Creating a Single Source of Truth for Summit Trail Advisors

LaunchPad Lab led a data transformation project for Summit Trail Advisors’ team and their clients.

The Client

Summit Trail Advisors is a networked family office that provides comprehensive wealth management services to high-net-worth families and individuals. Founded by a group of experienced financial professionals, Summit Trail Advisors offers a unique blend of expertise and personalized service, striving to deliver innovative solutions tailored to the individual needs of each client.

Their approach stands out from traditional wealth managers as they embrace a more adaptive and proactive approach, ensuring that their client’s financial goals are met efficiently.

The Challenge

A key pain point in Summit Trail Advisors’ operations lies in the fact that most of their clients have accounts with three separate banking entities across eight different teams, such as Schwab or Fidelity. Working across systems created disparate processes for data entry, resulting in tedious, manual efforts to maintain data across client accounts. 

These challenges made it difficult for Summit Trail Advisors to scale and improve operational inefficiencies, including reducing processing time and the potential for human errors. Summit Trail Advisors recognized the need to centralize their data to alleviate these issues and better support their clients.

The Solution and Approach

The first step Summit Trail Advisors took to effectively create a single source of truth for all of their clients was leveraging Salesforce CRM.

With a strong central data store like Salesforce in place, Summit Trail Advisors then engaged LaunchPad Lab to support the aggregation of all data from third-party custodians, such as Fidelity, Schwab, and Pershing. With this goal in mind, our team focused on organizing, structuring, and normalizing the data that synced with Salesforce, and created workflows to enable the automation of custodian data regularly.

Due to the confidential nature of Summit Trail Advisors’ work, they needed a secure solution to effectively manage data from multiple sources and funnel disparate information into a single source of truth. Best security practices were employed such as data encryption in transit for personally identifiable information (PII), and reducing the number of places such sensitive information persisted and surfaced.

The Tech Stack Behind the Scenes

Technical Architecture

To ensure Summit Trail Advisors had a fully functional app, we leveraged Salesforce, Heroku Connect, and Rails. This combination, particularly of Salesforce and Heroku Connect, is our preferred strategy for a seamless, synchronous experience. 

This “dual engine” approach ensures that data from the proprietary database is connected to the data stored in Salesforce. When a customer updates their name or phone number in the app, the data flows back and connects to the customer’s record in Salesforce.

  • Salesforce

    One of the most robust off-the-shelf software platforms, Salesforce offers powerhouse technology that is truly vital for internal business challenges.

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  • Heroku

    One of the best platforms for proprietary software development, Heroku enables developers to bring web and mobile apps to market 2x faster.

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  • Heroku Connect

    The middleman between Salesforce and Heroku, ensuring bi-directional, real-time syncing between Salesforce and Heroku’s Postgres database instance.

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The Results

With the launch of the new single source of truth for Summit Trail Advisors, we were able to reduce manual work through data automation.

  • Improved Operational Efficiency

    Leveraging data automation for large amounts of material is key to improving overall operational efficiency.  

  • Reduced Risk of Human Error

    Instead of manual data entry, which can lead to human error, Summit Trail Advisors now has one comprehensive solution for all of their data.   

  • A Single Source of Truth

    Team members can now easily access a 360-degree view of each customer, gaining full visibility and streamlining daily operations.

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