Pick Your First Workflow

By now you have a list of operations work that could go to an agent. The temptation is to start with the biggest, most impressive item on it. Resist that. Your first agent should be the one most likely to work well, quickly, because an early win builds trust with your advisors, your ops team and your CCO, and frees up time for the next one.

Where most firms start

Three workflows come up again and again as good first agents, because they happen every week, follow clear steps, and keep a person in the loop before anything reaches a client:

• CRM upkeep. Every email, call and meeting should end up in the CRM, and rarely does. The agent logs activity, life events and tasks as they happen. Mistakes are internal and easy to fix.
• Client updates. Clients want to know where their onboarding or transfer stands. The agent drafts short status updates from what's actually happening, and the advisor approves each one.
• Paperwork checks. Reviewing forms for missing signatures, wrong dates and mismatched names is pure routine. The agent flags problems before anything reaches the custodian; a person still submits.

That doesn't mean one of these is right for you. If your firm loses more time to meeting notes or service requests, that may be the better place to start. Score your own list.

Score each workflow on three things

1. Time it takes

How many hours a week does the firm spend on it, all in, across advisors and ops staff? A ten-minute job that happens 30 times a week is worth more than a two-hour job that happens once a quarter. Frequency matters as much as duration, so think in total hours per week, not time per task. Count advisor hours honestly: an hour of an advisor typing notes is an hour not spent with a client.

2. How rule-based it is

Could you write the steps on a single page for a new ops associate? If the task follows the same steps nearly every time, it's a strong candidate. If it depends on judgment about a client's situation or portfolio, it isn't agent work, and anything that amounts to advice stays with the advisor regardless.

3. Risk if it goes wrong

Imagine the agent makes a mistake. Is the result an internal CRM note that needs a fix, or a wrong form sent to a custodian, or a message to a client that shouldn't have gone out? Start where mistakes are cheap and easy to catch. Workflows that touch distributions, withholding or anything client-facing aren't off-limits for preparation work, but they need a human approval on every item, and they're rarely the best first agent.

The sweet spot

The ideal first workflow eats a lot of hours, follows clear rules, and is low-risk if something slips because a person reviews the output before it matters. For many firms that's CRM upkeep or paperwork checks. For a firm moving lots of households, it may be client updates. Let your own numbers decide.

Rank your own list

Use the tool below to enter up to five candidate workflows. We've filled in some common RIA examples to get you started; change the hours and ratings to match your firm. They'll be ranked automatically, and the score is explained underneath.

Take your top-ranked workflow into the next module, where you'll work out what handing it off is worth in advisor hours, client capacity and dollars.