To read the press release from Black Diamond, click the following link: http://www.blackdiamondreporting.com/whoweare/press

BlueSky is a web-based platform that enhances standard portfolio management and performance reporting features by adding an array of customizable options. BlueSky users can now configure the appearance and settings of their home page under the SkyViews feature.

Pre-configured report objects can now be added to a user’s home page under the SkyBoxes option, and comprehensive report pages constructed for each user are available under the SkyPages feature.

In addition, Black Diamond announced that it is expanding its Client Advocates team to better support the company’s clients. In the press release, Reed Colley, CEO of Black Diamond Performance Reporting, said, “Our expansion of our expert support in the areas of transition and data conversion are in response to the growing demand we are seeing from established wealth management firms.”

I have not yet viewed the new BlueSky platform, but I hope to arrange a demo soon and report back on its features and usability for advisers considering the system.

At the time, the ByAllAccounts-to-dbCAMS connection wasn’t 100% official as there were some behind-the-scenes issues with data relationships and configuration concerns. Also, dbCAMS users had to pay an annual fee to FCSI in order to use ByAllAccounts’ aggregation, and that fee was on top of the normal fees charged by ByAllAccounts.

Nevertheless, I demonstrated my engineering aptitude and ability to troubleshoot good enough to convince ByAllAccounts to allow me to use their service with CAMS. It was a good decision on their part as it led to a few new contracts for ByAllAccounts as I demonstrated my success to other CAMS users.

Finally, ByAllAccounts today announced an agreement with Morningstar, Inc., to provide enhanced access to aggregated client account data for users of Morningstar® Principia® CAMS (formerly dbCAMS). In addition,  users of CAMS no longer need to pay an annual access fee in addition to the ByAllAccounts fees. That is a positive development for everyone.

Click here to view the Marketwire press release ByAllAccounts Offers Enhanced Account Aggregation to Morningstar Principia CAMS Users.

According to a PRNewswire article, Pershing announced that it has introduced a version of NetX360™ that is compatible with the Apple® iPad™.

Click here to view BNY Mellon’s Pershing Unit Introduces NetX360™ for iPad™ from PRNewswire.

While Pershing may have introduced the iPad-compatible app, I cannot find the app in the App Store as of this writing. The iPhone-compatible app is available, but not the version enhanced for the iPad.

The iPhone version of NetX360 Mobile has not received favorable reviews. It has just one 5-star rating compared to 16 1-star ratings.

common complaint is that trading is not supported at all within the app. NetX360 Mobile does allow read-only access to client account balances, contact information, and transaction history. But several reviewers complain that their B/D shouldn’t charge a monthly fee (typically $10/month) for basic access to account information.

This month I tackle the issue of the constant back-and-forth messaging in which advisors often engage to schedule meetings with clients and colleagues. There is a better way!

Click here to read “A Simpler Way to Schedule Meetings” at Morningstar Advisor.

Another custodian has formed a partnership to increase its technology offerings to affiliated advisers.

Shareholders Service Group (SSG) of San Diego, Calif. announced today that it is partnering with Black Diamond Performance Reporting of Jacksonville, Fla. to deliver its industry leading, web-based portfolio management and reporting system through the SSG platform.

Click here to view the press release for the Black Diamond and SSG partnership (Yahoo! News).

With the addition of Black Diamond’s technology, SSG continues to fill the service gap between itself and the three major custodians, Schwab Institutional, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, and TD AMERITRADE Institutional.

One of the differences SSG features is its lack of a minimum asset requirement for advisers seeking custody services for client accounts. New advisers can begin to custody client accounts with SSG from day one, whereas a minimum asset level between $10 and $25 million is required to affiliate with the major custodians.

I mentioned three apps that can be used to circumvent this drawback (GoodReader, Dropbox, and SugarSync), each with its own pros and cons.

Today, the folks at SugarSync released an update to its iPad app to enable users to perform basic file editing and synchronization with its SugarSync cloud document storage service.

Unfortunately, I still find document synchronization on the iPad, even with the SugarSync update, to be a convoluted process.

Below is an excerpt from the SugarSync press release describing how their updated app works:

1. Via the SugarSync for iPad app, browse and view files from all computers already synced to the SugarSync cloud.
2. To edit a document (for example), click “Open in Pages” at the top of the screen (an appropriate document editor, e.g., Pages, Numbers or Keynote, must be installed).
3. In Pages (or other document editor), edit as desired and save the file to the iPad’s local storage.
4. Sync the file directly back to a SugarSync cloud account and remote computers via SugarSync’s Upload by Email. (Updated files are found in a dedicated SugarSync folder).

I followed these steps to edit a simple text file I created in my SugarSync folder. Sadly, these steps end up producing three separate files in an effort to support simple editing.

Naturally, the first version of the file is the one stored in the SugarSync folder. In step 3 above, a second version of the file is created by the document editor (e.g. Pages) once it is saved to the iPad. Then in step 4, the second version is emailed back to SugarSync (using a special email address provided by SugarSync) and is routed to a special folder in the Magic Briefcase labeled Uploaded by Email, thus creating a third version of the file.

So after editing one file, three versions of it now exist, spread across SugarSync and the iPad! Long time readers of FPPad know how I hate multiple versions of files and the plague of “versionitis.”

One the one hand, SugarSync does make it possible to edit documents on an iPad and send the updated file back to the SugarSync cloud. That is a good thing.

But on the other hand, the iPad’s lack of a basic file explorer makes the process of editing documents stored in the cloud unnecessarily complex.

So for now, I continue to use my iPad primarily to consume information (audio, video, Internet browsing, reading PDF files, etc.) rather than to edit existing documents. If I’m going to simply edit text files, I might as well save an email draft in GMail to avoid all the back-and-forth synchronization with SugarSync.

That said, I long for the day when basic editing of files stored in Google Documents is possible on an iPad. Before that happens, I bet a tablet PC running some variant of the Windows OS will be available.

The Executive Summary

• What: Apple iPad Wifi 16GB
• Pros: Elegant design, sleek & attractive, easy touch interface with nearly no learning curve, 10+ hour battery life
• Cons: (Besides the 13 referenced below) No native file explorer, editing existing documents is a convoluted process.
• Takeaway: The iPad can compliment a paperless office, enhance meetings with clients, and provide a single source to access print and online media if you’re willing to work within the limitations of existing apps.

The Review for Financial Advisers & Wealth Managers

What you won’t find in this review are the general statements about the iPad’s cool features (like iBooks, pinch-zooming, etc.)  and the drawbacks (no multitasking, no USB ports, etc.) of the device. Instead, you’ll find my take on how I believe advisers and wealth managers can use the new tablet computer to enhance their daily lives.

If you still feel like you need the basic pros and cons overview of the device, here are two links, one in favor of the iPad’s potential to change computing, and one painstakingly detailed on the drawbacks of the device.

• The 10 Most Surprising Things About the iPad
• 13 Glaring iPad Shortcomings

With that out of the way, let’s explore the ways I see advisers using the iPad.

Access Your Documents, Anywhere, Anytime

Some advisers have implemented a paperless office, and many others are considering operating in a paperless environment for a variety of reasons. The iPad can be used in a paperless environment as a new conduit to access all the information stored electronically.

The most direct way to access electronic documents with an iPad is to use an iPad (or iPhone) app. However, apps are non-existent from the major document management companies that serve financial advisers (e.g. Laserfiche, Worldox, CabinetNG, or DocuXplorer).

The next best thing to an iPad app is to access electronic documents via the built-in Safari web browser. This works particularly well for the web-based “cloud” service providers. Take NetDocuments as an example.

To access any document stored in NetDocuments with an iPad, use Safari to navigate to the NetDocuments login page, enter user credentials, and the NetDocuments home page is displayed with many of the features that appear on the desktop version of the program.

NetDocuments provides an optimized website tailored for mobile devices, including the iPad. Any document stored in the service can be viewed and the site supports a full-text search of all available documents.

Click the image below to view a 2:30 demo of the NetDocuments mobile website as seen on an iPhone.

If a cloud document management program isn’t used, the option to view files gets a bit tricky. The iPad does not have a native file explorer, so there’s no way to “drag-and-drop,” say, a PDF file from a desktop machine to the iPad.

A word of warning: the following applications mentioned may circumvent security policies for documents with private client data. Proceed with caution!

Several iPad apps exist that support the management of common file types such as .doc, .ppt, .pdf, and .html, the most popular of which is GoodReader ($0.99). Within the GoodReader app, files can be transferred from a desktop computer to the iPad over a shared Wifi network.

An alternative to GoodReader is to use a file synchronization service such as SugarSync. SugarSync creates a folder on a desktop’s hard drive that is synchronized to the SugarSync cloud. Any file saved in the SugarSync folder is automatically uploaded to the cloud and can be accessed through the SugarSync website. In addition, files in the SugarSync folder are synchronized to any other computer with SugarSync installed and used by the same user.

SugarSync supports a free app for the iPad, so any document stored in the SugarSync folder can be accessed directly through the iPad. There is one caveat: viewing PDF files though SugarSync is limited to file sizes up to 20MB.

DropBox is another cloud synchronization service I’ve mentioned before, but as of this writing, only an iPhone app exists which isn’t suitable to viewing documents on the large iPad screen.  However, GoodReader has a very slick feature that allows the app to connect directly to DropBox, so files stored in Dropbox can be downloaded into GoodReader and viewed at full resolution.

Naturally, an iPad with 3G Internet connectivity eliminates much of the need to load documents on the iPad’s internal memory. Still, there are times when the iPad will be used in an area with unreliable AT&T 3G service or no 3G at all (like during a flight), so getting in the habit of downloading important documents to GoodReader goes a long way.

Enhance Client Meetings

Once the iPad is connected to electronic documents, advisers can aim to replace piles of papers typically generated for client meetings with one simple device. Most meeting preparation includes a lot of document printing, including the meeting agenda, past portfolio performance reports, asset allocation chart, and various support documentation.

Instead of printing all of these documents, advisers can load them onto the iPad and access them (if necessary) during the course of the meeting. Adopting this paperless meeting style certainly demonstrates an innovative culture, but the reduction in paper use is cost effective and eco-friendly as well.

Also, during the course of a meeting, advisers may want to access the firm’s CRM system to refer to historical notes from a phone conversation or schedule a future appointment. Instead of deferring these tasks after the meeting, advisers can use the iPad to review these items in the CRM on the spot.

Again, cloud/SaaS CRM programs (think RedTail, Salesforce, AppCrown, ProTracker Advantage Cloud, etc.) make access via an iPad fairly easy, since all that is needed is a web browser. Locally installed CRM programs present more challenges. Some local CRM systems feature support for mobile devices, such as the Junxure Mobile add-on to Junxure.

Single Source for Media

The iPad is purpose built to consume media. Apple iTunes connects to volumes of audio and video content while the iBooks and Amazon Kindle apps enable access to nearly half a million books. In addition, a handful of major financial publications support individual apps to access exclusive content, including The Wall Street Journal (though it’s rated very poorly) and Reuters News Pro.

But what options exist for industry publications like InvestmentNews, Financial Planning, Financial Advisor, Investment Advisor, and the Journal of Financial Planning?

There are at least two ways to view content from industry publications on an iPad. First, PDF files can be generated from content available on the Internet from the various publications. PDFs can be created directly with Safari on an iMac or by purchasing Adobe Acrobat for a PC (several free PDF printing utilities are also available for PC). Move the PDF files to SugarSync, GoodReader, or email them to an email address linked to the iPad’s email program to view the file on the tablet.

Second, a hard copy publication can be physically scanned and saved as a PDF file (a.k.a the brute force method). I experimented with a recent copy of BusinessWeek and cut the binding off of the magazine to feed all 84 pages through my Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. About 3 minutes later I had a PDF file of the full magazine ready to access from my iPad (using SugarSync).

I used Adobe Acrobat 9 to optimize the original PDF and reduce its size to about 7MB from an original size of 42MB. Obviously, smaller file sizes transfer faster over Wifi, but it also gets around SugarSync’s 20MB file size limitation. But again, GoodReader gets the nod when viewing PDF files due to its decent navigation options like a single-tap page advance and “go to page X” selection.

Again, just like adding documents for a client meeting, advisers can aggregate different sources of industry media onto one device for reference and reading at any time.

Sum It Up

I highlighted three main ways I believe advisers can leverage new functionality made possible by the iPad. While the iPad can compliment the tools used in an innovative wealth management practice, I don’t expect the device will take over as the main computing tool in such an environment.

As the platform continues to increase its market share and adoption, I anticipate that new apps will emerge to expand the business applications for advisers beyond those that I can think of today. For example, I think Wifi will be the new USB. USB cables and ports will be rendered obsolete as devices will soon talk to one another via shared Wifi connections instead of USB. Yes, you heard it here first.

So should advisers run out and spend at least $500 to add the iPad to their practice? That depends.

If the uses I described are extremely appealing, one may find the price easy to justify. But in environments without paperless document management or online CRM systems, advisers may not fully realize the potential of how an iPad can change the way they run their business.

Today, Socialware announced several new initiatives to better serve the market of individuals and small and medium businesses (SMBs). The full announcement can be viewed on the Socialware blog.

What do these changes mean to advisers?

For one, the Socialware Sync service is aimed directly at tackling the capture and archive process for social media messages. Record retention is the starting point of any process intended to be compliant with FINRA and SEC regulatory guidelines.

In addition to archiving, Socialware Sync features a robust search function to identify messages containing any keyword of interest. This search feature may provide an answer to the dilemma of how to monitor various social media channels supported by an adviser.

While other sites such as WordPress blogs or YouTube channels aren’t supported, Socialware Sync focuses on the big three in social media; Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

So who else is competing for adviser attention in this space? Social media archive services are currently offered by Smarsh, LiveOffice, Arkovi Backups, and Backupify. I imagine I left a few off my list, so please leave a comment below about other services. Now each provider offers different features and price points, so they can’t all be compared directly with Socialware’s product offering.

What’s clear is that social media websites are not going away, and new technology like Socialware Sync exists to allow advisers in regulated industries to use these communication mediums compliantly.

WiseTREND is an organization that, according to its website:

…provides a set of specific industry-tested Solutions, as well as customizable Software applications for OCR, Document Conversion and Data Capture projects.

I’ve written on FPPad before (Improve Your Paperless Document Searches) about applying OCR to each and every document captured with a scanner. Doing so allows document management and search programs to look inside documents and match keywords entered in a search query.

Adopting intelligent search for documents means no more wasted time digging though seemingly endless trees of subfolders on a company server in an attempt to find one elusive document that ended up being misfiled when it was captured in the first place.

To get good quality OCR that can process batches of documents or run immediately upon document capture, you’ll need to spend some money on applications such as Adobe Acrobat or ABBYY.

But what if you just need to run OCR on one document for free?

WiseTREND offers a service called OCR Cloud 2.0, and anyone can evaluate this service by emailing a document image (PDF, JPG, TIF, PNG, and BMP) to ocr@wisetrend.com. Several minutes later (my trial took 8 minutes), WiseTREND will email back a PDF that’s been OCRed and thus has searchable text. It’s very slick!

Now I don’t recommend using the free email trial to OCR sensitive documents (I sent a receipt from a recent lunch meeting), but it’s a handy resource for that odd file you want to OCR for future reference.

If you have feedback on WiseTREND or other similar providers, I’m interested in hearing from you. Feel free to leave comments below or contact me via email.

First, firms want to implement a document management system to efficiently manage the volumes of paperwork and forms generated throughout the financial planning process. Second, advisers want to increase revenue and client service by capturing data on held-away assets through account aggregation software.

Late last week I posted commentary why document storage isn’t document management at advisors4advisors.com. On the account aggregation side, I recently learned of a webinar offered by ByAllAccounts aimed to address this opportunity.

Here’s a short clip from a press release issued today:

On Wednesday, February 24, ByAllAccounts will host a webinar to release findings from the Q1 Advisor Survey. The event – “Do you charge enough for held-away assets?” – will give financial advisors insight into how they compare to their peers in terms of billing practices. The webinar will address the following questions:

• How confident are advisors in increasing revenues in 2010?
• What percentage of advisors report, advise and bill on held-away assets?
• How much are advisors charging for this advice and reporting?
• What is the revenue potential for billing on held-away assets?

To register, visit: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/517328579

I’ve written about ByAllAccounts several times on FPPad, so here are some of the more popular posts you may find of interest:

• Done with Quarterly Reports; How About You?
• The Custody Conundrum at Advisor Perspectives
• Technology Tips to Cut Costs and Increase Revenue

Click here to read the release on FINRA’s website.

Here are several links to coverage, reviews, and feedback by folks I follow in the blogosphere and social media space:

• AdvisorTweets: FINRA Issues Social Media Guidance: Tweets Do Not Require Prior Approval
• Rock The Boat Marketing: Compliance: FINRA Bounces Social Media Ball To Your Court
• Arkovi Backups: FINRA’s Social Media Guidelines
• InvestmentNews: Finra unveils guidelines for social-media and business blogging
• SECLaw.com: FINRA Releases Social Media Guidance For Brokers
• Smarsh: FINRA Tackles Social Media Compliance with FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06
• BlissPR: FINRA’s Social Media Guidelines – Is 10 Pages Enough?
• Financial Advisor: FINRA Cautions Advisors About Social Media
• Gilbane Group: FINRA Affirms Regulation of User-Generated and Social Content
• Compliance Building: FINRA Issues Guidance on Social Networking Sites
• IT Knowledge Exchange: FINRA compliance rules extended to social media platforms
• [New as of 2/11/2010] Backupify: Financial advisors are required to keep social media records, even if it’s impossible

While this article is directed to lawyers, it is directly applicable to financial advisers who use iPhones to access information about clients.

But don’t the iPhone 3G’s encryption and unlock code features protect data from nefarious characters? No they don’t, according to Sharon D. Nelson, Esq. and John W. Simek of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Click here to read their article, Why Lawyers Shouldn’t Use The iPhone: A Security Nightmare.

Update 12/21/2009: Here’s an article from Davis Janowski at InvestmentNews discussing online conferences; No fuss, no muss, but forget about freebies. He highlights the Forbes iConference series among other events.

I attended the Forbes Advisor iConference Building a Rebound-Ready Game Plan on Wednesday of this week. I believe this is the second 100% web-based conference put on by Forbes. Note that InvestmentNews also recently held a 100% online event covering ETFs, but I don’t currently manage investments, so I skipped the event.

If you missed the event, replays are available for 90 days after the iConference. This FPPad post has details on how FPA members can attend for free.

Here’s my feedback on the Forbes event.

Format

Attending the iConference was easy; fire up an approved web browser (Internet Explorer 6 or higher or Firefox versions prior to 3.5), log in, and the iConference was underway. There were three main areas of the iConference:

• Presentation Area
• Networking Lounge
• Exhibit Hall

Navigating the Presentation Area was easy, and attending a live event was as easy as clicking the Attend button. This fired up a separate window that contained the presentation content.

There were two types of presentations that I attended. One type featured pre-recorded video of a Q&A session (e.g. the Steve Forbes keynote address) or a pre-recorded presentation (e.g. André Guillemin’s Mobile Technology presentation). The second type featured audio only presentations, typically of panel disucssions, accompanied by slides in the main window.

Both types of presentations were followed by a live Q&A session where questions submitted by attendees were addressed by the presenters. While I suspect many of the presentations were recorded, these Q&A sessions were live, as quite a few of the questions I submitted that day were read out loud word-for-word.

The Networking Lounge was essentially a chat room where all attendees could interact with one another. There’s nothing special to report here, but I never figured out how I could see who was logged in to the chat room. It was a crap shoot that someone would reply to questions or statements posted in the Networking Lounge (though Forbes staff members were always present to provide feedback).

Lastly, the Exhibit Hall featured virtual exhibit booths from vendors and sponsors. All booths featured a chat window, and here I could see the staff running the booth as well as the guests attending the booth. Some booths featured short video presentations about the company or organization, and electronic handouts and materials were available from most exhibitors.

Overall the iConference event was pretty much conducted just like live conferences, and I was impressed with how smoothly everything ran for me. I know other attendees encountered audio, video, and other technical issues, but I didn’t experience any problems throughout the entire day.

Format score: 10 out of 10

Content

The theme of this week’s iConference was Building a Rebound-Ready Game Plan, but it very loosely tied in the content from the presentations. So while I learned some new information, I don’t feel the iConference sets up attendees with a solid game plan to navigate the rebound.

I ended up posting much of the interesting content from the iConference on Twitter using the hashtag #FAiC09.

Click here to see search results of #FAiC09 tweets (PDF).

(So I fudged the formatting to make these search results look halfway decent when printing to a PDF file. Does anyone have tips on how to print more attractive search results from Twitter?)

Again, the content seemed recycled from other events and didn’t seem strongly tied with the game plan theme, so I’m scoring this a little lower.

Content: 6 out of 10

Execution

Again, the iConference ran without any technical difficulties for me, the questions I submitted were addressed, and the content was compelling enough for me to attend nearly the entire day.

Add in the fact that I didn’t have to travel, book a hotel room, or take a substantial amount of time away from my business, and the iConference model is a very attractive medium for the delivery of continuing education and professional development.

Execution: 10 out of 10

Summary

So with a total overall subjective score of 26 out of 30, you can see that I’m impressed with the concept of a virtual conference and pleased with the effort put forth by Forbes to conduct the event.

I really do believe that we’ll see an increase in popularity and availability of virtual events that stretch beyond the standard one hour webinar that are so prominent today. Don’t get me wrong: short webinars won’t go away, but combining the webinars into larger events with networking and exhibitor opportunities at low or no cost is very appealing.

On December 9th, another iConference is being offered titled Building A Rebound-Ready Game Plan.

How did I find out about this resource? By chance, I was navigating the FPA national website looking for information related to my position as the incoming Technology Director for the FPA DFW chapter. Set over in the FPA News Brief section is a single-line link titled FPA President Part of Forbes.com Regulatory Webinar. I clicked the link and learned of the iConference.

Registration to the iConference is $75, but FPA members can attend the iConference for FREE. Here’s how.

Click over to the FPA News Brief to find the special promotional code. Just use the code when registering for the iConference and the $75 fee is waived.

This will be my first virtual conference, so if I have the time and inclination, I’ll post my reaction to the event and any significant takeaways.

Today, my Twitter feed @BillWinterberg is featured in FINS from The Wall Street Journal as one of the top 10 Twitter feeds for career-minded advisers to follow.

Here’s a quick snapshot of my listing (click the snapshot for the full article):

It’s a privilege to be named along side 9 other excellent influential individuals on Twitter. I had no idea that this list was being published, so it’s great to be recognized by an independent organization as someone to follow for high-value professional development content.

Also, that twitpic link (http://twitpic.com/rm9ha) shows how to find the financial planning wave on Google Wave. If you’re on Google Wave, search for us and join the discussion.

So in case you haven’t done so already, click here to follow me on Twitter. I promise to continue to deliver relevant links and discussions of topics pertinent to financial service professionals and independent financial advisers.

It’s that time of year again when Financial Planning magazine publishes its annual survey of technology in use by financial planners and advisers. This is the third year for the survey, and again Joel P. Bruckenstein tallied up the responses (from over 1,500 individuals!) and reviewed the results.

Click here to view Bruckenstein’s review of Financial Planning’s 2009 Software Survey.

Just as I did last year, I’m posting my 30-second summary of the review. I’m listing each comment along side those of 2008 for easy comparison.

• 1,550 people responded to the 2009 survey (over 4 times the 350 responses in 2008)
• 24% said they use Microsoft Outlook as their CRM (barely down from 25% in 2008). That sound you hear is me slapping my forehead. Zoho CRM was a surprise write-in response.
• SaaS CRM programs still lag their locally-installed counterparts, just as in 2008
• MoneyGuidePro is the most popular financial planning package with 20% of users (down from 23% in 2008). Now 19% reported no planning software used, up from 11% in 2008
• In portfolio management software, Morningstar Office topped responses with a 24% share (after not even making the 2008 list because of a survey design glitch), beating out Schwab PortfolioCenter® (19%, 18% in 2008) and Albridge (14%, 18% in 2008). This year, 23% said they don’t use anything, down from 28% in 2008 (again, likely because they don’t manage money or they get portfolio data off of a broker/dealer website)
• Account aggregation adoption still falters. The topic received a 5-sentence paragraph mention in the 2009 article. 70% responded that they don’t use account aggregation software (down from 75% in 2008). ByAllAccounts and CashEdge led the choices for those that do use it. I guess a lot of advisers are simply waiting for clients to retire to capture assets held in captive retirement accounts.
• Paperless office and document storage systems continue to be nearly non-existent for the majority of respondents. Note to Financial Planning magazine survey designer: As Adobe admits its Acrobat software is not a document management application, a point freely expressed in the survey article, so why continue to list it as an available choice in the survey? I know it was listed in prior years’ surveys, but in my opinion this continues to skew results in this category.
• Rebalancing software gained in use from 22% in 2008 to 33% in 2009. Prices in this category are falling and more vendors are entering this space with competitive solutions. Tamarac, Advisor Software (on Schwab and TDAmeritrade’s custody platform), and iRebal continue to lead this sector.

Those are the significant takeaways from this year’s software survey. There’s lots more in the article, but this short summary should give you the overall concept of what was highlighted.

What’s Google Wave?

My favorite description so far of Google Wave is that it’s the Play Doh of communication: there are no obvious instructions, but you can pretty much do anything with it.

So if you’re on Google Wave, connect with me and let’s see what we can make. (Sorry, I’m out of invitations!)

My address is billwinterberg@googlewave.com.

I also created a public wave specifically for financial planning. Search for with:public “financial planning” to find it.

Earlier today, technology columnist David Pogue asked the following question on Twitter:

Lots of replies came in, so it’s difficult to determine which apps are the most recommended among those that replied.

So enter Wordle to the rescue. A quick copy and paste of the replies (with some quick deleting of low-value words) produced the following word cloud (click the image to open the image on wordle.net).

So now it’s easy to see which apps are the most recommended to wow David Pogue’s audience. See any trends?

I finally got around to reading the October edition of Forbes magazine and saw Lee Gomes’ Digital Tools column.

Click here to read Forget Disruption. Dive Deep Instead on Forbes.com.

The point of the column is how Dropbox programmers worked extremely hard to tackle some very difficult code, yet the result is a simple and elegant program that just works. Once you “get” the concept of Dropbox and start using it, you wonder how you ever lived without it.

The beauty of Dropbox is there’s nothing to think about. You don’t need to read a manual. Dropbox just runs in the background, synchronizing files, backing them up, and even tracking revision changes, all without requiring user intervention. When something bad happens to files stored on Dropbox, you’re happy it’s there to rescue you (often from your own stupidity after “accidentally” deleting your latest market commentary newsletter).

How does this apply to financial planning and wealth management? Think of the many systems involved in an adviser’s practice, all with varying levels of complexity. I receive many questions about which program is the best for CRM, document management, or any of the other core adviser systems, and I often gravitate to the same answer.

The best program is the one that just works, where advisers don’t have to think to get work done or capture information. The best tools have extensive programming under the covers, but feature an elegant, simple, and easy to use interface.

Think about this when contacting vendors and VARs about the latest and greatest adviser tool. Does the program “work?” Or are you required to follow a myriad of cascading tabs, nested menus, and button clicks to access what should be core functionality?

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.

One of the tools I recommend in my productivity presentation is a service from Dropbox. Dropbox is a utility that synchronizes all files stored in the Dropbox folder on a computer with any of your other computers where the software is installed. It also has a web interface to browse, view, and download the files stored in the folder. The first 2GB of data stored on Dropbox is free; additional storage is available for a nominal fee.

When I checked in a few minutes before presenting my productivity session, I had a problem. The staff couldn’t find my slide materials on the presentation laptop. I did bring my laptop to the event, but it was in my hotel room at the opposite end of the facility, requiring a round-trip of at least 10 minutes.*

Instead, I pointed the laptop’s browser to the Dropbox website and logged in to my account. I selected my presentations folder and downloaded the latest version of my presentation, as Dropbox is always keeping my files synchronized across my computers.

In less than a minute, I went from crisis mode to crisis averted, and started the presentation right on time. It’s one thing to say how useful Dropbox can be to advisers, but providing real-world examples really drives the concept home.

*Yes, I could have carried a USB thumb drive with my slides, but thumb drives get lost and it takes extra time to make sure files on the drive are up to date.

This is a quick post on developments in the search engine space. This advisors4advisors article link talks about Google’s infusion of “caffeine” updates to speed up indexing and improve results. This is likely a response to the introduction of Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

If you’re like me, you don’t want to spend much time searching. Browsing the Internet is so 1990s.

I want a “find” engine, one that gets me the information I want as quickly as possible. Here’s a tip how can you compare the two search engines to determine which one works best at finding information for you.

Launch the website http://bing-vs-google.com. Enter your search terms and see your results from both Bing and Google side-by-side. If you have dual monitors, you can set your browser window to span the entire workspace and see full-screen search engine results. Searching “financial planning technology,” Bing lists my blog FPPad.com on its second page of results, while it’s buried much farther down at Google (yes, I quickly updated my Google SearchWiki to promote FPPad.com to the first page).

Despite the listing disparity in a sample size of one, I’m still a die-hard Google user. But Bing vs. Google may change that in due course.

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.

The replay of that webinar is available here or use the embedded player below (my portion begins at the -27:50 time point).

I highlighted the following 10 technology tips to help advisers cut costs and increase revenue:

• Rebalancing software (e.g. iRebal, Tamarac, TRX) to increase trading efficiency
• Account aggregation services like ByAllAccounts and CashEdge
• Desktop search tools
• OCR software for scanned images
• Hosted file synchronization services (Dropbox)
• Google Analytics for website metrics
• Internal Wikis for business processes and procedures
• Multiple LCD monitors
• Judicious email use
• Inbox Zero
• Virtual meeting software

For all the specifics and details of the highlighted tools, read the posted transcript.

You can post your questions about these tools below or provide your experience on how they have worked in your practice.

Many advisers who consult with me regarding the use of social media are justifiably concerned about compliance when it comes to using such services. Advisers can use outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to communicate with others and to broadcast information to targeted niche markets. These tools are fantastic ways to build brand recognition for an adviser or a firm and to identify the level of services offered to the public.

I’ve written here previously how FINRA and the SEC may determine that any message disseminated through social media services constitutes marketing and/or advertising and at the very least should be archived and retained in a compliance file. If you are a representative regulated under FINRA, you likely need pre-approval from compliance before posting any messages through social media services. SEC-registered advisers should consult with their Chief Compliance Officer before posting messages as well.

Now let’s assume that an adviser decides to use social media to grow the business. Terrific! But what can be done to efficiently archive and retain those messages sent through social media services?

A new service called Lifestream Backup can help reduce the burden of retaining social media content for compliance purposes.

Configuring Lifestream Backup is very straightforward. After activating the service, users only need to enter login credentials for each social media website to be backed up and select appropriate backup preferences. Lifestream Backup then proceeds to backup various types of messages and content posted through supported social media services.

The content that Lifestream Backup saves is stored on the Amazon Web Services network, another “cloud computing” service. In other words, until the backups are saved to a local computer or server, they are subject to loss in the event the service experiences unexplained data loss. So I recommend that users of Lifestream Backup download data saved by the service. Downloading data once per month is likely sufficient, but it may be prudent to perform this task once every week.

Lifestream Backup currently supports eight social media services:  Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, Google Docs, WordPress, Delicious, Basecamp, and Zoho. Backup functionality for Facebook, Gmail, and YouTube are expected to be added in the future.

The Lifestream Backup service costs $4.95 per month. This is a very reasonable expense considering the time it would take for an adviser to manually track down and save social media content from various sites to a local compliance file.

In the end, this service (along with previously mentioned Smarsh Twitter archiving) allows regulated advisers to take a proactive stance about meeting compliance requirements when using these rapidly evolving social media services.

First, Andrew Gluck at Advisor Products, Inc. has asked me to participate in Friday’s Financial Crisis Webinar Series. The topic is Advisors Using Social Networking Successfully. I will share some of the experiences I’ve had through the use of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook mediums that have personally resulted in new connections and new business.

Click here to register for the Friday, June 5 webinar Advisors Using Social Networking Successfully.

Second, I’ll be part of a panel hosted by InvestmentNews to offer 50 Cost-Saving and Money-Making Ideas in 50 Minutes. I have a list of my top 10 technologies that I believe financial advisers can use to save money, make money, and sometimes both simultaneously. There should be at least one good tip for every adviser listening to the webinar.

Click here to register for the Tuesday, June 9 webinar 50 Cost-Saving and Money-Making Ideas in 50 Minutes.

Hope to “see” you on the web.

Smarsh continues to impress me as an innovative force and market leader in email archiving and compliance. They recently announced a Smarsh CRM product to help users be more efficient and productive (a post I’ve had in my drafts section ever since my son was born!).

Today I read an article on a new service that may prove to be very useful and timely to the adviser community.

Smarsh has announced a social media (a.k.a.Twitter) message archiving service at a Twitter conference this week.

“This innovation is a logical extension for Smarsh, which has built its business by providing email archiving and compliance solutions for clients in the highly-regulated financial services industry,” said Smarsh founder and CEO Stephen Marsh at 140, a Twitter conference in Mountain View, Calif. that is sponsored in part by Smarsh.

For more information contained in the press release, click here.

As I’ve written here before, Registered Investment Advisers (both SEC and State) as well as FINRA Registered Representatives need to be diligent about archiving messages distributed through social media platforms such as Twitter. I’m very happy to see Smarsh, a technology player in the adviser space, step up to the plate and offer exactly what advisers need.

Related posts

NBA Fines Mark Cuban $25,000 for Twitter Comments; Will the SEC be Next?

Adviser Use of LinkedIn May Violate SEC Rules

Tweets and Blogs from T3 (Tech Tools for Today Conference)

Apparently over the weekend, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 by the NBA for comments he posted on Twitter (from USNews.com).

Can the SEC be far behind by issuing fines to registered advisers using Twitter for failing to comply with regulatory law on the publishing of advertisements?  I posted a few weeks ago about my concern of advisers using LinkedIn’s Recommendations feature when it may violate rules against testimonials.

Now that some precedent has been set, albeit by a completely different body (i.e. the NBA), I suspect that the SEC might not be too far behind in stepping up its enforcement efforts by following the tweets of registered advisers.

My advice to registered advisers: Tweet with extreme caution.

Want to Know More?

Andy Gluck at Advisor Products, Inc. is hosting a webinar this Friday, April 3 featuring Brian Hamburger of Market Counsel to address the compliance issues of using social networking technology, including LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and others.

If you’re interested in learning more about this subject, I highly recommend you register now!  This session has the potential to reach the maximum number of participants allowed.

Register for Friday’s Compliance Issues Posed By Linkedin, Twitter, Blogging, & Social Networking at Advisor Products, Inc.

If you’re using a standard (i.e. not Bluetooth) wireless keyboard in the office, anything you type is not secure.  This includes all the Social Security Numbers, account numbers, birthdays, email addresses, etc. for your clients that you type day in and day out.

See this YouTube video featuring Steve Gibson of GRC.com addressing the ease at which wireless keyboards can be compromised.

There is code out there on the Internet that can sniff out the radio signals on the 27MHz band and collect all the data transmitted through it.  All one needs to do is identify the 8-bit translation code (what Gibson refers to as the XOR function, which I know as the Exclusive OR back from my digital logic engineering days) to ”decrypt” everything that is typed.

Bluetooth is much safer and has encryption that is much more difficult to break.

My disclosure: I have a hardwired USB keyboard, but I do use a wireless mouse.

Related articles:

• Bruckenstein’s Picks for Best of Technology 2008
• Get the Financial Planning 2008 Software Survey
• NAPFA Technology Conference Report: Day Two

Over the last week, our firm has been implementing tax loss harvesting strategies across our entire book of assets.  As one might imagine, there are many, many individual trades to identify, submit, track, and confirm, as we want to ensure that all activity is executed without errors for our clients.

The Trade Log

Part of our process includes the update of a trade log so that it contains details of all our trading activities.  We use several custodians for client assets, so to date we have consolidated all activity into one Excel worksheet.  Therefore, all trading data is in one place and can be sorted, screened, and filtered according to desired data.

Each trade is listed on one row in our trade log.  When we execute a swap, the sell trade appears on row 1 and the buy trade appears below on row 2.  That simplifies the process of watching for wash sales, as I can sort all the sells by date and group them together so we can quickly see what funds we shouldn’t rebuy unless the 30-day repurchase window passes. 

Here’s an approximation of what the trade log looks like (account numbers and other data changed to protect the innocent). 

Trades are listed one per row

Pretty straightforward stuff.

Custodian Trade Format

A portion of our clients’ assets are custodied by a 3rd party money manager and we have been trading many securities through their bulk request system.  This custodian wants bulk trade instructions submitted on a spreadsheet (rather than uploads that Schwab, Pershing, and others support, but that’s because they’re not 3rd party money managers!).  That’s not a problem, except that they want the sell and buy trades for the security swap listed on the same row.  Ok, I can do that.

Buy and sell trades appear in the same row

But the problem I have is when I want to migrate the buy and sell trades from the sheet formatted for the custodian to the sheet formatted for the trade log.  How do I interlace or interweave the buy and sell instructions so each has its own row?

Twitter to the Rescue!

Enter Twitter.  On the 15th, I posted the following tweet:

Excel help! Column A has 1234etc, Column B has ABCDetc. I want Column C to contain 1A2B3C4D etc. How do I interweave 2 columns?

After one false start, I received the answer that I was looking for from Debra Dalgleish of Contextures.com and an Excel MVP, within one day:

@BillWinterberg For results in col C, enter this in C1 copy down: =OFFSET($A$1,ROW()/2+IF(MOD(ROW(),2)=1,0,-1),IF(MOD(ROW(),2)=1,0,1)) 

I can use this formula to take the data formatted in the custodian spreadsheet and convert it so each sell (pasted into Column A) and buy transaction (pasted into Column B) are on its own row in Column C.  Try it out for yourself!

I came up empty after many Google searches for the solution, so I’m really impressed how this Twitter experiment turned out.

Not using Twitter?

Go to their website, click “Join,” choose a username (I recommend something similar to your real name and not “CoolFinanceGrrl”) and start tweeting.  I also recommend TweetDeck to consolidate your tweets and simplify the management of people you follow.

Related posts:

• Boarding the Twitter Bandwagon
• Get the Buzz on Twitscoop
• NAPFA Technology Conference Report: Day Two