tech podcast, to be highlighting an app that helps you reduce screen time. I think really, Peter feels like that’s, that’s opposing every other episode we’ve had. However, I’m a big believer in using tools. Well, not mindlessly, right? And I figure that things like Opal can help break us out of our smartphone addiction in particularly when we’re at home, if no other other no other time. So you may have already tried screentime features, I think most phones have that sort of what what time have you spent on your screen is giving you that feedback. But the differences I understand it is with Opal, you get to apply a combination of restricting apps that you can get to in certain times, giving you real time feedback, but also rewards so that you can begin to focus much better on the thing you want to focus on right now and snap ourselves out of that phone zombie mode that we all get into. So please, if you do check it out, let me know and I’d love to hear how you go and how it manages to give you a little bit of sanity back perhaps. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll get your advice tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And if you’re keen to hold a team building event that really ignites their curiosity, then I would love to run and awaken the misfit within workshop for your team, where we sort of get them out of survival mode. We move beyond just adults and we really started venturing the conversations in the Connect She has created in these workshops are incredible. And as your team build their curiosity, math muscle, then they’re also learning a skill that can be applied in the practice in your future innovation efforts. So it’s got a bit of a double whammy benefit there. If this is of interest then please reach out to me on LinkedIn forward slash Peita M D. That’s PEITA M D. Otherwise, I look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember, advice explores: Stay curious.