Journal of Financial Planning: December 2025
Charesse Spiller is the founder of Level Best (www.getlevelbest.com) and creator of FinOps Co-op. She is a financial planning expert with a passion for helping firms streamline their operations and scale their businesses seamlessly. With experience working with multiple firms across the United States, Charesse draws on knowledge from four core areas: the financial planning process, client experience, technology integrations, and team delegation and empowerment. She has made it her mission to help financial planning firms proactively analyze their current processes, create new systems, and implement them.
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Advisory firms talk about technology constantly, new tools, integrations, automation, and AI. But what often gets overlooked isn’t the technology itself; it’s the management of it. Firms implement software but rarely assign clear ownership or maintain the infrastructure that keeps everything running. The problem isn’t the lack of technology—it’s the lack of skill, time, and role clarity to make it work consistently.
Across firms, I see the same pattern: client service teams struggling to use the tools they have, workflows half-built or outdated, and leadership stepping in as the default problem solver. Advisers are running on fumes, troubleshooting at night because the systems meant to support them aren’t being managed. Technology management has become another item on the adviser’s to-do list, but it’s one that should never belong to a single person.
When there’s no ownership, even the best tools lose value. Firms with robust CRMs, automation platforms, and planning software often find themselves in chaos the moment something breaks. A single glitch feels like the end of the world. The team floods Slack with messages, leadership gets pulled in, and suddenly everyone’s questioning whether the system even works. But it’s rarely the technology that’s the problem; it’s the lack of process, documentation, and accountability behind it.
How to Spot the Problem
When technology isn’t managed, it shows up in familiar ways across firms. The cracks start small with missed handoffs, outdated workflows, and tools that feel more like chores than support. Advisers often mistake these for isolated issues or bad software, but they’re really symptoms of a lack of ownership. Here’s what that looks like day to day:
- No operator in place. There’s no one responsible for maintaining or overseeing the systems. Tasks default to whoever has the most availability, not the most expertise.
- Underutilized tools. The firm pays for robust platforms but uses them at a fraction of their capacity. Reports go untouched, automations sit idle, and features that could save hours each week never get implemented.
- Single point of failure. One person holds the “keys to the castle.” When they’re unavailable or leave, the team stalls. Everyone scrambles to remember how things work.
- Reactive communication. When something breaks, the team scrambles to find who knows how to fix it. Productivity halts while everyone debates what went wrong.
- Advisers as firefighters. Leadership gets pulled into every small tech issue, troubleshooting between client meetings or after hours. This reactionary cycle drains energy and reinforces the idea that no one else can handle it.
These aren’t technology problems, they’re management problems. Without ownership, even the best systems create confusion instead of clarity.
The Framework: Assign Ownership, Not Tasks
Most firms respond to these challenges by adding another checklist, meeting, or piece of software. But the problem isn’t effort, it’s structure. Technology doesn’t need more users, it needs owners.
Every system in your firm should have at least one assigned owner and administrator and, ideally, a backup for each. Cross training is critical. When knowledge lives with one person, you’re one vacation or resignation away from chaos.
System Owner (Strategic Oversight)
- Approves and governs changes that affect workflows and client service
- Ensures updates are documented and communicated to the team
- Aligns tool usage with operational standards and compliance
System Administrator (Day-to-Day Management)
- Handles troubleshooting, user access, and vendor support
- Answers team questions and keeps the tool running smoothly
- Avoids making firm-wide changes without approval
If your CRM workflows stop triggering, the system administrator investigates and works with the vendor. If the fix involves altering a firm-wide process, it’s escalated to the system owner, who verifies alignment and ensures documentation before anything changes.
This model gives your firm structure without red tape, and cross training ensures that structure holds even when team members shift or leave.
Governance Isn’t Optional
Strong technology management is about creating rhythm and accountability. The CFP Board’s 2024 guide to the technology standard makes it clear that firms have a professional duty to monitor and assess their technology platform on a regular basis through scheduled reviews and ad hoc checks when systems or vendors change (CFP Board 2024). Oversight isn’t optional; it’s an ongoing expectation.
That responsibility doesn’t have to fall to a CFP® professional, but it must fall to someone. Whether that’s your operations leader, an assigned system owner, or a trained administrator, your firm needs a clear review cadence. The CFP Board also emphasizes training and competence as part of the ethical duty of care; in other words, you’re expected to maintain the skills and governance structures needed to use technology responsibly (CFP Board 2024).
Cross training supports that cadence. If every key system has at least one owner and one backup, updates and problems can be addressed without panic or disruption. Ownership becomes part of firm culture rather than an occasional scramble.
And the data backs it up. Charles Schwab’s 2024 RIA Benchmarking Study found that top-performing firms—those with structured digital workflows—spend 25 percent less time per client on operations and 10 percent more time on service (Schwab Advisor Services 2024). Similarly, Fidelity Investments’ 2024 tech-forward firms study reports that “digitally empowered” firms grow clients 20 percent per year versus 8 percent, and AUM 22 percent versus 11 percent compared with less tech-forward peers (Fidelity 2024).
Governance isn’t bureaucracy, it’s your firm’s growth engine. Firms that treat technology management as infrastructure, not an afterthought, reclaim time, reduce stress, and position themselves to scale sustainably.
Lessons from Other Industries
You don’t have to look far to see how much ownership matters. The biggest brands in the world have learned that when no one’s clearly accountable, whether it’s technology, service, or process, things break fast.
Amazon is a great example (Godden 2021). Every major project has one “single-threaded owner,” a person fully responsible for results. If something goes wrong, they don’t form a committee or point fingers. That person fixes it and moves forward. It’s a simple concept that keeps a massive company running smoothly, and it works just as well for a team of five. Someone owns it, or everyone feels it.
Ritz-Carlton shows how accountability looks outside of technology. Every employee is empowered to resolve a guest issue immediately, with the authority to spend up to $2,000 if needed (Yoong 2024). This helps build trust and ownership with employees. When people are equipped and empowered to act, accountability becomes culture.
The same lesson applies to advisory firms. You don’t need Amazon’s scale or Ritz-Carlton’s budget to operate with that level of clarity. You just need to make ownership visible. Because when you assign clear responsibility for your tools, who maintains them, who communicates changes, and who ensures they’re working, your team stops reacting and starts running the business.
The Leadership Imperative
At some point, every firm hits a wall where the owner or CEO realizes they’re running on fumes. They’re managing clients, overseeing the team, and somehow still the one resetting passwords or troubleshooting why a workflow didn’t trigger.
If that’s you, it’s a sign your systems have outgrown the way you’re managing them.
Technology management is leadership work, not firefighting. It’s about building the structure that lets your team take ownership so you can focus on where the firm is headed. That means creating clarity around who manages your systems, who reviews them, and how often they’re maintained.
You don’t need more tools or more meetings. You need accountability. You need someone who understands that keeping the firm running smoothly isn’t about fixing every small issue—it’s about preventing them through process, ownership, and trust.
When ownership is clear, everything else gets easier. Teams run more independently. Advisers get time back. Clients feel the difference.
Because when no one owns your systems, you do, and that’s exactly what’s keeping you from scaling.
Build Your Next Leader
At some point, every firm leader has to ask: If I step away, who’s running this?
There’s usually one person on your team who shows up early, keeps things organized, and quietly holds the firm together. They may not have “operations” in their title, but they have the mindset for it: curious, resourceful, and always looking for a better way to do things. That’s the person you want to invest in.
They’re the ones who can take ownership of your systems, help your team use technology better, and ultimately keep the business running without you having to hold every lever. When you invest in developing that kind of leadership inside your firm, accountability scales, and you finally get back the space to lead the business forward.
References
CFP Board. 2024, January 25, “CFP Board Publishes Technology Guide for CFP® Professionals.” www.cfp.net/news/2024/01/cfp-board-publishes-technology-guide-for-cfp-professionals.
Fidelity. 2024, April 29. “Fidelity Study: Tech-Forward Wealth Management Firms Report Stronger Growth, Better Client Experience and Higher Advisor Satisfaction.” https://newsroom.fidelity.com/pressreleases/fidelity--study--tech-forward-wealth-management-firms-report-stronger-growth--better-client-experien/s/524a5029-d41b-4ce5-ae2d-843c40ccd74e.
Godden, Tom. 2021, March 18. “Two-Pizza Teams Are Just the Start, Part 2: Accountability and Empowerment Are Key to High-Performing Agile Organizations.” Amazon Web Services. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/enterprise-strategy/two-pizza-teams-are-just-the-start-accountability-and-empowerment-are-key-to-high-performing-agile-organizations-part-2/.
Charles Schwab. 2024. 2024 RIA Benchmarking Study. www.aboutschwab.com/ria-benchmarking-study-2024.
Yoong, Kimberly. 2024, March 18. “Defining Service Excellence: Setting the Highest Standards of Service in 2024.” Hotel Online. www.hotel-online.com/news/defining-service-excellence-setting-the-highest-standards-of-service-in-2024/.