What are Relationships?
Relationships is one of the main entities in Engage.
Relationships are the center of information within your CRM, representing a group of Portfolios, a list of Accounts, and associated Relationship Contacts. They can also represent an institution client or business that is a center of influence. A Relationship usually has attributes like addresses and contact information for the Relationship, Primary and Secondary Contacts, Connections, a Relationship Team (who manages the actual relationship), as well as valuation information, contact preferences, and service information about the Relationship. It is a hub that has connections to other entities in Engage such as Portfolios, Accounts, Activities (Email, Tasks, meeting notes) regarding the relationship, and Contacts related to the relationships and other interested parties.
Relationships also, by default, reflect important dates such as Relationship Start Date and Relationship Age, Last Contacted On, Last Review Date, and Next Review Date.
Primary Components of a Relationship
Contacts:
Primary Contact indicates the leading person associated with the Relationship, where Secondary Contact is an additional person or contact record that can be associated with the Relationship. You can also add additional Contacts to the Relationship, so you are not limited to just two.
Connections:
There are options to affiliate Portfolios, Accounts, and Contacts to a Relationship, but sometimes you need to connect additional records and Connections allow you to do this. For example, if you have an Attorney or Accountant contact that you would like to associate with a Relationship, you can add them as a Connection, rather than a Contact to the Relationship.
Relationship Team:
Relationship team is a group of users that is designed to track who is responsible for the specified relationship and their associated positions. This allows for easy communication about a Relationship among the relationship teammates. Some examples of team role names include Relationship Manager, Wealth Manager, Investment Manager, Client Service Associate, and Operations.
Portfolios:
Portfolios are groups of Accounts which are generally associated with the Portfolios or Groups you have created on your Portfolio Management System. Details, Ownership, Activities, and Valuation are all associated with Portfolios, as well as asset mix information based on the assets within the Portfolio.
Activities:
As a best practice, it is recommended to track activities on Relationships, rather than Financial Accounts, Portfolios, or Contacts. This will allow all activities to be associated with the highest entity within Engage's Entity Hierarchy.
Relationship Navigation
Learn about what is included out of the box for a Relationship Entity.
Video Transcript
In this video, we're going to discuss the main entity of Relationships on Engage. Some of the things we're going to look at are the System and Personal views on Relationships, the organization of your Relationship form, and we're going to deep dive into the reference panel on a Relationship. What I use a site map, to click on Relationships, it's going to pull up the default System View. It's possible to change your view by simply choosing a different view and pinning it as that default. Within a System View, I can search for a specific record, I can sort a particular column, or I can add a filter to pull back specific results. I can also create, a brand new record, delete a group of records or refresh my view here. We also have the ability for you to show a chart based on the information in your view. So if you click show chart, the chart will come up and then you could also choose a specific chart you would like to view. If you want to go back to your list, you can just go ahead and collapse that chart.
Next, we'll take a look at a specific Relationship record. I'll search Roger and choose the Nick and Catherine Rogers relationship. At the top of the page here, we have the relationship name, and we also have important information about the Relationship. This particular firm has chosen Primary Contact, relationship age, total market value, and last touch date to be the main points that show up for every record.
Now we'll take a look at the Relationship Summary. This form's organization has been created by the Firm Administrator. It is likely that your view will differ from ours. First we'll look at the summary. On the left-hand side, we have the relationship summary information, so main data points about this particular relationship. We have the relationship name, type, when it started, what Family it's associated with, and also the age of the Relationship. In the middle here, we have the Relationship Team. So this is the team of users who are responsible for this particular Relationship and what the role is associated with this Relationship. And then on the right, we have the reference panel, which we'll dig into in a moment.
Lower down on the page, we have some more data points that are useful to know about this particular Relationship. We have valuation information that we're receiving directly from the Portfolio Management System. We have last touch details, which is based on activities associated with this Relationship and their Contacts. We also have next touch details that are calculated based on those activities. On the right hand side, we have our Activities Plus box, which is going to show you a list of activities associated with this Relationship. You have the ability to add new activities directly here or change what activities are shown here in the filter section.
The other two boxes we have here are the Time and Expense tool and the Client Service information. The Time and Expense will show you based on your interactions and with whom the client has interacted at your firm, how much this particular client is costing. Next to it we have our client service, which is going to show us specifically information about the client, including their tier or their level of service expected from your firm, their relationship health, and also the expected touch dates for this Relationship.
And finally, on this page, we have our Primary and Secondary Contact information for this particular Relationship. Now your Firm Administrator can choose to adjust how this view shows up for your firm.
Next to Summary we have Portfolios, which is going to show you a list of Portfolios and Accounts that are associated with this particular Relationship. Generally, if you have an integration with your Portfolio Management System, some of this information comes directly from there. Next, we have our Contacts tab and that's going to include the direct members and indirect members of this Relationship, as well as any Connections are going to be more associated Contacts with this Relationship, but not part of that membership. Examples would be an attorney or a CPA. Also can show a connection to members of a different relationship that may be were something like a family friend or business associate. The other information we have here on Contacts is the contact preference. So how does your client like to be contacted by you and your firm?
Next, we have addresses, not all clients come with a single address. We have a list of addresses, including their home, their work, and even a vacation home. From your more addresses, you can choose a primary address associated with this particular Relationship and those addresses can also be inherited to the Contacts associated with this Relationship. Next tab we have here are any notes associated with this Relationship. And the final tab is any related entities and information for the Relationship.
Now we'll take a deep dive into the reference panel over here on the right. The first widget here is Important Information: What do you need your internal users to know about this Relationship as soon as they look at it. Then we can go and take a look at the Portfolios associated with this particular Relationship, any Legal Entities, Financial Accounts, or Financial Assets that this particular Relationship has associated with it. And you can also take a look at the Connections. So again, any Contact that isn't necessarily a Primary Contact for this Relationship. Not only can you view the associated, for example, Relationship Members, you can dig in to that particular Contact by clicking on that name and if you need to, you could actually make changes to that entity from here. You can also open multiple records at one time. This is allowing you to do work on a single page instead of having to switch between records. Don't forget, anytime you make any changes, you'll want to go ahead and click your save button in the bottom right-hand corner.
As a System Administrator, you have the access to adjust your form as well as your fields that display for any of your entities. For example, if within your firm, you do not have both a Wealth Manager and an Investment Manager. You can adjust to this particular form to show the Relationship Team with one or the other.
We want to make sure that the information displaying within your CRM is useful for you and your firm. In the next video, we'll take a deeper dive into the Contact entity.
