Click here to visit The Standard® Webinar Series page and view the replay (63 minutes). It’s free!

I could spend a few paragraphs explaining how to install the bookmarklet and how it makes reading stuff on the Internet easier, but allow me to let the pictures tell the story.

So, out of the two identical articles below, which one do you want to read?

This?

Or this?

Enough said. Now go get Readability.

Here are the details:

If you’re a current PortfolioCenter® user, you can earn a $500 credit for each referral that signs up for the aggregation service by December 31, 2009.

If you’re not a current user and sign up before December 31, 2009, you’ll receive one free quarter of aggregation services. Put another way, new advisers save 25% off the annual ByAllAccounts aggregation fee.

Click here to see the offer on the ByAllAccounts website along with 3 short lines of rules.

Again, I’m not paid to push ByAllAccounts (or any of the other vendors and service providers I write about); I’m a past user and understand the leverage their service can add to the right advisory firm that continues to update captive account information manually each month from paper statements.

I want to share an article published on IATechForum that highlights Laserfiche’s Avante product. Joseph Salpietro, President and CEO of Xpyria Investment Advisors (why the website domain is yannico.com is beyond me), shares his experience integrating the product into existing firm functions.

While the article features only the Avante solution (Laserfiche is one of the primary forum members), pay attention to the concepts of how the software was used to eliminate paper-pushing in the firm’s processes.

Click here to read Making Work Flow on IATechForum.

Nearly all wealth management firms are experiencing declining revenues and increasing operating costs, compressing profit margins in all areas. Here is one simple solution to save time and money on a ubiquitous entry in a firm’s operating expenses: long distance phone calls.

Google has a free 411 service, GOOG-411, that allows users to call nearly any business nationwide and connect for free.

How It Works

GOOG-411 is simple to use. From any phone, dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-4664-411). At the prompt, say the business name followed by the city and state. GOOG-411′s voice recognition will attempt to match the request to businesses listed in its ever-growing directory. If the request is recognized, GOOG-411 offers the top listing and will automatically connect to the business unless given other instructions.

GOOG-411′s voice recognition saves time when calling businesses. Advisors no longer need to look up a business phone number in Outlook Contacts, the company CRM, a misfiled business card in a Rolodex, or (gasp) and handwritten address book. Simply pick up the phone, say the business, and get connected.

If the request is unclear or doesn’t match a listing exactly, GOOG-411 will announce top matches from which users can select by simply saying “connect me.”

Here’s a 90 second video from Google on how easy GOOG-411 is to use.

Is Your Firm Listed?

If GOOG-411 is a cost-effective solutions for advisors, think about how clients may use it, particularly those living in other states. Instead of dialing the firm’s toll number, clients can call GOOG-411, say the business name, and if the firm is listed, get connected immediately without having to pay a dime in long distance.

So stop reading this post right now. Call 1-800-GOOG-411. Say your firm’s name, city, and state. Are you in Google’s listing? If not, you need to change this immediately.

Get Listed on GOOG-411

Google 411 works on the information provided by Google Maps. To update your firm’s listing in Google Maps, follow the link provided in this FAQ:

http://mobile.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76434

Eliminate Your 800 Number, Too

Not only can advisors save money by using GOOG-411, they may also consider dropping the toll-free number that cuts into the bottom line.

This is a great opportunity to touch clients, too. Communicate to clients located in other states and let them know about Google 411, how easy it is to use, and how clients can use it to call your firm for free. Not only can clients call your firm for free, but they can call nearly any business nationwide for free. That’s a great money saving tip that I’d appreciate receiving from my advisor.

In summary, saving on long distance calls may not seem like much, but it’s a simple step to reduce costs. It’s just one way advisors4advisors.com is trying to help advisors save money and operate more efficiently.

I previously wrote about optimizing your Outlook habits by only using the program at three specific times during your workday (say, 10am, noon, and 4pm or whatever you find works in your schedule).

Today, I’m happy to report that since the beginning of 2009, I have worked on eliminating all the pending emails in my Outlook Inbox so I can reach the ultimate goal of Inbox Zero.  Here’s what my inbox looks like today:

Never heard of Inbox Zero?

Allow me to introduce Merlin Mann, productivity guru and creator of 43folders.  He wrote a series of posts on 43folders looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox.  In addition, he presented an session on achieving the state of Inbox Zero for a Google Tech Talk.  The one-hour video of his presentation in embedded below (click here if reading through an RSS reader).

One hour is a lot of time to devote to this concept, especially when it’s one hour that you might spend cleaning out the garbage in your inbox.

For a quicker tutorial, go read the Inbox Zero posts on 43folders and eliminate the time-waster of your day otherwise known as a crowded Outlook Inbox.

Related Posts

• Optimize Your Outlook Habits
• Expand Outlook Efficiency with Switch Options
• Create a New Message Shortcut for Outlook

I want to comment about positioning a practice in a recession after reading David Drucker’s article on Morningstar Advisor, Practice Management in a Recession.

Drucker interviewed two broker-dealer firms to discover what their reps are doing to respond to the recession.  What are they doing?  First, reps are committed to continued spending on marketing to new clients, and second, they are looking to reduce operational inefficiencies in their practice.

Market Your Business, Yourself

I absolutely agree that continuing marketing efforts (and arguably increasing them) is essential to firm growth, and it must be done strategically and with purpose.  Still, I’m an operations guru, not a marketing guru, so I’m going to defer to others on the best, most effective techniques advisers can use to market in the face of a recession.

For some advice from industry marketing consultants, read Bob Veres’ January 2009 edition of Inside Information.

Reduce Practice Inefficiencies

Aha, now here is where I have something to add!  In his Morningstar article, Drucker counsels advisers to streamline the onboard process when new clients join the firm.

While reducing inefficiencies when signing a new client is valid, I don’t think it’s where advisers should primarily focus their efforts.  Unless you’re a gigantic firm and are adding 30+ clients a year, you should look elsewhere to streamline processes where they have a more significant impact on the firm’s bottom line.

Think about it: onboarding a client is one of the few specific processes that varies client-by-client.  Now if we’re talking about streamlining the configuration on your internal systems (e.g. adding the client to your CRM, your document management system, your billing program, etc.), certainly, advisers must have this process clearly defined so that it’s easily repeatable.

But if we’re talking about simplifying the ACAT process, gathering of client documents, etc., this is much more difficult to streamline.  Each client’s situation is unique and not all clients reply quickly to your requests for financial information.  Also, say you cut half a day of time it takes in the onboard process.  If you add a dozen clients in 2009, you save only 6 days of employee-hours in your operating expenses.

While good, advisers must focus on streamlining processes that can save weeks of time. So think about things that are done hundreds or thousands of times over the course of a year.  How do you handle the following?

• Client check requests
• Required Minimum Distribution tracking
• Trading and portfolio management
• Gathering price, transaction, and balance data for captive assets not held at your custodian (e.g. 401(k) plans, annuity products, cash value life insurance plans)
• Quarterly report generation
• Uploading reports to client web portals

This is just a small sample, but these are the areas advisers need to streamline in order to stay competitive.

So evaluate those processes that occur on a daily basis, and begin asking yourself and your staff, “What can be done to simplify what we do today?”

Related posts

• Bruckenstein’s Picks for Best of Technology 2008
• Increase Adviser Productivity At Least 10%
• Has Laborious Client Data Entry Met Its Match?

Click here to visit Independent Advisor Tech Forum.

Independent Advisor Tech Forum is a collaborative effort spearheaded by several technology vendors in the independent adviser space.  The list of participants is a genuine who’s who of big players in the technology space for CRM, paperless office, and performance reporting.  Here’s a short list of who’s involved:

• Laserfiche
• Junxure
• Black Diamond
• IPS Advisor Pro
• LaserApp
• Nexus Strategy, LLC

For more information on the participants, click here check out the partner page.

The site is more reminiscent of a blog rather than a “forum,” as the articles are posted in a blog style rather than in the traditional discussion forum format.  In other words, users of the site can only reply to existing posts via comments versus having the ability to post new topics in a true forum format (for example, AdvisorMax Discussions and Financial Planning’s Discussion Community).  I guess that’s the nit-picky, detail-oriented side of my personality coming out.

While the forum is targeted to registered reps considering a shift to independence, independent advisers should find useful articles and discussions sprinkled throughout the content. Still, I anticipate the site may be short on comprehensive content about the specific “how-tos” of managing technology as its focus is mainly on extolling the benefits of the products sold by the vendors.

Related articles:

• Free AdvisorMax Access for Advisers
• What Will Brokerage Turmoil Mean to Advisers?
• OneVoiceRIA Promotes Public Awareness

The article, titled When More Is More by Michael Totty can be viewed by clicking here.

From the article:

Paccar has added multimonitor setups for material planners on its manufacturing lines, who have to manage demand for production parts using information on inventories inside and outside the company. Because of limited desk space and falling prices of displays, planners received two larger widescreen monitors instead of the three-screen setup in the call center. The ability to manage more rapidly changing information has produced a 10% to 20% boost in productivity, Mr. Quinn says.

Software to support multiple monitors has come a long way, so the days of external boxes are dwindling (e.g. the Matrox DualHead2Go product).  Also, prices for LCD displays continue to drop, so purchasing two 20″ monitors and a 256MB graphics card for each workstation could be done for about $500 (obviously you can spend much more for additional memory and larger displays).  For that price, the cost may likely be recovered in less than a month due to gains in employee (and personal) productivity.

Multiple Monitors and Email

My one criticism of the article: do not be compelled to leave your Microsoft Outlook window (or any other email program) active in one of your displays.  New incoming emails are a distraction and they interrupt your thought process and productivity.  Instead, close your email program altogether and begin a habit of checking email in batches, perhaps 3 or 4 times a day.

Afraid that you’ll miss “critical” or time-sensitive emails?  Train those who are emailing you to call you instead, or perhaps walk down the hall to your office (if you work in a small environment as I do) for critical communication.  Also, you may look in to a utility called AwayFind to help others communicate time-sensitive needs (I currently don’t use AwayFind, but it’s on my radar screen).

What’s My Setup?

Here’s the setup that I’m using in my firm to add productivity to my daily tasks:

• Two Dell 2007FPb 20″ LCD displays
• NVIDIA e-GeForce 6200 256MB DDR2 PCI graphics card
• Resolution set to 1600 x 1200 for each monitor

This configuration has definitely increased my productivity.  I am able to reconcile portfolio accounts much faster, I can generate mail merge email messages to our entire list of advisory clients in a flash, and I can record compliance information without constantly switching between source data files and input forms.

If you’re on the fence about adding multiple monitors, I urge you to take the plunge and make the purchase.  It may take a day or two to get used to working with multiple screens, but you will not regret it.

You’ll wonder how you ever worked before with just one screen!

Related articles:

• Create a New Message Shortcut for Outlook
• Expand Outlook Efficiency with Switch Options
• Stop Sending “Dear Valued Client” Emails

The webcast will be held this Thursday, November 20 at 4:00PM EST/1:00PST.  Unfortunately our company has an all-day offsite staff retreat scheduled for Thursday, so I’m not able to attend the webcast.  I’ll look for a link to the webcast archive and post it here if one is available.

It features Heath Batz, senior manager of online trading tools at Schwab Institutional, and Michael Granger, Vice President of Implementation and Client Management at Advisor Software, Inc. 

This Webcast is scheduled to cover:

• Exporting and importing models to between other Portfolio Rebalancer users within your firm
• Adding, maintaining and rebalancing accounts held at outside custodians
• Creating a custom security equivalency group, leveraging rules-based equivalencies, and completing a rebalance using those equivalencies.
• Efficient trade file generation by leveraging block trading and trade allocations.

Click the image below to open the registration page to attend the Webcast.

Related articles:

• Schwab Portfolio Rebalancer Enhancements

I signed up for the next session to be held on:

November 5, 2008
2:00 – 3:00 Eastern Time

Visit my previous post to read more or simply go to the ByAllAccounts website to register.

Click here to read the PreciseFP press release on PRWeb.

What PreciseFP aims to do is simplify the data gathering and entry process advisers face when bringing a new client into the firm.  I don’t quite make the connection with the phrase “precise financial planning (FP)” to data gathering, but still, the application has promise in streamlining the potential volumes of data gathered by advisers and their staff.  PreciseID is a cooler name, but it’s already taken by Experian.

Bruckenstein Reviews PreciseFP

Included in the press release is a link to a review by Joel P. Bruckenstein on the Morningstar Advisor website.  Joel gives a decent overview on how the utility works, but I didn’t get a sense of how PreciseFP might be orders of magnitude better than a fillable PDF created specifically for clients to complete when signing on with a firm.

PreciseFP runs $489 a year (or $49/month).  To save PDF files locally, advisers will also need to buy Adobe Acrobat running anywhere between $149 and $499 depending on desired functionality.

Important Takeaways about PreciseFP:

• Two interfaces are offered: an Advisor Dashboard and a client site
• Customization of intake questions is limited, other customization appears non-existent
• It won’t prevent garbage data from being entered by clients.  For example, clients may not know if the state in which they married is a community property state
• Specific interfaces with popular CRM and financial planning software applications don’t exist, although data from PDF files can be exported to an intermediate XML file (YourSilverBullet, anyone?)
• It’s a version 1.0 product, so the user community is limited and more dynamic features are yet to be added

Nevertheless, PreciseFP is one of only a handful of applications targeted at simplifying the data gathering process.  It’ll be interesting to see how well the application is received in the adviser marketplace.

In February 2008, I adopted the use of the ByAllAccounts WebPortfolio and Custodial Integrator data aggregation service.  I blogged a little bit about it here and here, and am working on a more comprehensive review of the service addressing how I’ve successfully integrated it into our operations process.

But until then, I wanted to point out an invitation from the folks at ByAllAccounts to take a “look under hood” of the service.

Martin Dickau, Chief Technical Officer at ByAllAccounts, will be presenting a webinar next week to provide an inside look into the data aggregation process and how the company prepares data to be integrated among a variety of users and their respective portfolio software platforms (e.g. dbCAMS, which my firm currently uses, Schwab’s PortfolioCenter, Advent, Etelligent, and many others).

If you’re the kind of person that likes to know what goes on behind the scenes of software services, I suggest you attend the ByAllAccounts webinar.  Capturing, aggregating, and distributing captive 3rd party account data is likely much more complicated than one would think.

September 17, 2008
2:00 – 3:00 Eastern Time
Click the image below to open ByAllAccounts’ website and click the registration link.

[Image credit]

Also basic but often overlooked are commonly accepted rules for an effective client e-mail. Says Gregory, you maximize its effectiveness by making sure your e-mail has a compelling subject line, is tightly written and edited, is addressed and targeted to one client at a time and is designed with a lot of white space, which makes the e-mails easier to read by allowing you to compose them in a noncluttered, eye-inviting manner.

“But Bill,” you might say, “I’d love to send out personalized and targeted emails to all of my clients, but with 250 clients, it would take many hours or even a full day.” Instead, I can imagine what “targeted” emails advisers might be sending now:

Isn’t it a tad bit ironic that your best clients are still receiving emails with the salutation “Dear Valued Client?”

Yes, I’m here to tell you that you can easily personalize bulk emails sent to clients. Here’s how to do it.

Bulk Email Providers

First, the easy way to customize email communication to your clients is to subscribe to a service like Constant Contact.  There’s a monthly fee of $15 for an email list of up to 500 clients, which is more than adequate for all but the largest of independent financial planning firms.

However, using a service like Constant Contact means that your email messages will have Constant Contact’s banner across the bottom of the message like the one shown below.  This may or may not be a bad thing (especially since there’s subscription removal information), but it’s one thing to keep in mind.

Using Outlook’s Mail Merge

So you decided you don’t want to pay $15 for the one or two bulk emails you may (or may not) send each month.  Instead, you can use Microsoft’s built-in mail merge feature.

First, there are two things to remember regarding Microsoft’s mail merge. Number one, you cannot customize the subject field to the recipients. When the final step in the mail merge is completed, a window pops up where the subject of the email is defined for all recipients (shown below). THIS is the subject of your merged emails, NOT the subject typed in the sample message in Outlook.

Number two, you cannot easily include attachments in mail merged emails. There are some Visual Basic macros that can make this happen, but they are beyond the scope of reasonable capabilities for financial adviser firms.  So the personalized message to your clients should not refer to any attachments to the email.

Mail Merge Wizard

The mail merge wizard walks through the process of generating customized email messages fairly well.  To begin the mail merge process, either open a blank document in Word or open a new blank email message in Outlook (provided that Word is your email editor).  Click Tools->Letters and Mailings->Mail Merge… to open the Mail Merge Wizard.

Walk through the steps in the mail merge wizard to select email messages, select the message recipients (you can use an existing list of contacts or even use an Excel spreadsheet of names and email addresses), and draft your message.  In Step 4 of the wizard you can insert the customized fields such as the Greeting line.  Note my image above; the <<Greeting Line>> field is shown, and it is here that all of the recipient’s first names are merged.  Step 5 will preview each message to be generated.  Click through the recipients to see that the greeting line is customized for each recipient.  In other words, each message has a custom salutation for your client rather than the generic “Dear Valued Client.”

Finally, Step 6 completes the merge and brings up the Merge to E-mail window shown earlier.  Type in the subject that all your clients will see, choose send to all records, and click OK.  At this point all the customized email messages are generated and sent from your address to all your selected recipients.

More Mail Merge Guides 

Since I didn’t address all the specifics of the mail merge process (such as matching the field definitions of contact information), I want to include a link to a knowledge base article at Microsoft that describes more of the details.

Click here to view Connie Miller’s mail merge article at Microsoft.  

Finally, you can search Google to find many other helpful articles on the subject.

One word of wisdom.  Test your merge by sending a message to your various personal email addresses with different salutation lines.  You don’t want to make a mistake with your first mail merge and accidentally send it to all your clients while you’re testing the interface.  Practice this one a few times before committing to your final message.

And thankfully, you’ll put an end to those generic emails to clients!

dbCAMS Command Window

For example, I discovered the Command Window buried in dbCAMS’ Tools menu not too long ago.  The Command Window allows scripts, both basic and complex, to be executed in order to modify database information.  One example where the Command Window has proved to be very powerful is when I need to change non-managed assets of a client to managed assets as they increase their level of service with the firm.

Updating Client Asset Information

Here’s a quick tip on using the Command Window features to facilitate the transition of non-managed accounts tracked in the software to managed accounts.  The field where managed assets are defined is in the Dwnld/Price/Billing tab of the client’s asset, shown in the image below.

Consider a client that has a well-diversified portfolio with a dozen or more mutual funds, or perhaps the client participates in a Separately Managed Account with many individual securities.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no straightforward way to select all of the client’s assets and modify the Managed field accordingly (our firm uses the letter “L” to indicate a managed asset).

dbCAMS does feature a Global Field Change interface in the Tools menu, but the Managed field is not an available option in the interface.  So one would have to open each asset and manually change the Managed field one-by-one.  That’s a terribly inefficient process.  Here’s where the Command Window adds efficiency.

Using the Command Window

The Command Window is listed under the dbCAMS Tools menu, shown below.

Note the warning message when opening the Command Window.  Heed this warning, as you can do considerable damage to the data contained in dbCAMS if the wrong script is used.

For our purposes, all we need is a simple script to replace the Managed field with the letter “L.”  Typically all assets to be modified will belong to one account, so we need to add a filter to limit the modification to just one account.  First we need to select the FAS – Assets table in the drop-down list since we don’t want to change any other type of data.  Then we’ll use the REPLACE command and set a filter to just one account.  See the command example in the window below.

The script shown will replace any character in the asset’s Managed field with the letter “L” only for those assets belonging to account 15104.  Run the script by pressing the Execute button, and it will set the Managed field accordingly.  You can save this script by pressing the Save button.  Note that the script shown above is saved as “Set Manage” for future use.

Press Cancel to close the Command Window and then navigate to the client’s assets in CAMS to verify that replacement was performed correctly.  Lo and behold, if your script was formatted properly, all of the client’s assets are now set to Managed assets (e.g. Managed field contains “L”).

Command Window Risks and Rewards

Remember, the Command Window can destroy your data just as quickly as it can save time by updating fields in batch fashion.  For most of the common updates, use the Global Field Change option in the Tools menu.  But for those fields that are more specific such as the Managed field, knowing how to safely use the Command Window can go a long way.

The /c switch is just one of many command line options when running Outlook.  I found a nice concise list of the various command line switch options to perform specific tasks using Outlook. 

While most are not nearly as useful as the new message window switch, I like having a reference to this kind of information just in case I need it in the future.

Click here for the list of Outlook command line switch options (opens in new window)

On a side note, let me say that I try to keep the messages I send to others concise and relevant for the recipients.  Nevertheless, my role and responsibilities require that I send out confirmations and notifications on internal matters such as security transactions, fund receipts and disbursements, and the occasional status update.

If I’m going to send out these updates, how can I do it while keeping Outlook closed?  Enter the new email message shortcut.

Creating a New Email Shortcut

Here is a quick and easy tip you can use should you want to keep Outlook closed for long periods yet still wish to send outgoing email messages.

Summary

For readers comfortable making desktop shortcuts, simply create a new shortcut with the following item location (you may need to use a different path where your Outlook.exe is located):

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\Outlook.exe” /c ipm.note

The Nitty Gritty Details

For readers that need the step-by-step process of creating this shortcut, I’m including it below.  First, find the location of your computer’s Outlook executable file, outlook.exe.  For most Windows XP users, the executable is found buried in the Program Files directory.  The image below shows the full path of my outlook.exe location:

Highlight and copy the path in the address bar: this is what we’ll need to create the shortcut.

Next, minimize all windows to show the desktop.  Right-click anywhere on the desktop to bring up a menu list, hover the cursor over New and then click Shortcut (shown below). 

This brings up the window to create a shortcut (shown below).  In the item location, paste in the address where outlook.exe is located that was copied from the explorer window.  The address needs to be surrounded by quotation marks.

Before clicking Next, the following text needs to be entered to the right of the Outlook.exe path (known to me as switch options):

/c ipm.note

So the entire entry in the item location should be:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\Outlook.exe” /c ipm.note

Click Next > then type in a name for the shortcut (e.g. Outlook New Email Message) and click Finish.  Now you have a desktop icon you can click any time to open a new email message window.  You don’t need to bother opening Outlook and get distracted by the huge quantities of email in your inbox.

Shortcut Bonus

Here’s a bonus on using the shortcut.  If you want to use a keyboard combination (I use CTRL+SHIFT+M for my email shortcut, which is the default shortcut used when Outlook is running), right-click on the shortcut icon and then select Properties.  Click on the Shortcut Key field once and then press the keyboard combination to set this field (shown below).

Click OK to accept your changes and then try out the keyboard combo: CRTL+SHIFT+M.  How about that, a new email message window appears!

I hope you find this shortcut as useful as I have today.  I have a quick and easy way to open a new email window that I can use to send quick and appropriate messages.

Be sure to leave any feedback or suggestions in the comments below.

[tip: Brian Tillman]