Blog
2023: Time for a Resilient Family Office
Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of risk. For family office’s, the need to adapt intensified with the pandemic and will be ongoing through a potential recession in 2023/2024.
Is Your Family Office Software Obsolete? How To Tell
All family offices rely on software to help run their operations. While many of these packages are routinely updated, they may no longer meet the needs of a modern office. What makes software obsolete? Gartner describes obsolete software as “an information system that may be based on outdated technologies, but is critical to day-to-day operations.”
Points of Failure in a Family Office
Do family offices ever fail? Yes, they do. The reasons behind many failures involve family dynamics, in which generational and other differences create tensions and challenges. However, there is another major point of failure for family offices that is easier to correct—technology.
A Self-Driving Family Office?
Along the technology journey toward automotive automation and self-driving cars, experts frequently talk about five levels of automation, ranging from no driving automation whatsoever (Level 1) to full driving automation (Level 5). Today’s family offices might think about a similar spectrum when considering where they are in harnessing the power of automation to improve the way they get from here to there.
Creating a Best-in-Class Client Experience in your Family Office
When it comes to elevating the “customer experience” to improve client satisfaction and results, today’s family offices could learn a thing or two from Starbucks.
Time is Money: Even in a Family Office
In business, it's all about the bottom line. There are several factors that affect that bottom line, and an effective business leader will monitor them all. One of the most important measures is what's called the operational efficiency ratio, also known as the indicator of the health of the business. The operating efficiency ratio compares the expenses to any revenue generated and obviously the goal is to have as low a ratio as possible—to be able to generate revenue in the most efficient way.
Why Family Office Technology Matters: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Back in the old days, when the holy grail of an integrated investment ledger and general ledger was just a dream, a family office had to cobble a system together with the tools available. Many offices relied on the combination of Microsoft Excel and QuickBooks, or they looked to a wide variety of point-based functional technology products that had been sold into the family office space – after being developed for fund managers, hedge funds, private equity firms, etc. Not a great solution, but options were limited.
Why the Right Family Office Software is Even More Important in a Sliding Economy
More than a few economists are now predicting a recession in late 2022 or in 2023. Then again, others say a downturn will be averted. Either way, most people think that a family office is well protected and would not be affected much by a recession. History says otherwise.
Meeting the Staffing Challenges of the Family Office of the Future
Building, retaining, empowering, and optimizing teams is perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing any organization. Without good people who have the knowledge and tools to excel at their jobs, businesses cannot perform.
Family Office Cybersecurity
Across multiple surveys of family office software users, cybersecurity is consistently the single most important and commonly identified item of concern. The potential breach of the family office IT system and the loss of confidential data keep many family office personnel up at night.
Rehumanizing the Family Office
The idea of machines overthrowing and displacing humans has long been feared. This fear dates to at least 1872 in Samuel Butler's literary work Erewhon. Then, machines were mere metal gears, yet this fear still festered. The fear was driven by comparing the rate of the evolution of machines vs. the pace of the evolution of humans. Butler states, "What I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward."
Data Islands
Islands can be ideal vacation destinations. However, data islands (or data silos) cause significant problems when managing a family office. Created by using the wrong tools and work processes, data islands result in work duplication, reporting delays and errors, and families wondering about the true status of their affairs.
Reimagining Family Office Cybersecurity and IT Excellence
If your family office is still using on-premises IT infrastructure, such as in-house servers running your applications, you probably are taking significant unnecessary security and compliance risks. You're also wasting precious time and resources that could be better spent adding value for your family.
A Universal Family Office Platform: Is It Possible?
"Tailor-made" is a popular expression that suggests a great fit for a given need or situation. A great fit can be fantastic if achieving that right fit doesn't require exorbitant amounts of time, inefficient manual processes, costly custom software development, and too many resources.
How Proposed Changes with Bill H.R. 4620 May Affect Your Family Office
Since a single family office (SFO) is solely tasked with managing the money of one single family, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has historically allowed them to operate under different regulations from traditional investment advisors. The 2008 financial crash first prompted regulators to reconsider this exemption. Although no changes were made at that time, the more recent collapse of Archegos Capital Management in March 2021 spurred lawmakers to introduce bill H.R. 4620, which would change how SFOs are regulated
Bill-Pay Reimagined for the Family Office
Bill-pay in a family office—what does it look like? The process starts when a product or service is purchased, and the office receives a vendor invoice for payment. That invoice is recorded, validated, approved for payment, and then paid. The process is time-consuming and error-prone for many family offices, involving manual, paper-intensive workflows, multiple point systems, and spreadsheets.
Reimagining Data Aggregation in the Family Office
Aggregating data for reporting, planning, and performance tracking is one of the most essential requirements for any family office. Its importance continues to grow. As the hub for a wide range of information critical to the family or families it serves, the family office needs to quickly and accurately aggregate, analyze, and report on data from various sources.
Direct Investing by Family Offices: The Barbell Challenge
The direct investing process for family offices is an ever-increasing “barbell” challenge. Initially there is the process of evaluation and due diligence around the proposed investment, and then once the investment is made the perils revolve around data and maintaining the investment “reality”: IRR, ownership, reporting, etc. Investment on one side and operations on the other — this can be a big-lift for a family office.
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