June 2, 2005

As a newly launched Canadian family wealth management firm serving affluent clients, it was only appropriate that Richardson Partners Financial Limited chose an exclusive and leading-edge communications solution to integrate its voice and data network across its eight offices nationwide. Cisco's IP Communications system fit the bill for this fast-growing firm.

Business Challenge

Founded in 2003, Richardson Partners Financial Limited (RPFL) has quickly become Canada's fastest growing wealth management firm by offering its high net worth clients unprecedented levels of service and unique product mixes. Since June 2004, the firm has more than doubled its assets under administration by recruiting the top advisors in Canada and carving out its niche with a unique value proposition.

"We are focused on attracting industry-leading Investment Advisors who share our belief that affluent Canadians need access to truly customized solutions and exclusive products - offerings that are simply not provided by other financial institutions," says Sandy Riley, Chairman and President.

Richardson Partners Financial Limited, which now oversees more than $3 billion in assets from its eight locations across the country, required a network/telephony solution that would be flexible enough to allow its Investment Advisors to meet the demanding needs of its clients.

The firm also wanted an integrated communications system that would be attractive to advisors because of its simplicity to transfer their business to the firm and leverage their ability to deliver superior service to their clients in such a cutting-edge environment.

"You have to understand the nature of our business," Chief Operating Officer, Sue Dabarno explains. "Computers aside, our core communications mechanism is the phone. It's all about relationships, so our Investment Advisors are constantly talking to their clients and making sure they're taking care of their clients' investments. The phone system has to be reliable. That is an absolute must."

It also has to be easy, she says. "The last thing we want to do is add administrative overhead to our Investment Advisors. We want them to really focus on those client relationships and not worry about administrative chores."

Chief Technology Officer Stanley Eng explains that RPFL decided early on to go with an outsourced model for virtually all its technology requirements. "We didn't want to have a large I.T. shop," he says. As a result, the firm wanted a telephony/network solution that could be managed by as few staff as possible.

Another key consideration was the speed of deployment to enable RPFL's time to market. The firm was launched in May 2003 and the doors officially opened to the public in November, leaving little time to roll out a system. "As a new business it was essential that our voice and data network was fully operational by our launch day on November 1. Our timelines were extremely aggressive, but failure just wasn't an option," says Eng.

Network Solution

Eng explored several telephony/network options, assessing the cost and feature sets of both traditional Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems and Internet Protocol-based (IP) communications solutions.

"For us, we could either look forward or stay with the status quo. And because we didn't have the baggage, we looked at the cost differential and decided a Voice over IP system built from scratch really made sense. We said, 'We're building for the future and this solution fits.' And we made the decision to go for it," he says.

After examining competing offerings, Eng settled on a Cisco IP Communications system after a thorough due diligence process with Cisco to make sure they covered all their bases. Eng explains: "When we looked at the skill set required, and the knowledge Cisco brought to the table and the capabilities of the technology, it was an easy choice." He had used Cisco in the past and his two core engineers at the time were quite familiar with the company's technology platform.

With 210 users spread out over eight offices, an additional 40 users at James Richardson & Sons Limited and related companies and some employees working remotely in home offices, RPFL opted to go with a mix of Cisco IP phones. All told, 340 IP phones have been deployed allowing the firm's Investment Advisors the freedom to stay connected anywhere within the network.

The solution also includes Cisco Unified Messaging, which allows Investment Advisors to play voicemail messages through their Outlook box "without having to do some complex key codes on the phone," Eng says. "Cisco has made this very simple; because the integration is so seamless, it's really a snap."

"Placing redundant Cisco CallManagers on opposite sides of the country is providing a built-in failover mechanism and peace of mind," Eng says. "Because our integrated network is IP-based, if we lose Mississauga, we can failover to the Winnipeg CallManager and no one will even know the difference," he says.

The end-to-end Cisco network features Cisco wireless connectivity in all offices, along with Cisco firewalls and Virtual Private Network (VPN) concentrators to ensure high levels of security.

While Cisco provided the technology solution, it was Bell Canada -- a Gold Certified Cisco Partner - -who acted as technology partner in the deployment. Eng says each of the eight offices is linked through the Bell VPNe Enterprise Network, which provides the network intelligent and quality of service he needs to run an integrated voice and data network.

"We outsourced the management of the network and used Bell's engineers to help our engineers install the network," Eng says. "It was like a one-stop shop because they were able to provide the specialized expertise and the manpower to successfully meet our aggressive timeline."

Business Value

Long distance savings are often cited as the key benefit of converged networks, and while the savings are significant, it's the other features that drive home the real business benefits.

Eng is very enthusiastic about the technology and how it enables Investment Advisors to achieve greater productivity while supplying unprecedented levels of service to the firm's clients. "Not only is our Cisco IP Communications system helping our Investment Advisors serve their clients better, its simplicity and functionality is helping attract new advisors to the firm." adds Eng.

The firm continues to investigate new ways to leverage their technology to deliver higher levels of service to clients. One project under pilot is the ability to integrate the Outlook contact database with the phone system. The system will be configured to recognize when a client calls in and populate the Investment Advisor's phone screen with key information about the client from the database.

Crystal Voice, a soft phone created by a third-party Cisco value-added developer, is currently being piloted. This allows Investment Advisors and employees to receive phone calls to their business number on their laptops anywhere they are, whether they are working at home for the day, at their vacation home, or even out of the country. For example, one RPFL Investment Advisor works remotely when traveling internationally. Clients call the office phone number and it's seamlessly routed to the advisor's soft phone on the laptop. "No one even knows that the Investment Advisor is actually traveling outside of the country. They call, and the Investment Advisor answers," Eng says.

Extension mobility allows traveling employees to sign in on any phone in any of the company's eight offices and have their phone - and all its properties - appear on that specific handset. This functionality provides a great boon to the Investment Advisors' productivity as they remain at full capacity with access to their personal extension and all its properties anywhere on the corporate network.

A great feature for those who prefer not to type is that users can pick up the handset and start recording a voicemail message that will be saved as a .wav file and can then be e-mailed. All the receiving user needs to play the message is a media player.

RPFL has also enjoyed immense savings from this system, especially in the area of I.T. staffing and long distance, Eng says.

"I've got two individuals looking after my entire data-voice network. How many other firms this size could say that?" Eng estimates that if he had separate voice and data networks, he'd need two to three workers overseeing each network, so the manpower savings are very significant under this system.

Most wealth management firms spend one per cent of their revenue on long distance. But because all calls made to any area code of the eight cities in which RPFL currently resides - Winnipeg (head office), Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Mississauga Montreal and Sherbrooke - are essentially local calls, the firm's long distance bill is so insignificant that it "doesn't even hit my radar," Eng says. In fact, he laughs, "I worry more about cell phone bills."

Next Steps

RPFL's network of Investment Advisors continues to expand and the firm has flexibility to service smaller regions such as Sherbrooke where they recently opened a new office. Eng says they've built "branch in a box" kits - a three-foot high rack on wheels that includes Cisco routers, switches, wireless access points; everything the Investment Advisor needs to get up and running.

"Everything's built right into this rack," he says. "We just ship it out, plug it in and the Investment Advisor is up and running with the same features available in the full size offices. That's the beauty of this technology - we're able to set this up so fast and keep the Investment Advisor focused on doing business and managing their clients' investments."

One of the key considerations for going with Cisco, Eng says, is the fantastic wealth of third-party applications that are available to the firm. He's already piloting a few of these features and the opportunity for future growth is almost limitless.

"When we selected this system our reasons were clear," says Eng. "First was our focus on clients' needs and our ability to provide them with superior service, next was ease of use for Investment Advisor teams and their ability to leverage the system for increased productivity, and finally was the flexibility for future growth with controlled costs which is always important for a startup."