AdviceTech Podcast #57 – Plutosoft Update – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the Ensombl AdviceTech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And this week we’re diving into another one of our advice tech sequel episodes. Now what’s cool about this is I think the last time that I interviewed this particular person, I was introducing it as the XY advisor AdviceTech podcast. So at the very least, that’s changed since we last spoke, we’re going to be talking about updates, new features, enhancements, all the other exciting things they’re doing. So here today to keep us up to date on all things Plutosoft is the MD himself. Thank you so much for joining me on the show, Vincent Holland and welcome.

Vincent Holland
Well, good morning, Peita, it’s great to be doing another episode. I can’t believe it’s been 12 months since our preview. So I’m really excited to be sharing some updates

Peita Diamantidis
in this is crazy. So we last spoke at episode two of the show. So you were one of the original people that took a risk on this crazy person asking you questions about your tech. So I appreciate that, at the very least, for you being willing to have a conversation. And here we are. I think it’s number 57 or thereabout. So, you know, this is crazy stuff. So I’m very excited to dive in here. What I imagine has been a busy year for you. But before we dive in, we’re going to take another step towards getting to know you better through your sort of tech use. If someone came to you and said, I’m going to build an AI buddy for you that will just magically get a task done. Is there something particularly you’d love people somebody to just wage and wave a magic wand for you. So that AI style and make a lot a lot easier?

Vincent Holland
We’re better we’ve we’ve got a busy household, three kids under six, and they are dishwasher packed up recently. And we’re about to move house, so I haven’t been able to replace it. So I’ve spent the last few months washing your dishes in a commercial kitchen. So it might not be an AI invention specifically, but if there’s one piece of tech I could do, it’s right now it’s a fully functioning dishwasher. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
But you know, what the, the gap between problem with thing like that and resolving it is huge. It’s a pain in the neck, isn’t it? So even the automatically that doesn’t work, and it makes an appointment for somebody to either come and check it out or get you a new one. I actually would be up for that. Because that’s just a disaster when those things happen.

Vincent Holland
It’s insurance. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Right?

Peita Diamantidis
I completely agree with you. Oh, yeah, I couldn’t do without the dishwasher that they’d be teased. And I do not have that many people in now households. So now the thing is not all tech is good tech. Right? So is there a more analog version of technology, you know that you actually prefer something that you sort of like the previous version of?

Vincent Holland
Well, it’s funny, I was born in the mid 80s. So I’ve lived through that era in which we’ve seen probably the most rapid technological advancement in human history. My six year old son doesn’t quite understand that the internet that Alon YouTube didn’t exist, but I was his age. So you know, I remember things like the Sony Walkman, the evolution to the Discman, the windows 95. To remember when that was years launched the iPod, the iPhone, the old Nokia 5110. Yep, it was the brick indestructible you can throw it into the wall and it wouldn’t crack. Yep. But probably the thing that I reckon lated better back then was the old Hi, Fi stacks. I really miss that Sony hifi. They don’t look pretty, but you just can’t believe the sound quality.

Peita Diamantidis
And oh, you know what, though? I think they look they might not have looked pretty, but they looked cool. I think it established a tone for a household of wearing to music. Like I think it was a real messaging item. For people like this is important to us. I agree with you. Whereas now, you know, they have a little bit of something plugged into a chat. It just doesn’t do the same thing for me. It just doesn’t have that same deal.

Vincent Holland
You can’t hear the bass. No,

Peita Diamantidis
no. So I’m there with you. I’m right there with you on that one. All right. Let’s dive into Pluto Pluto. So shall we now there will be some people listening right now who maybe didn’t hear our previous episode, we’re not going to repeat all of that. I’d encourage you to go back and listen to episode two, if you can to sort of you’re a bit of a beginner. But that said, why don’t we just start with the category you guys are in just broadly for people. So we’ll position them there. And then we can dive into the updates. So you know where do you guys sit in the advice tech space and sort of Who do you generally lined up against

Vincent Holland
so put us up this is positioned very much as that all in one software solution that business critical piece of software that combines the core CRM and workflow function and then brings the whole advice process one to one systems. So that’s everything from factfinding strategy modeling, product advice, documentation, producing statements that advice records, that advice, review documentation. We’ve also got a firm branded portal through Actually vice practice can create front end access for their clients share documents, the wealth snapshot published modeling. And really the number one pain points we set out to resolve for practices to help them to produce high quality advice documentation in in a fraction of the time. So it’s very much that core piece of advice, technology.

Peita Diamantidis
Awesome. And so very much Yeah, very much in the center. This is not an add on, this is the sort of tool it’s in the center of what advice practices doing. And you’d have the whole team unit and all that sort of stuff,

Vincent Holland
very much. So it’s not a bolt on or an add on. It’s very much that core piece of software, we have a philosophy here that you should only ever enter a piece of data once Once data is in a system, you don’t want to duplicate the data because the minute you do that, you’d lose accuracy. And then also efficiency.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s talk it’s been 12 months. So let’s talk about, you know, some of the big, big updates you’ve been working on, and then we can sort of get to some tweaks later on. So what are some big chunky things you guys have either rolled out or been spending time on for the, for the tool?

Vincent Holland
Yes, so so a couple of things that we’ve been working on Functionality wise, is we released the pulse, which is a business reporting dashboard that gives advice practices, business intelligence data. So just having that high level set of data that you can see on a screen, it’s got your fees, your top clients, funds under management revenue, really looking at the business performance. And our ethos here is that we’re not just about providing a piece of technology, but we’re here to help practices produce results. So that’s improving profitability, delivering a better client experience, automating the non value, adding parts of the advice process so that advisors can have time freed up to focus on building client relationships. So there’s that business metrics piece that we we’ve rolled out, we continue to expand on integrations. Yeah, so we’ve added new providers to our data feed lists, we now have data feed, but just about every major investment platform in Australia, we recently added generation life, the investment bond, perfect provider, and we’re also doing some work at the moment with colonial on its new Edge platform,

Peita Diamantidis
it’s into the data feed thing must be I mean, you guys must all just pull your hair out every time one of them either launches a new product or merges with somebody else, because it’s like guys seriously, like, because they’re not, I’m guessing you guys after then, you know, adjust again, you know, when there’s somebody takes over somebody else, and now the data is different, or it’s coming from somewhere different, or it must be, it must be a bit of a challenge,

Vincent Holland
it sure was challenging, I would say it from from a system maintenance perspective, it’s one of the most time consuming aspects of the software to to maintain is the is the data feeds. But it is, you know, at the same time, it’s such a key thing for practice is to have to have that portfolio data flowing into the system. So it is it is a critical part of the process. But unfortunately, quite time consuming.

Peita Diamantidis
It is isn’t it? And I’d love to just touch on this business intelligence concept. Because I think what I love about that is, you know, for many years, I just don’t think many of us in financial advice in whether it’s, you know, owning a practice or running one, as practice managers really had a access to or really, were encouraged to look at the business as that sort of, you know, a normal logistical environment, you know, what’s the, what are the things that happened in one order? where are the bottlenecks, you know, where are we spending too much time we’re in, we’re not spending enough, you know, those sorts of things. And so, so it’s encouraging to get more and more information on that. So that, for example, I mean, and we’re not there yet, I’m assuming, but I’d love to get to the point where somebody who’s at that level, you know, sort of managing resources and things could see, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, we’ve got a build up at this point, you know, whatever in the cycle it is, we’ve got to build up there, we need to throw some extra resources at that, or, or, Oh, hold on, we don’t have enough coming in, we’re going to get a gap and not have enough for everybody, you know, those sort of things that let you you know, turn those dials in your business to just keep it humming. Rather than suddenly turn it, you know, everybody turns up and there’s, you know, people pulling their hair out and it overwhelm all round, I think, you know, starting down that path of having more information, because it’s there, you know, and drawing it out from a from a business perspective and a resources perspective is is exciting over time.

Vincent Holland
Yeah, absolutely. And what what we found in our system because we do capture the all the data points about the practice, that’s, that’s client information, that’s workflow information, the revenue and fee fee reporting. We’ve got all that data in our systems that was really about how can we present that in a way that advice practices can see that at a dashboard level and and be able to analyze those key business metrics Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Peita Diamantidis
Is there any other sort of bigger updates that you’ve worked on in the last year? Anything else that sort of sort of a chunky tool?

Vincent Holland
Yeah, a couple of the other things that we’ve been working on, uh, not so much functionality specific, but really about building a strong capability when it comes to sins like implementation and our body. Yeah. So we know that when a practice wants to make the software switch, that it that it is a big step. And part of what we’ve invested in is to make that a very structured and smooth process. So that’s everything from being able to migrate data across from their existing system across into the new system, the training involves getting all team members up to speed as quickly as possible. So we’ve put a lot of effort and resources into making that a seamless experience all the training and content that goes along with that. Certifications. So we’re now ISO certified. So that was a big step, you know, with the way cyber security is going, that’s been critical. And it’s really important that as a provider, we’re at the forefront of, of cyber security. Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting, five years ago, when we had discussions, cyber security was just an afterthought. Yeah. Now, it’s one of the first things that practices talk about when they’re looking at technologies. So cyber is the cyber is becoming such an important part of the tech landscape. It is,

Peita Diamantidis
isn’t it? And it’s even, I mean, I’ve just become really aware, too, I did a, a masterclass for a group of virtual session for, for the public. So for a small community, and, and which was great. And there was a question about some tools they might be trying to use or consider using, and which, you know, great questions, yay. And, and, hey, what do you think about this, that sort of stuff, and, and I found myself anything to do with tech, you know, reinforce, make sure you have, you know, multiple factor, make sure you have make sure you have don’t use these generic Putlocker, even though that wasn’t really what we’re talking about. And and they weren’t even this is not about them engaging with us, I’m just finding that I’m sort of really going hard on all of the layers, we can the way we can protect ourselves that anybody I’m interacting with now, the minute the technology comes up, because we’ve just got to all get on to it. You know, it’s so it’s so important, and people still are fairly green on this, aren’t they? You know, certainly they are. And

Vincent Holland
it’s, it’s something you really want to be across, you know, particularly when you’re looking at technology, because of the nature of the data that financial advice practices tend to hold about clients, you know, it’s important data, it’s financial data, it’s, it’s personal data. So you really want to make sure that you are doing your, your due diligence, and I would encourage advice practices, when you’re looking at software providers look at things like ISO certifications, get an understanding of where the data is, is hosted. Is it in Australia? Where is it hosted? Does the provider do things like penetration testing? Yep. So, you know, just being I think those are the things that, you know, in this landscape that practices should be, should be looking at when they’re doing their due diligence?

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Now, any sort of, you know, tweaks you’ve made in there, are there any other you know, little things that you sort of adjusted? Well, I’m sure there’s loads, actually, little things that maybe even were suggested by users or things you sort of made changes through over the last 12 months?

Vincent Holland
Yeah, we’re constantly doing incremental changes. We have a weekly release sheduled. So every, literally every week, we do we do a new release. So that’s typically done on Wednesday night, outside of business hours, a lot of that is driven by user feedback. So we’d have a specific channel where users can log idea requests, and then we incorporate a lot of that into our roadmap. So there are a lot of, you know, small scale enhancements that are done each week to the system. But as you would know, it, you know, you do little things over a week, over the course of a year that that then becomes quite a lot. So it’s constantly releasing new changes into the into the software.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah. And it’s, there’s just so many places, and so many things that are now possible to be updated. It’s, well, it’s exciting times, I think it’s not I mean, you know, years ago, we used to get, you know, updates on the tech, they’d come through as the email. And to be frank, no matter really what the tech was, it was generally not something you’d bother reading because often it was about like underlying, sort of either processing or, you know, stuff behind the scenes that they’re doing and just letting you know, we’ve done this thing. And I’m like, Well, I don’t even understand that what that is, why would I care? What I love about where we’ve got to with technology now is, is generally those updates are all about user experience. Like it’s all about what makes it easier for us as users. So which is really cool, you know, so it means we are getting, you know, more either x As or it’s making it easier to use, or it’s extra features, you know. So it’s, it’s it is a different world in that sense, I think these days than it used to be for sure.

Vincent Holland
That’s right. And part of what we do in the financial device space, a lot of is, is legislative driven as well. So, you know, as you can imagine, with one or two modeling, there are constant updates to indexation rates to yet Centrelink assets and income tests. So you’re constantly having to update the system to take into account those sorts of things.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, for sure. Now, I’m curious, is there anything you’ve sort of witnessed a practice doing with the tool that sort of knocked your socks off? You’re like, wow, that was a fabulous way to, you know, utilize the tool or that really, because, you know, people can get really creative? Because we don’t all think the same, do we? So is there anything you’ve seen, where you thought it was just a fantastic way? I could be internally, it was a value internally, or it could be enhancing the client experience that sort of was really cool. Yeah, well, this one,

Vincent Holland
this one really comes back to the point about how important it is to implement software. Well, in a practice, you can put this tool in the world, but unless you’re using it optimally, you’re not going to get the benefits from it. Yeah, one of the initiatives we released is what we call our best practice series, which is firms a proven methodology to quickly adopts aspects of the tool to see more immediate results. And one practice we worked with, it was really about streamlining their review process. And one of the things they did was to introduce the front end client portal into the into the review process, nice. So you know, building that review workflows, so that portal, access gets sent to the client before the meeting, client can update the data in the portal that syncs and updates the data automatically into the core system. And then that data then flows straight through into the review documentation. So actually, being able to incorporate that portal into the review process, made the review process much more efficient. And when it comes to getting those efficiency wins, the review process is one of the best places to start. Because for most firms, that’s where most of your time gets spent is the volume review clients. Yeah, that’s your bread and butter. It is

Peita Diamantidis
right. And I love that idea, too. We do this a lot with any either data. So sometimes you’ve got to do a data cleanup, or there’s something you’d want, or some more data you want to collect across the board or like this, where you want to introduce something. And we’ve now always do that in that sort of rollout way. So it’s okay, what are we doing regularly that we can gradually roll this out, and reviews are perfect for that. So it means you’re not onboarding, I’ve got huge number of people in one hit, because it’s just a disaster, right? Whenever you try and do that, whereas to do this, as part of the next review, whenever the next review comes up, the person is going to get the invitation to the portal, then they’re going to, and they’re immediately going to start using it with the advisor, or so they don’t get an invitation and then don’t really have a good reason to go in for six months, you know, so I love that idea of timing it so that it’s immediately useful and relevant for people

Vincent Holland
at the dashboard, and the minute you bring a process that affects your clients. So it’s it’s one thing to implement change in your practice, it’s quite another to do that with your with your clients. So there’s actually a method to getting that adoption with, with clients using the portal, you know, in terms of how to notify clients, how you bring them on board, so that and that’s part of what that best practice series is all about is helping get that uptake with clients helping them to, to prepare, because if you, if you implement it properly with with your clients, you’re gonna get a much better success rate in terms of clients using that process.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s got to be that whole bouncy ball thing, doesn’t it? You’ve just got to make it such that people can just step into these things. And not I mean, some of these things, I think. I mean, I hear a lot in technology, all my my clients would never do that, you know, and now, part of that is us projecting, I think, because it sounds hard and difficult. So we’ve got to admit to that we’re projecting but I think also, what we’re saying is if somebody dumped that on me, and I was a client, I wouldn’t want to do that. And the answer is, you’re absolutely right. Like, you can’t just dump and run with this. You know, any great onboarding experience, like you’re saying is the journey that sort of feels easy, and it naturally flows in steps and, you know, there’s help and there’s people holding your hand, you know, we’ve got to take that sort of stuff really seriously with our clients

Vincent Holland
100% And sometimes we don’t give clients enough credits. You know, even clients older demographics, that they’re much more tech savvy than they once were. So we’ve seen really good success rates in terms of clients using the potty provided as you say that it’s, it’s it’s rolled out effectively to then

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, it looked really to me the filter. Because we’ve got debt, Tim and I’ve been debating this sort of stuff for a while now. And, and our filter now is do they use a smartphone. So if they’re tech savvy enough to not have still have a flip phone, right? So I mean, my mother in law still has a flip phone. So there’s just no way that she’s ever going to get to the point of engaging with something via an iPad or a computer or anything like that she’s flip phone status. But once you’ve reached smartphone level, there will be at least one app they’re using on there. Right? So they’ve the concept of an app already, if you don’t, I mean is something that they’re familiar with. So to me, that’s sort of the hurdle. I’m, we’re sort of getting better at ignoring age as much as just usage, like, what are they doing, and they’re, and then the way you teach them how to use something just uses that as a baseline, you know, you sort of help them understand from that point. And every time we’ve done that with somebody, they’re so grateful, because they feel like the world’s opened up. For them, you know, even teaching people how to listen to a podcast, we’ve done that with clients, you know, because they just hadn’t encountered it. And now, like, you wouldn’t believe like they’ve discovered all the crime podcasts and that, like, you know, I think I think we really need to see that as a gift that you can give some of these clients.

Vincent Holland
I think you’re right. And I think what you’re going through that whole COVID period that forced individuals of all different ages and demographics to really adopt tech, you know, booking vaccine appointments online, the all the apps and, and things that went with that QR codes. Yep, QR codes. Clients are a lot more tech savvy than they once were.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And somebody else has done some of the hard yards there for us, which is awesome. I mean, I remember prior to COVID, I remember, QR codes had this journey where they became a thing. And then everyone was like, Oh, that’s really old school. But now because they were used during COVID and lock downs. They’re now they’ve popped up again, everywhere, you know. And so people are using them in presentations and in all sorts of things. Because suddenly it’s something that everybody’s familiar with. And it’s it’s not so old school anymore. I love it. It’s so funny. Now, looking forward a little. I mean, I’d love to hear what the plans are. But, but I think there’s something that everybody’s asking about. So and I hate to do this, because you know, it’s it’s unknown. But I’m curious what your take for Pluto, soft, not your view on what Cuellar is going to do. Nobody knows. But your take for Pluto soft on what that could mean? Is there anything you’re considering now and how you guys might adjust accordingly, depending on what happens, say next year, as things roll out?

Vincent Holland
Yeah. We’re often asked to give it our thoughts on quality of advice, review. Yeah, our view on it. And it’s always hard with these things. Because, you know, there’s a report that’s been handed down, there’s been commentary in the media. But as far as I’m aware, there hasn’t been any draft legislation put forward and some of the changes that have been I was, you know, when you think about it, they’re quite, they’re quite radical from the current landscape we have our LPU on it, though, is that we don’t expect there’s going to be a material difference to how practices conduct their day to day business operations. Yep. There was a lot of talk into QA on abolishing or getting rid of SOPs, the latest we have is that there’s still going to need to be an advice record of have some description. Yep. But you know, it’s interesting when you look at the legislative requirements, or what needs to be included in a statement of advice under current rules, you know, a lot of a little bit solos that have been produced go way beyond what a face legal legislation requires. Anyway. Yeah. So yeah, we can’t see how that’s going to radically change the advice process. If, if anything, it’s going to, you know, if we’re looking at big super now getting into advice, there’s going to be more emphasis on firms to differentiate. Yes, they’re their service offerings. So being able to do strategy modeling that that big strategic, yep, Please spin comprehensive looking at clients goals, and objectives. Those are the things that matter to clients. That’s what clients paid for when they go to see their advisor. And that’s what advice professionals will you know, that that’s really where you need to be focusing on to differentiate yourself. Yeah, so we’re watching it closely. And our hope is that with the advent from an advice, documentation, point of view, that accredits more flexibility in how the advice is presented, so some of the things we’re looking at is more Israel snapshot recording, right? PowerPoint presentation, so So we’re we’re looking at those sorts of things.

Peita Diamantidis
Yes. So I think any, any advisor based on what may or may not happen with QR, any advisor who is an investing a bit of time into either understanding Canva or understanding PowerPoint better, I think won’t be serving themselves well, because I think they is a big difference isn’t there between the preparation and analysis? Documentation of all of the advice versus the presentation of the advice? And I think really the presentation bit is going to be the most extreme change. You know, I think that’s where Cuellar is going to have any impact. So to me, I don’t think I think I don’t think spending energy on that spot will be wasted time for advisors, whereas anything else on with you, how can we tell what’s going to happen?

Vincent Holland
That’s right. And I think from a business planning perspective, I don’t see how quality of advice really changes how you go about planning and the key business decisions you’re going to make. If you’re struggling with efficiency, before Cuellar, you know, you can you’re going to have those sunk pain points after quality and advice review site. I don’t think it’s going to be the silver bullet that’s going to solve everyone’s problems. I think you do still need to be proactive. And and, and looking to solve those those challenges. Whether whether Cuellar comes into effect, and in whatever way it takes, yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
for sure. Now, let’s talk then, in terms of what you guys do have down the track, what are the, you know, what are the sort of future developments, you’ve got planned out? What’s on the timeline for Pluto soft,

Vincent Holland
year, the next major isin we’re looking to release is our is open banking. So for those who are not familiar with open banking, it’s a new regulatory regime, which has recently come into force in Australia, it follows what’s been done in the UK, and elsewhere. And what what it does is it compels banks to release data banking data about clients to approved recipients that the best things like bank accounts, lines, being able to release that data. So we’re going through the process of being accredited with the a triple C, and then that will enable us to release open banking through our client hub portal.

Peita Diamantidis
Now, I put you on the spot here. And this may be an idiotic question. It just demonstrates I think we’re, you know, for advisors, most of us aren’t across this as a concept. But does open banking coming into effect, potentially down the track, change the concept of data feeds, because if a client can give you a token, give a tool access to, you know, the information about their financial accounts, whatever they might be, does that then check? Do you get what I mean? Does that then change the way we either need or don’t need data feeds from, you know, platform providers?

Vincent Holland
As far as I’m aware, I don’t think it will impact platform, data feeds, platform, data feeds are different in that they are controlled by the adviser. Right? Which is which open banking, that’s very much controlled by the client, the client has to consider each release that that data so they fall under two different mechanisms. Yeah, yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay. That’s useful. Okay, now, I can’t have somebody on for a tech conversation without talking about AI. Only because now, I mean, I don’t know about your LinkedIn feed. But my LinkedIn feed is peppered with people with all sorts of chip GPT tips, all sorts of stuff. So is do you see AI playing a part in Pluto soft at all down the track? Have you given that any thought what how does you feel? How do you feel from your tools perspective? It might play a role if at all, look,

Vincent Holland
the scary thing with AI is it’s still in its in its infancy. And it’s it’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen, but but I think it’s fair to say it’s going to have a much bigger impact on on every aspect, not just just advice, but all aspects of life. One of the one of the things we’re actually using AI for is not so much on front end functionality, but in terms of how our development is run, chat GPhC, you know, you can you can ask you to question you know, who’s building code and what’s the best way to build an application. And it actually fast tracks that whole process. So rather than spending hours trying to figure out a problem, it literally tells you the quickest possible way to do it. So from a development perspective, it’s actually got a lot of you can provide a lot of assistance in terms of being able to build applications a whole lot quicker. So that’s one of the things that we’re using it for. So that’s not so much for it for a user front end experience. But more than all the back end processes of building application as it’s enabling us to build up a ship faster but but I think we watch the space closely. Because I think it’s it’s it’s moving at a rate of knots.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, it sure is. And you’ve just made me wonder actually, if there’s Some, look, this is a dorky thing to share. But during COVID, when old, you know, loads of parents were stuck at home with their kids, and they were therefore far more actively involved in things like maths homework, or, you know, all these sort of activities that they were then having to, to help their kids with, because, you know, they weren’t doing it with their teacher, I ended up almost having like, a help functionality for my circle of friends who have kids, because I’m a mess freak. And so they’d sort of message me with, how do I help them do this? Can you give me a step by step, you know, instruction of what they should be doing? And you’ve just made me realize they probably could now ask Chet GPT, you know, put in a question and ask chip GPT to give them a 10 steps of you know, how to actually manually work out this answer for somebody of whatever age so that they can therefore help their kids with that stuff. It just never occurred to me that that’s what you could be using it for, for but certainly, rather than just getting the answer, you could ask it to give you, you know, the the all the small steps in terms of working, working out that mess. So thank you for that, I’m going to be passing that on to my friend circle.

Vincent Holland
The other one, the other one that just came to me, as you were saying that is, you know, in terms of marketing and organizing events, you know, you can literally ask that to chat GBT and it will give you a whole campaign or what you need to do the messaging. You know, it’s quite, it’s quite extraordinary what the, what the tool is capable of. And like I said, it’s only going to get smarter. That’s, that’s scary thing. And particularly

Peita Diamantidis
like, I mean, we’re using your favorite bit to almost trigger a brainstorm. So we’re planning to do some client, or public facing events, and like you say, things like, like, we know what the topic is, right? But we’re not particularly good. And there is a real art to coming up the up with the title, you know, like the actual punchy title, you can mark it, that sort of stuff. It’s hard, isn’t it? Like, it’s really hard to do that stuff. So I push that into Chet GPT, and asked to give me a whole lot of examples. And then we just debate which one we think works, you know, and tweak it. So it’s a great inspiration for, for that sort of stuff. It’s not that it’s giving you an answer you use, it’s just getting your brain working so that you can then select from a few and then adjusted accordingly. So I’m with you on that for sure. What else is Pluto soft up to generally? Is there anything you guys have been doing even with your teams, or that you’ve taken part in, you know, in the last little while that you wanted to share things that advisors could be aware of, of what, you know, the Pluto soft group have been up to?

Vincent Holland
Yes, so one of the things we’ve done recently is we’ve started to do more face to face events. So we we ran what we call our practice leaders forum. So we ran our first forum in Perth, earlier in the year, and then we’ve just finished doing one in in Sydney. And that was a, that was a great session, and had a great turnout. So the practice leaders forum, it’s all about practice leadership, that the unique challenges that that advisors are facing, it’s a great forum to be able to have that p2p Peer insight. You know, we had a we had a really good panel, asking them the tough things, what what are the challenges they’re facing? How are they? How are they solving challenges in their in their own practice. And then what we also did is we ran a best practice workshop. So So that’s looking at, you know, real life case studies, you know, we talk about efficiency, we talk about trying to improve how we deliver advice, and it was just a very practical workshop on how you can build key workflows and processes into your to your business to achieve more, more automation. So we’re definitely going to be more active in running those events next year. So stay tuned.

Peita Diamantidis
And look, it’s great. We’re so used to events either being like an industry wide sort of one, like a, like an association and so on ensembles, a good example of that, or maybe a delivered one, you know, and there are multiple ways you can collect together. And so one that sort of the, the collecting nature is the core tool they’re using, you know, that’s a great another way to because it’s once again, different conversations you’ll have with different types of people when you attend those, you know, so I love that when it’s sort of bringing together different views or people that can then have different, you know, debates about things and about things like automation, I love that as a different way to sort of engage and sort of develop your practice you know, over time for sure now, outside of your tool and even it can be even outside of advice tech, is there any you know, broader technology for business or anything like that, that’s caught your eye recently

Vincent Holland
that you thought oh, that looks cool. Well, certainly I’d have to say it’s hard to go past jet chat GPT at the risk of being predictable John, one of our technical leads is a real buff on the on the tool and some of the things he’s been able to show show us have been nothing short of phenomenal so I think that’s definitely one of those things, if you haven’t checked it out, is definitely to to look a bit more closely at it.

Peita Diamantidis
And and it carriage you I mean, I was just joking before about my LinkedIn feed. And of course, this will be defined by the fact that I’ve looked into these things. But if you’re new to this, then I would encourage you to, to try and find a downloadable of a, like a cheat sheet GPT prompts like somebody that that can give you some things to sort of point you in the right direction. I only say that because for example, I was planning on being basically I’m doing a little program that’s about generating AI images. And just as a way to learn, and they gave us some questions to ask chat GPT, about visual brand strategy. And Holy Toledo Batman, what, what it could come on, in terms of oh, you know, and so basically, I told that this sort of thing, like a character, I wanted a brand to embody, and it’s coming up with the colors and the, you know, consider these fonts and you were like, like, and here’s the tagline. And these are the sorts of themed social media posts you could have. And like, it’s just, it’s, it’s down to how we ask it. That’s the key with these tools. It’s, it’s about how well you can ask. So definitely, if you haven’t embarked on that, I truly think we all need to, even if it’s just to understand the possibility, but I honestly think you’ll find it can really impact along along a lot of different areas, then probably more than we really think, I think we probably none of us are probably quite creative enough to come up with that on our own. But I’d encourage you to sort of reach out and check a few things out. Anything else we’ve missed that you guys have been up to, or that you’ve you’ve been working on in the last 12 months, I feel like there’s probably a lot but anything in particular, you want to mention,

Vincent Holland
immediately, I’m just trying to think if there’s anything we haven’t covered, the bulk are away. So now activities, as we call it, that was another thing we we released. So OIC activities is about being able to produce documentation in bulk. Okay, I can give you a quick example, let’s just say you want to rebalance a client’s portfolio, or you want to make a switch and swap a sort of holding, yep, in just a few, at the click of a few buttons, you’ll be able to produce all the arrows for those clients affected. Yep, just automatically produce the record of advice automatically distributed to clients on the client hub portal, and the client will be able to electronically except the recommendations on the on the portal so that that’s some that’s a massive efficiency when I was talking to a practice, just recently, who rolled out that functionality previously, they were doing portfolio rebalances as part of their review process. So to implement a change to the portfolio, they were looking at the course of the 12 months review cycle to get change implemented across all clients, they rolled out bulk arrows, and they were added to have all the clients advice, executed within within a week. So it was a massive productivity win for that practice.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s a wonderful lump, particularly when, you know, in those situations, like you need to change out a fund, you know, like, there’s one of those things that you need to do across the board that you, you might have done a whole lot of work about a methodology and for whatever reason something’s happened, that can be all sorts of reasons. So to have that sort of functionality, that means, you know, it’s it is from one thing to here. And we had to do that batch across, you know, across the list of clients makes a big difference. Because those things are heartbreaking when you’re trying to embark on those, they can just sort of like an almost shut down a practice, can’t they, when they’re trying to do those sort of bulk activities, it’s really can be quite exhausting.

Vincent Holland
And we know that financial markets change very, very rapidly. So being able to include things like that quickly, is is really important.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely, absolutely. All right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about Pluto soft, then you can find their website in the episode show notes. We’ve also included Vinzenz LinkedIn details, I’d encourage you to reach out, I’m sure it will point you to the right person in the team to engage with. But thank you so much for joining us on the show again, and I can’t wait to have you back in another year’s time to hear what else you’ve been up to. Clearly, there’ll be lots of talk about them, too. So thank you very much. Thanks, Peter. And

Vincent Holland
if you would like to find out more about put us off, just go straight to the website, click Booker Booker demo. And we’ll be able to give you a quick overview,

Peita Diamantidis
perfect walkie talkie. Are you a current user of Pluto soft? Maybe you’re considering it or, you know, you’ve been active user, you’ve got some great feedback, you know, please join the conversation on the ensemble community platform. If you’re embarking on it any curious, make sure you ask all of us, you know, let’s crowdsource this stuff. That’s what the platform is there for the power of ensemble as a group is the fact that we’re so keen and willing as individuals to engage with each other on either a challenge we’re facing or an idea we have or a question we have or even just a wow, you know, I’m really excited, I just listened to the podcast, I’m a user of pod Politis. Often we’re about to implement this thing, right? That shared experience is really powerful. So please get on the platform, I’d love to hear what you think. And how you find the tool. Now, in terms of my thoughts, there’s two things out of that conversation that I think are really, really interesting and worth just covering off. Number one, if you are looking at a new core tool, so core advice tool, this is that one that everybody in the practice is going to use, it’s, it’s in the middle right of your business, then I would 100% Dig deep before you make the decision into how carefully they have curated your onboarding experience. I’ve looked at a number of the tools that fall into this category. And where they fall down, is that they don’t see that necessarily as their job helping you embark on this, like, they’ll hopefully be a reference point where you can ask questions, they might even have a massive library of explanations or you know, or blogs or videos, or yeah, you can go in if you’ve got a question on that topic, but they haven’t necessarily designed an onboarding journey. Right. And so that, to me, is the thing, I’d encourage you to ask loads of questions about, I was excited to hear Vincent and the team have been applying energy to that, because here’s the thing, we are doing this, once generally, most of us don’t make that change very often in our business lives. As a practice, they see people do this all the time, right. So over and over again, they will see either the the order people should do things in or the preparation you should take before you make the move, or heads up, these are the sorts of challenges people face, that’s not about a problem with the tool, it’s just because you’re making a change, you know, all that sort of stuff. So, you know, absolutely understand onboarding, and the way they engage with you how clever they’ve got about making that smooth for you, because it can make all the difference, right? If you get beat up through that process too much, and it gets far, far, far too hard. You and the team are not going to be enthusiastic about using the new the new tool that you’ve implemented. So that’d be my, you know, a big tip about these core tools. The second one is, Vincent mentioned, these weekly updates, you know, they send out the Hey, this is what we’ve updated in the system, can I suggest for any of the tools that you use, often in the business, you’ll often get those tools. And for the core ones that you spend a lot of time in, and I’d put, you know, a system like this, if you were using it in that category, that I’d encourage you to have a make a pretty punchy meeting, maybe maybe 15 minutes, you know, 1520 minutes, but once a month, you get everybody who uses that tool on whether it’s a video call, or you get them together in a meeting. And you all look through that four weeks of update emails, and talk about whether somebody’s use the new feature, how they found it, should we be changing the process? Oh, I didn’t know that. Can you talk to me about what the feature means, right? We need to make sure we take everybody on that journey, and you do it as a structured and disciplined approach. Now sometimes, like we were saying, sometimes the updates will be something either quite dull, but useful, of course, but dull. And so the meeting might only go for three minutes. Better to have the discipline of you having those in place so that everybody’s ready to talk about the last four weeks of email updates for the system, then you’re not doing it at all. Yeah, because every one of the new features we should be talking about taking advantage of implementing it in the process questioning or giving feedback to the provider. Oh, we really loved that one do more of those. Or that one was funny, that messed up the thing we were trying to do it can you help us fix it, you know, that sort of stuff. So get proactive, and get really disciplined about the way utilizing these big chunky tools. Now, as you know, there’s only one skill we need to become bionic advisors. And that’s avid curiosity, folks now to help you build that habit. Today’s curiosity corner app that caught my eye, I I can’t quite describe how excited I am about this tool, even though it’s actually not that complicated. And I’m not sure any of the rest of you are going to be that excited. But the tool is called Data GIF maker. You can find it at data GIF maker dot with google.com. And that’s da ta G I F ma ke r dot with google.com. The reason I am so excited about this tool is the way we represent what is often quite simple data. It’s nothing crazy. It could be acid, like something as simple as asset allocation like like quite simple data, we represent it in a way that A can be quite meaningless. And it’s certainly not engaging, right? It’s just dull, right? really dull. What they’ve done this is produced by Google News lab. So they’re just trying to provide helpful little tools. And they’ve got three types of gifts you can make on some basic data. So the first type is called race track. So basically, this is about, maybe you’ve got target allocation of a certain thing, and actual, and it you’ve put it in, you pick the colors, you pick a name for what the amount and the target, like the figure for each end, it does this little race track wobble GIF, to show that you can then save as a file to show somebody or look at it was a bit short. So the target was at 40%. But oh, it’s a bit short at 35. Right. And it’s just a way to represent data in a really funky and interesting way. The second type they’ve got is called rectangles. So this is basically, you know, you’d have the totals that it’ll it’ll start flat, and then it spreads out into a rectangle and breaks it down into whatever figures you’ve given it. So that’s a way of showing the breakdown of something or the allocation of something or you know, something like that. And that’s another gift. And the final one is circles. So this would be the size of the circle. So you could have multiple circles that would appear based on the size of the figures you put in, and then it drops down and tells them what that item is. Now, it’s just the three and I know that doesn’t sound like much. But please go and check it out. This type of tool is exactly what we could be popping into some of our documents, particularly if they’re, you know, online, or we’re trying to, you know, send them an email and give them a flag on what’s going on or like these engagement things, even if it just forces us to think differently, and we go and get it built somewhere else. This is perfect. This is exactly in our wheelhouse. And it will force you to really think about the way that we’re representing technology to the consumer to the public. I’d love to hear what you end up using it for please reach out if you do. Honestly, I think this is a winner. This one. You all might think I’m crazy. Please tell me if you do on the community, but for one ensemble, but this one’s a cracker. I came across this accidentally and I think it’s amazing. 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 autumn magically sent to you each week. And you know what if you’ve got an event coming up in the next 12 months, I’ve had some great conversations with groups, you know, wanting to, you know, somebody to speak to their audience about streamlining their tech stack. I’ve even done some sort of Marie Kondo style, minimal minimalist tech stacks, those sort of things, and how it can help you manage these things going forward and incorporating tips like how do you make this discipline part of what you do on a regular day to day basis? I’d be happy to have a chat about what you might be looking for. So please reach out. And we can brainstorm what what might add value to your audience. So reach out to me on LinkedIn forward slash Peita MD. That’s PEITA MD. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember, advice explores: Stay curious