Software Archives - Page 3 of 10

TRX receives US Patent for Analysis Expert functionality

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Bill Winterberg in Software

Innovative dashboard for portfolio rebalancing is now a patented method

Last year I connected with Total Rebalance Expert (TRX) CEO Sheryl Rowling to learn about the rebalancing software for advisers. In our discussion, Rowling highlighted the innovative Analysis Expert dashboard for which TRX filed a patent.

Watch the video interview from T3 2012 about the patented technology (starts at 3:05): http://youtu.be/JrpKkRuxok8?t=3m5s

Now, TRX just announced that it attained US Patent 8,321,320, granted November 27, 2012 for “Portfolio Management Analysis System and Method.”

“Advisors have been telling us all along that our approach to providing the needed technology to automate the portfolio rebalancing process was unique and innovative,” said Cheryll Lurtz, TRX co-founder and CIO, in a press release.

“Now with this patent, advisors using TRX can uniquely benefit from that intellectual capital that was generated from the experiences in tax-efficient rebalancing developed in advisory practices,” added Lurtz.

Click here to view the TRX press release (43 Kb PDF)

Financial adviser marketing tools for the Digital Age

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Bill Winterberg in Practice Management, Software

inbound marketing

Get onboard with these top tools for marketing in the Digital Age

As a financial adviser, you have the potential to benefit tremendously from the proliferation of new online marketing tools.

Now that we’re fully enveloped in the Digital Age, you have many new techniques and resources at your disposal to market your business and services to those who can benefit the most.

What’s so different about marketing in the Digital Age?

Digital Age marketing is characterized by “inbound marketing,” as opposed to “outbound marketing.”

Inbound marketing is the free, value-add content you create and post online for others to find, based on their needs (and, more importantly, search engine queries). It’s what the person on the left in the image above is doing.

Outbound marketing is more traditional, where you advertise using billboards, email blasts, and prospect seminars in the hopes of exposing your company/brand/profile to as many people as possible. It’s what the bullhorn guy on the right of the image is doing.

So which Digital Age marketing tools should you start using?

I wrote a succinct guide to marketing in the Digital Age for the January 2013 issue of the Journal of Financial Planning.

Click here to read Tools for Digital Age Marketing from the Journal of Financial Planning.

How screencasts can promote business growth this year

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Bill Winterberg in Software

Camtasia
Screencasts can educate, inform, and promote your business for a more prosperous New Year.

How many times have you walked clients through filling out one of your account forms, or shown them how to create an account for your client portal?

If the answer is more than once, then screencasts might be your answer to address these situations more efficiently.

What’s a screencast?

It’s essentially a recording of both your voice and your computer screen that you can turn around and publish for others to view. There are a number tools you can use to make screencasts of your own, several of which I covered in my latest Quickview update for Morningstar Advisor.

Click here to read Show off With Screencasts at Morningstar Advisor and see which tool you’ll start using to experiment with screencasts.

Contactually’s Email Report Card: Everything you didn’t want to know about your bad email habits

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Bill Winterberg in Software, Technology

Contactually Report Card Frequent readers know I’m an advocate of Contactually, a professional relationship manager application developed by the eponymous startup (see: Podcast: Daily follow-up reminders help financial advisers maintain strong client relationships).

One pretty cool “holiday gift” in terms of new functionality from Contactually is their Email Report Card.

Contactually now delivers an interactive infographic, for lack of a better word, that grades a variety of parameters with respect to your email habits.

Now all of your bad (and good, if there is such a thing) email habits don’t need to remain a mystery anymore. You can see statistics on new contacts made (I got an A+!), subject line length (B+ here), and your average email response time by month (oops, I failed!).

Click to view my custom Email Report Card from Contactually.

To get one of your own, sign up using the link at the top of my report (not an affiliate link, I get no benefit if you sign up).

PODCAST: How PreciseFP streamlines routine data gathering and client collaboration

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Bill Winterberg in Efficiency, Podcast, Software

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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Don Whalen, co-founder of PreciseFP

Client data gathering and form filling are the least glamorous tasks that make up your workday, but the activities are essential to create financial plans with correct information.

Fortunately, there are a few solutions that can significantly streamline the arduous data-gathering process.

One product is PreciseFP, co-founded by Don Whalen and Sebastian Skwarek in 2008.

In what probably sets the record as the longest time between my initial discovery (see: Has Laborious Client Data Entry Met Its Match? from September 2008) and follow up, I connected with Don Whalen to learn about PreciseFP’s growth over the last four years and how PreciseFP has matured to be a reliable, cost-effective tool advisers can use to facilitate the data gathering.

Listen to the podcast below, and note that Whalen provides a discount code all listeners can use to receive 15% off their subscription to PreciseFP (not an affiliate code, I receive no referral fees if you sign up).

Want to impress guests of your holiday event? Add a mobile app.

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Bill Winterberg in Online Marketing, Software, Technology

The holiday season has arrived! Like many financial advisers, you’re likely planning to close the year by hosting a client appreciation event.

Client appreciation events are a great way to build rapport and camaraderie with clients, but they are also a great way to further differentiate your business from other financial planning and wealth management firms.

One way to differentiate your event (and also your business) is to build a mobile app for it.

This month’s Quickview update for Morningstar Advisor highlights one service you can use to build iOS and Android apps to showcase your next client appreciation event.

Be sure to read Quickview: Event Apps Made Easy.

Cabinet MOBILE iPad app is the latest way to leverage document management on the popular tablet

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Bill Winterberg in Software, Technology

In a press release today, Cabinet, a provider of document management software, announced the release of its own app for iPad called Cabinet MOBILE.

View the Cabinet MOBILE listing in iTunes ($9.99).

Cabinet joins other document management providers like Laserfiche, Worldox, and NetDocuments in the trend of providing customers access to their electronic documents through a native mobile application.

Salesforce for financial advisers solicits bipolar reactions; AppCrown attempts to resolve disjointed CRM

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Bill Winterberg in Software

Salesforce.com is like black licorice among financial advisers; they either love it or they hate it.

Just 5% of all advisers who responded to the 2011 Financial Planning Magazine tech survey said they use Salesforce as their CRM. For a CRM widely used in other verticals, financial services just hasn’t warmed up to the program.

So along comes a company called AppCrown (you may remember them as E*Assist back in the 00s) with the hopes of successfully implementing the AppCrown variant of Salesforce in wealth management firms.

Here’s a short interview with AppCrown COO Franklin Tsung on why he believes the adoption of Salesforce.com will grow among financial advisers and how the company’s “pure play” integrations will contribute to its success in the market.

(click to view on YouTube)

Yes, you can create financial plans in eight minutes

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Bill Winterberg in Software, Video Spotlight

I connected with Neal Ringquist, President of Advisor Software, Inc. and talked about the trend he’s seeing of advisers turning to quick financial planning tools in their business.

One of Advisor Software’s initiatives for 2012 is to supply advisers with that tool, a web-based program it calls goalgamiPro.

“[Advisers] can quickly generate a plan and a conversation with a client, collate the material, so the discussion with the client is about goals. It’s about them, and it personalizes that discussion,” said Ringquist in an interview.

For more information on goalgamiPro and the trend towards quick financial planning tools, view the video interview.

Alternative investments don’t need to be a headache to manage

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Bill Winterberg in Software

With interest rates stuck at record lows, you’ve likely considered adding alternative investments to your clients’ portfolios for a boost in investment income. Alternatives also, in theory, add diversification to portfolios through the use of non-correlated assets with respect to equities and fixed income.

However, managing and reporting on alternative investments usually means adding a lot more manual processes to your back office procedures.

Thankfully, software and service vendors to financial advisers recognize the challenge and now support tools to facilitate alternative investment management.

I covered one of these tools in this month’s column for Morningstar Advisor.

Find out what it is by reading Outsourcing Alternative Asset Aggregation and More.

[Photo: troismarteaux]

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