At Sam Law Wealth Management, IT Director Martin Nowlin turns to the new Bento 4 to track all client info and organize virtually everything.
Martin Nowlin
IT Director
When you deal with life insurance and investing, data is crucial. At the Sam Law Wealth Management firm, agents collect and organize vast amounts of information to help their clients find the best policies and investments possible. And they do it all with Bento 4.
"With Bento, we've been able to create a very sophisticated database that tracks all client info," says Martin Nowlin, IT director at Sam Law. "It saves a tremendous amount of time and all but eliminates paper clutter in the office. We organize virtually everything with Bento."
Searching for Organization
Based in Lubbock, Texas, Sam Law manages life insurance policies and investment accounts for outside clients. The firm also manages a diverse range of family projects from real estate and investment holdings to charitable fund raising projects at Texas Tech University. There's a lot to do, and a lot to organize. "We do many different things throughout the course of a day," says Nowlin. "We could help a client buy life insurance, then work on a marketing campaign to companies in need of a new 401k solution for their business."
The team needed a customizable database application to help streamline their varied workflow. "We switched the whole office to Mac and learned about Bento at the same time," says Nowlin. "It was the perfect solution for us. It's easy to set up, easy to use, and flexible enough to handle all the things we do whether we are in the office or in the field."
High-Powered Bento Database
Nowlin and the Sam Law team built a robust client database. The library tracks customer insurance and investment portfolios and logs agent notes. "Case notes are very important in our industry," says Nowlin. "We need to keep extensive documentation about every client meeting and every email correspondence. Agents can record audio notes on their iPhones after meeting with a client and their recordings are stored in the client’s records. We're able to track all email correspondence and document files in Bento. We can bring up those files during meetings in an instant. That's invaluable to us."
The team also links iCal To Do items to client records, a new feature in Bento 4. "If one of us has met with a client and has a list of tasks to complete, we can attach To Do items to the record and it'll go into iCal," says Nowlin. "We use that feature all the time. Whenever we pull up a client record, the tasks are there and they integrate with iCal and AppleMail to send alerts and reminders. And all of this information is available to us whether we are in the office or in the field on our iPhones and iPads."
Printing Simplified
With Bento 4, the Sam Law team can also print mailing labels directly from records. "When it's time to print labels for envelopes, it's easy to just select a group of clients, hit the ‘Print Labels’ button, and select the type of labels we use. Its just so much more direct than having to create labels in another program."
Bento 4 is at the center of the Sam Law office. It's the organizational hub that facilitates tasks from start to finish. "Our favorite phrase around here is, 'Add it to Bento,' " says Nowlin. "We use Bento for everything. It's at the center of our business and it's absolutely indispensable to us."
