H&R Block Inc. has been busy talking to about 21 million taxpayers as today's April 15 tax return filing date arrives. For some of them, after Uncle Sam gets his due, there's still an H&R Block representative who wants you.
Each year, millions of potential clients for investment advice appear during the rush of tax season, then disappear from H&R Block's offices. A wealth of information on a prospect's finances accrues from the contact at tax time. The tax preparer knows whether the client has just bought a house, gotten married, or had a baby. Careful use of this information can lead to more business for H&R Block Financial Advisors Inc., the company's financial-investment-advice unit.
Since it implemented a Client Acquisition System in January, H&R Block believes this tax season that fewer of these potentially valuable prospects are falling through the cracks. It built CAS using a services-oriented architecture approach, which means it's more likely to succeed than its two cumbersome and ineffective predecessor applications, says Scott Thompson, senior architect for H&R Block Financial Advisors.
Using a customer's tax data raises privacy issues, which H&R Block meets head-on. "The customer has to explicitly sign a permission form that his tax information can be shared with another line of the business," Thompson says.
