Tell Your Story with Client Reporting

2020 was a year for introspection on many levels and, the Black Diamond^® Wealth Platform’s client reporting team was no exception. By taking a moment to reflect, we took stock in where we started and affirmed our mission to help advisors be effective storytellers. 

Recognizing that end-client expectations are high, and reporting has become much more comprehensive and distinct, advisors need to be able to easily and efficiently craft and communicate their stories in a natural way. To help firms move the needle on this concept, we focused on two initiatives:

• Content Management: Creating a mechanism that makes it effortless to incorporate additional content into reports
• Group by Anything: Introducing unprecedented reporting flexibility

Content Management 

At the onset of market volatility in March 2020, April’s quarterly reporting was right around the corner. At the time, adding or editing external content like commentary, disclaimers, and newsletters into batch style, quarterly reports was a hands-on collaboration between advisors and the service team. And, the volume for updating this type of content surged. With more than six million reports generated last year and nearly four million of those associated with batch reporting, advisors needed agility.

So we asked ourselves, “What can we do to help reduce the amount of time it takes for users to prepare quarterly reports?” One of the biggest opportunities recognized was to create self-serve tools that make it easy to replace external content. This led to the creation of Content Management within Black Diamond’s Reports application.

With Content Management, users can simply upload their content file and run reports referencing it immediately. This was a crucial step towards reaching self-serve efficiency. The addition of Content Management has laid the groundwork for future possibilities such as referencing client or account-specific external content, incorporating third-party statements or other integration content, and so much more.

Group by Anything

Finding a way to provide advisors with unprecedented reporting flexibility would give them the freedom to tell their story without data barriers. While Black Diamond offers many custom and system fields for supplementary use throughout the platform, we understood that holistically incorporating them into reporting capabilities would allow advisors more control and versatility over how they portray their investment strategies.

The project, what we are calling “Group by Anything,” will open up new possibilities for how advisors aggregate, filter, and report on system or custom fields within Black Diamond. To get there, we made significant “behind the scenes” progress over the past year to ensure the platform’s foundation could support the call.

This year, we are going to begin introducing aspects of the project within the Reports application. This will include significantly more options for displaying allocation on any reporting level, building flexible “groupings” within report tables, expanding capabilities around managed account reporting, and ultimately the ability to report on alternate classification schemas.   

The team understands the importance of client reporting for every advisory business. This is why we remain laser-focused on making it as scalable, flexible, and efficient as possible. Along with the “Group by Anything” initiative and the new Content Management tool, an easy-to-use Report Builder, customizable templates, detailed archives, plus various options and settings streamlines the reporting process.

To learn more about joining the Black Diamond community, request a personalized demo today.