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FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 10

Posted on June 10, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

I’ve spent the week catching up on a backlog of work, vendor demos, phone calls, and reading due to May’s busy travel schedule. Tungle.me deserves recognition for helping me keep my sanity while scheduling all the calls and demos this week. If you haven’t heard of Tungle.me, read my column for Morningstar Advisor A Simpler Way to Schedule Meetings and try it yourself.

Now on with this week’s stories of interest:

Cabinet NG Creates New Class of Web-Based Document Management with CNG-WEB from CabinetNG.com

Cabinet NG, an on-premise document management software application, extends its functionality to the web with its latest release of CNG-WEB, making document capture and access from remote locations easier than ever.

One RIA’s unvarnished views on Advent, Black Diamond, Tamarac, IAS, Orion and Schwab PortfolioCenter after an odyssey of test drives from RIABiz.com

Take six portfolio management applications, drop them in a bucket, shake it around with a dose of trials and due diligence, and out comes one winner (in theory). Here’s one adviser’s perspective on hashing out a portfolio management solution for his practice.

Choosing Software That Works for Your Advisory Firm—Part 7: The Keys to Success from AdvisorOne.com

The seventh update in a series by Spenser Segal of ActiFi designed to present best practices to advisors on how to choose, implement and monitor new technology for an advisory firm.

Advent Brings APX to Pershing NetX360 from Marketwire.com

Advent Software, Inc., a leading provider of software and services for the global investment management industry, today announced that Pershing’s introducing broker-dealer and independent registered investment advisor (RIA) customers will now have access to Advent Portfolio Exchange® (APX) through NetX360™, its innovative, open-architecture technology solution.

 

FPPad and Blueleaf Partner to Deliver Adviser Technology Content

Posted on June 10, 2011 by in General

I am happy to announce that I’m now contributing technology-related content to Blueleaf, a new personal financial tracking tool for both consumers and financial advisors.

Take a moment and read my first post Why Advisor Software Feels So Outdated.

Look for more posts featuring industry perspectives, best practices, and Blueleaf highlights in the future on the Blueleaf blog. And if you’re interested in learning more about the Blueleaf platform, click to request an invite.

 

Technology Sure to Delight Your Employees

Posted on June 5, 2011 by in Technology

If you’re struggling to identify how to best reward your employees for their extra effort during the Great Recession, one adviser tells what he did that received overwhelming enthusiasm.

While attending the FPA NorCal 2011 Conference last week, I sat in on a presentation titled Technology Developments Over The Past 10 Years—Time Sinks & Time Savers by Dr. Dave Yeske of Yeske Buie in San Francisco, CA and Vienna, VA. Yeske offered terrific insight on a variety of technology tools his firm employs to systematize financial planning services and help all employees be as efficient as possible.

One of the takeaways from his session highlighted an employee incentive Yeske Buie provided to everyone that drew an overwhelmingly positive response. Yeske Buie offered its employees $599 plus tax to purchase an Apple iPad2. The award is enough to purchase a 32GB WiFi iPad2 outright and just $30 shy of a 16GB WiFi + 3G model.

Instead of making a bulk purchase of iPad2s, Yeske Buie’s award allowed employees to upgrade their units to ones with more space and 3G capability and pay for the difference out of pocket.

Yeske was amazed by the employees’ response to the award.

“I’ve never, EVER, seen them so excited about an incentive provided by our firm,” he told session attendees.

Yeske commented that the firm has paid out bonuses and other incentives in the past, but the award of an iPad2, “made our employees’ eyes light up!”

What’s even more interesting is what the employees have done after receiving their iPad2s. Yeske added that employees now use the FaceTime app as a video intercom to chat with their colleagues, both in the local office and in the office located across the country.

With the iPad2 paired with the firm’s voice over IP phone system, Yeske said the firm, “effectively has a 2,400 mile long hallway between the two offices.”

So if you’re seeking an incentive that will have a similar effect on your employees for the hard work they put in, look no further than your local Apple Store.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 3

Posted on June 3, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

This week’s FPA NorCal Conference wrapped up a hectic month of May, involving four separate conferences in four cities across the U.S., combined with two short vacations coupled with the travel.

Still, we’ve managed to keep an eye out for relevant technology articles in the financial planning profession. Here are this week’s stories of interest:

AIG’s Advisor Group to roll out revised platform from InvestmentNews.com

See what an investment in the “healthy seven digits” looks like for representatives under the AIG Advisor Group technology platform.

Commonwealth’s revamp of technology includes subtracting Advent from RIABiz.com

Advent first buys Black Diamond, but then Commonwealth Financial Network breaks its ties with Advent Software citing a lack of value for the cost.

One-Click Calling from CRM at MorningstarAdvisor.com

In Bill’s monthly blog at Morningstar Advisor, he discusses how advisers can simplify making phone calls with web browser extensions. Say goodbye to 10-digit dialing!

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 27

Posted on May 27, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

This week’s Bits and Bytes is a big one! There are a few stories carried over from the previous week, as updating this page when traveling exclusively with an iPad is not the easiest thing to do, but a lot of great stories entered the wires this week, too.

And a reminder, Bill will be attending FPA NorCal next week in San Francisco, presenting Cultivating Clients in a Connected World on Wednesday afternoon. If you’ll be there, stop by and introduce yourself!

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Choosing Software That Works for Your Advisory Firm—Part 6: Ensuring New Technology Meets Your Business Goals from AdvisorOne.com

The sixth update in a series by Spenser Segal of ActiFi designed to present best practices to advisors on how to choose, implement and monitor new technology for an advisory firm.

Compliance and Connectivity from Financial-Planning.com

Well, well, it seems that Bill’s presentation Cultivating Clients in a Connected World has persuaded Bob Veres to consider adopting social media for purposes other than marketing and search engine optimization. See what he has to say about advisers considering this new communication medium (and follow @bobveres on Twitter).

Smarsh Report Identifies Electronic Communications Compliance Gaps at Smarsh.com

Smarsh, the email and social media archiving solution provider, released results from a survey of compliance professionals regarding the use of electronic communications including social media. In summary, it confirms what you already know: compliance professionals aren’t up to speed on supervising and archiving electronic communication, specifically social media.

Tweet on the Street from NYTimes.com

Morgan Stanley is ready to unleash its 17,800 brokers into popular social media service Twitter (their archive and monitoring solution is Socialware). But nothing they post will be unscripted. Good luck with that, we say.

IPS AdvisorPro® and Redtail Integrate Technology Systems from IPSAdvisorPro.com

IPS AdvisorPro® and Redtail Technology announced the availability of a new data integration between their industry leading technology platforms for financial advisors. The new integration will streamline the preparation of Investment Policy Statements (IPS) by automatically populating IPS AdvisorPro® fields with client information contained in Redtail’s CRM solution.

After tortoise-like beginnings, AssetBook is now on-the-hop in portfolio management software from RIABiz.com

One smaller but fast-emerging portfolio management software firm is AssetBook. Based in McHenry, Md., it has burst onto the portfolio management software scene thanks to a recent marketing push and now has 150 firms using its services.

 

Pershing Brings NetX360™ to the Android Market

Posted on May 24, 2011 by in Technology

Pershing LLC continues to expand its mobile offerings to advisers by releasing NetX360™ for the Google Android™ operating system.

We wrote in June 2010 about Pershing’s support of an iPad app for its NetX360 portfolio management platform. The app was finally released to the App Store in December, taking almost six months to complete the final development and review process. Using NetX360 for iPad, advisers can view client portfolio balances, access account statements, submit trades for equities and mutual funds, and more.

This week, Pershing is expanding its support of mobile access to NetX360 with the announcement of an Android-compatible app.

“The availability of NetX360 on mobile devices provides our customers with the ability to utilize all of NetX360’s capabilities no matter where they are, and provides them with the same level of security and encryption as their desktop NetX360 application,” said Suresh Kumar, chief information officer of Pershing, in a company press release.

Click here to read the full press release at PRNewswire.

And click the image below to view NetX360 Mobile in the Android Market

NetX360 Mobile - Android Market

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 20

Posted on May 20, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Bill is attending NAPFA National 2011’s final day today after appearing as a panelist for Thursday’s session on adviser technology. As always, look for the live tweets from this conference which can be found under the #NAPFA11 hashtag.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Behind the scenes in social media at InvestmentNews.com

As regulators take their own sweet time coming up with guidelines for social media, the marketplace is coming up with its own solutions for financial advisers.

A blessing from Charles Goldman helped seal the Advent-Black Diamond deal from RIABiz.com

It was a big deal for the RIA business. Yet the planned combination of Advent Software and Black Diamond was not so large that investment bankers got called in to finance or advise on the transaction. What sufficed in place of Goldman Sachs, it turns out, was Charles Goldman.

Tweets That Mean Business from Financial Advisor Magazine

Advisors are finding that social media is more helpful than just sharing silly things like what you ate for dinner last night.

 

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 13

Posted on May 13, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

We’re attending the 2011 FPA DFW Financial Planning Symposium today (our second of four conferences this month!) and will be live tweeting updates using the #FPADFW hashtag.

In the meantime, below are this week’s best stories in financial planning technology.

Read this month’s column for Morningstar Advisor, A Popular CRM Gets an Upgrade

Over the last 12 months, Redtail product developers and engineers have been working hard to prepare a new version of its CRM, code-named Project Leapfrog, scheduled for official release in January 2012. In this month’s column, Bill explores the new features and design of Project Leapfrog and how they improve this already-popular CRM.

Cabinet NG First to Offer Scheduling, Workflow and Document Management in One Package from MarketWire.com

Cabinet NG, provider of document management and workflow management software, today announced the latest version of CNG-SAFE 7.0. The new version aligns document and contact management through its breakthrough scheduling capability making it an industry first with scheduling, workflow and document management in one core package.

Cambridge, Commonwealth vault advisors into social media; the boost is mostly free, for now from RIABiz.com

Sensing the urgency for advisors to have access to social media, Cambridge Investment Research and Commonwealth Financial Network have begun offering their advisors coaching and technology services to help them use social web sites.

Choosing Software That Works for Your Advisory Firm-Part 5: How to Implement New Technology from AdvisorOne.com

The fifth update in a six-part series by Spenser Segal of ActiFi designed to present best practices to advisors on how to choose, implement and monitor new technology for an advisory firm.

Actiance Selected by Smarsh as Social Media Compliance Partner from Reuters.com

Actiance, enablers of the safe and compliant use of unified communications, collaboration and Web 2.0, today announced that Smarsh, the managed service leader in secure and reliable email archiving and compliance solutions, has expanded its agreement with Actiance to include the Socialite platform.

 

 

Advent Purchases Black Diamond Performance Reporting for Approximately $73 Million

Posted on May 12, 2011 by in Portfolio Management Software

Black Diamond Performance ReportingJust in to our wires is a press release from Advent Software, Inc., a provider of portfolio and financial management software to advisers. They just announced an agreement to purchase Jacksonville, Fla.-based Black Diamond Performance Reporting for approximately $73 million.

Click here to read the full press release at MarketWire.com

“Together, we believe Advent and Black Diamond can be even better, faster, and stronger, and we’re proud to add this powerful new alternative for advisors to our family of purpose-built solutions,” said Advent President Peter Hess.

We want to congratulate Black Diamond Founder and CEO Reed Colley and his entire team on the acquisition and look forward to continued efficiencies available to advisers as a result of the purchase.

Redtail Adds Mobile Assistant Integration to Transcribe Notes into CRM

Posted on May 10, 2011 by in Software

We’re back in our Dallas headquarters, but not for long.

See Bill next week at NAPFA National 2011, then two weeks later at FPA NorCal. If you heard the great feedback about Bill’s session Cultivating Clients in a Connected World at last week’s FPA Retreat, you have a chance to see the session live at FPA NorCal!

Now on with the technology updates.

Redtail Technology, providers of the popular web-based CRM, just announced an integration with Mobile Assistant. This integration allows advisers to use a transcription service to automatically update client records in their Redtail CRM system.

Advisers should have no more excuses about not having time to update records after a client phone call or meeting. Just call up your Mobile Assistant account, dictate your notes, and find them in Redtail the next day.

For all the details on the integration, click here to read the release notes on Redtail’s blog.