Individuals and business entities that are looking for expert advice on how to manage their wealth typically have two options at their fingertips: investment banking and wealth management. Investment banking is a service offered by banks to commercial establishments, and it’s focused on managing finances and negotiating business deals on behalf of the corporate client.
Wealth management firms, on the other hand, typically work with high-value individuals by providing them with every service they need to wisely manage their personal finances and grow their wealth. The services that investment bankers and wealth managers provide intersect in many ways, though they cater to different markets.
Revenue management is a complex financial activity that, if not done efficiently, can rack up high overhead costs and cut into the profit of the client as well as that of the investment banker or wealth manager. This financial service is highly dependent on implementing the right decisions in a timely manner as well. As such, letting opportunities to earn a profit slip by simply because the firm took too much time to come up with the right numbers is not an option. Instances like this prevent financial firms and their clients from maximizing their possible earnings, and these can also damage the firm’s reputation and their clients’ trust.
To clearly see opportunities for growing the wealth of their clients and to reduce overhead costs that cut into their potential revenue, wealth managers and investment bankers should look for a revenue management system that offers the following functions:
Convergent Pricing and Billing Solutions
Pricing and billing management solutions are some of the first things that wealth managers or investment bankers should look into in their quest to run a much tighter ship. A pricing and billing management solution, to put it simply, refers to a tool that provides both billing and pricing assistance in a single package. Such a tool significantly reduces the time and resources it will take for firms to come up with profitable price points and dependable billing services. With this tool, a revenue manager can easily determine circumstances that offer larger profit margins, and this information can aid the bank or firm in their negotiations.
Unfortunately, this function is often absent in the legacy systems that traditional financial firms use, as older systems still depend on data silos to store information. Using data silos makes it much more difficult for the company to determine the factors they should consider when designing a modern pricing infrastructure. This, in turn, slows down their process and prevents banks and firms from determining the conditions they need to meet to maximize their profit margin.
Merchant Acquisition and Onboarding
It doesn’t matter if the revenue manager is working with an individual or a corporation; it’s always an important step to earn the client’s trust if a bank or firm is keen on managing the said entity’s wealth. Without this key component, it wouldn’t be possible to convince a person or company to allow a financial firm to handle their investments or even just store their money. The question is how will the bank or firm do this when they can’t always see their prospective and present clients face-to-face?
A revenue management program that offers tools for merchant acquisition and onboarding is key to getting a client’s trust in the current times. A merchant acquisition program can be automated to streamline deal pricing and invoicing details—processes that, if done separately, often take a lot of time and plenty of back-and-forth between the client and the manager. Taking care of these tasks in one fell swoop reduces the cost of the acquisition process.
The system stores the client’s information, and the firm can always pull up these details if they need to adjust billing and pricing plans or tailor specific services to a particular account. Even though the client can’t see their revenue managers face-to-face, the quality and consistency of the service that the firm or bank provides can be enough proof that they deserve the trust of their clients.
Capability for Seamless Integration
While there are revenue managers who can afford to overhaul the system that their company uses in one go, there are plenty of banks and firms that plan to upgrade their systems and processes little by little. Does this mean that the latter won’t be able to enjoy the benefits of a modern revenue management system? Not exactly. They can still make use of modern tools if they choose a revenue management solution that’s designed to seamlessly integrate with the older system that they currently have.
As they continue to upgrade their tools, they should make it a point to look for programs and services that are compatible with their legacy system while also able to accommodate future innovations.
It’s high time for financial institutions to start considering upgrading the systems that they use. Understanding how the latest technology can be used to manage revenues successfully will not only set a revenue manager apart from the current competition; it can also help financial bankers and wealth managers prepare for and navigate the challenges that they’ll encounter in the future.
