Vancouver-based customer relationship management (CRM) software Maximizer launched the French edition of its financial services edition this month.
The software’s focus is for wealth management and insurance, Mike Curliss, president of Maximizer said in an interview. It took the team about six months to translate the entire user interface and train French-speaking customer support staff.
“We have clients like Richardson Wealth and iA; these organizations operate in Quebec. We want to make sure that they have a CRM that they can operate in their second biggest province,” Curliss added.
The software’s AI assistant, IQ Boost, is also available in French with this update. It can go through client records to summarize information like investment holdings and insurance policies to help advisors prepare for the next meeting.
While some U.S.-based software providers want to enter the Canadian market, many of their products either don’t come with a bilingual user interface or don’t have servers in Canada, Curliss added.
“Canadian companies are very concerned about data sovereignty, where their data goes and how much are they putting out there, which could be proprietary information,” he said.
Maximizer uses domestic data centres and clients’ personal information never leaves the wealth management firm. Meanwhile, IQ Boost is trained with anonymized information, Curliss said.
Offering a French version of the software also helps compliance efforts by ensuring data is inputted into the CRM, Curliss said. For example, if French-speaking advisors are frustrated with English-only software they may keep client records elsewhere, which makes it harder to pass audits and prove compliance with know your customer requirements.
“When everything else in the workday happens in French, the CRM shouldn’t feel like an exception. Removing that friction is what allows technology to actually get used,” Curliss said.
For now, the CRM has to be installed in either English or French, but a future update will let users switch between the two languages, Curliss said. He also wants Maximizer to open an office in Quebec in future, when it makes financial sense for the company.