Compliance moves on a calendar. Your tools don't.
Form 5500, Safe Harbor, QDIA, 404(a)(5), SAR, ADV, CRS, 408(b)(2). Eight cycles across hundreds of plans, and one missed notice becomes a DOL letter. A spreadsheet can hold the dates; it can't chase them.
Best-of-breed becomes worst-of-many.
Benchmarking in one tool, fiduciary docs in a second, CRM in a third, Excel for the gaps. You pay for each twice: the license, then the advisor hours spent re-keying between them.
Adding plans means adding people.
Every hundred plans has meant another operations hire. The book compounds. Payroll shouldn't have to.