Inside WealthTech – from the technology powering the advisor’s stack to the WealthTech companies defining the industry, we deliver the stories and strategies behind smarter advice. Each episode features candid conversations with industry leaders about the technologies, ideas, and partnerships transforming the way advisors serve clients, grow their practices, and redefine financial outcomes.
In this episode, the Envestnet team sits down with Brooke Deese, Director of Growth and Partnerships at Practifi, to talk about how AI, CRM strategy, and organizational readiness are redefining daily advisor workflows.
Read on for a snapshot of the conversation, or watch it in full, here.
When firms should evaluate a new financial advisor CRM
"We’ve outgrown what we're doing today and we need more.”
As firms grow, their operational needs change. Deese sees two common inflection points: teams stretching a lightweight CRM beyond its intended purpose, and firms operating on a large enterprise system that adds unnecessary complexity.
In both cases, she notes, advisors begin to feel constrained.
“They’ve outgrown what they can do and they need more automation, more efficiency, and more out of their workforce,” Deese says. The refrain she hears often is, “We need a bigger box.”
What firms seek at this stage isn’t just additional features but a different underlying model that supports firmwide processes, workflow discipline, scalability, and increasingly, embedded intelligence.
This is the broader direction of advisor technology: platforms that unify advisor workflows, client records, planning data, and operational tasks so firms can evolve without constantly rebuilding their tech foundation.
One tactic advisors can rely on to evolve these operational tasks is through automation and artificial intelligence (AI).
Use AI to accelerate CRM workflow creation
While AI dominates headlines, Deese begins by grounding the conversation in the real workflow friction points inside advisory firms: where time is lost, where processes break down, and where technology can meaningfully reduce operational drag.
She sees firms craving tools that make the CRM smarter and more intuitive, not more complex, underscoring that “the biggest time stack… is workflows.”
“AI is really moving that needle of making it work efficiently for us.”
One example Deese highlights is using AI to accelerate workflow creation. Historically, this has been one of the most time-intensive parts of CRM configuration. Now, AI allows advisors to start with a simple prompt and generate an initial structure they can adjust from there. The goal isn’t to replace firm workflows, but to eliminate the blank page and reduce unnecessary friction.
Deese extends this thinking to task suggestions. When an advisor enters a note into the CRM, AI can read the context and propose the relevant next steps. Advisors still approve the action, but what used to be multiple manual clicks becomes a single decision point.
“It’s not multiple steps. It’s one step,” she says, underscoring how AI collapses redundant actions into a single confirmation.
For time-strapped teams, these small efficiencies compound quickly. And, as Deese notes, reclaimed time is not only fuel for growth. It can also mean showing up for a school lunch, making it to family dinner, or stepping away early on a Friday afternoon—simple markers of flexibility that matter as much as productivity gains.
This shift reflects a broader industry movement toward CRMs that blend structured workflow with intelligent guidance.
Platforms across the ecosystem, including those embedded within larger wealth management systems, increasingly emphasize automation, task intelligence, and integrated data to help advisors operate with greater consistency and efficiency.
Make your CRM about relationships, not contacts
“Contact management's dead. Your phone can do it.”
When asked how she would describe the role of CRM in advisory firms, Deese doesn’t start with features. She starts with trust.
“Ultimately, a CRM, at the heart of what it does, it’s in its name, it’s the relationship,” she says.
Deese explains that modern financial CRM is less about storing client information and more about enabling the depth, context, and consistency that strong client relationships require. She’s also direct about her own expectations as a client, noting that she wouldn’t hand her assets to an advisor unless she felt truly known.
“I’m not giving an advisor my money unless I trust them, and I know that they have my best interests at heart,” Deese says.
For many firms, this marks a shift away from the traditional mindset of CRM as a digital filing cabinet.
Today, advisors manage an expanding set of tasks, meetings, and touchpoints. Deese emphasizes that CRM should support both relationship quality and time management, helping advisors keep promises, follow through consistently, and stay organized across larger, more complex books of business.
Prioritize change management over just CRM features
“The gap is getting everyone that touches it involved in the process.”
Deese is clear that a CRM’s success doesn’t hinge solely on its capabilities. It depends on how firms design, implement, and adopt it.
Too often, she says, systems are built from a single vantage point, usually operations or the team that formally “owns” the CRM.
“Oftentimes we build CRMs… from one lens,” Deese notes, with the result being a system that appears complete on paper but fails in practice because it reflects only part of the firm’s workflow reality.
Her recommendation is straightforward but rarely executed: involve every team that touches the CRM from the beginning.
“To make it fully efficient across the firm, the gap is getting everyone that touches it involved in the process… and what they need out of it,” she explains.
When firms skip that step, frustration later shifts unfairly to the CRM itself. The system becomes the scapegoat for process misalignment that began much earlier.
Tactics for driving advisor adoption
“Get your naysayers involved in the process earlier.”
Deese is candid about one lesson she’s learned repeatedly: adoption fails when firms avoid the people most skeptical of change.
“Every firm has that person that is the stick in the mud that says, ‘I’ve done it like this. This is how we’ve done it. This is the way we’re doing it,’” she says.
But avoiding that voice early often guarantees resistance later.
Instead, Deese encourages firms to bring skeptics into the process from the start. When those individuals see their real workflows and frustrations reflected in the system design, they often become advocates.
When they’re excluded, they can quietly undermine adoption even as the project moves forward.
This is a lesson that applies universally across CRM and platform deployment: the best technology succeeds only when the people using it see themselves in the solution.
Rapid-fire reflections
As part of Inside WealthTech’s speed round, Deese also shares her quick takes on a range of industry topics.
- Crypto in portfolios: “It’s here to stay.”
- AI’s role: “I think it’s a copilot.” Nothing replaces the human element.
- Finfluencers: “I think it’s great. I think it’s another channel.”
- The great wealth transfer: It will reshape behavior as new generations handle money differently.
- One change to wealth management: “The sea of gray suits.” Breaking norms can open new conversations.
Across the responses, a consistent theme emerged. Technology and demographics may shift quickly, but advisor judgment, personal connection and openness to new ways of engaging clients remain central.
Stay Inside WealthTech
Watch the full episode of Inside WealthTech with Brooke Deese to explore how Practifi is rethinking CRM, AI, and firmwide adoption to help advisors build stronger relationships and run more efficient practices.
And make sure to follow Envestnet for upcoming episodes featuring leaders redefining wealth management through technology, data, and collaboration.
Learn how Envestnet’s wealth management technology platform, including its relationship-first CRM for financial advisors, supports relationship-driven advice, unified workflows, and scalable team-based operations.
