Tag Archives: Chatter

FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 28

Posted on February 28, 2014 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, iPhone and iPad users on high alert; what you need to do right now to fix a huge security flaw, how Schwab Advisor Services plans to give thousands of advisors a presence in the popular app stores, and what’s the next hot technology you might see coming from the industry’s largest independent broker-dealer?

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Today’s episode is brought to you by Redtail Technology, providers of cloud-based CRM for financial professionals since 2003.

Redtail Technology

Check out their popular CRM, document imaging, and complaint email solutions and sign up for a 30-day free trial by visiting fppad.com/redtail.

Behind iPhone’s Critical Security Bug, a Single Bad ‘Goto’ from Wired, and

Apple Patches Critical OS X ‘Gotofail’ Security Hole from PC Magazine

[This week’s top story is for all of you who use iPhones and iPads in your business. In case you haven’t heard, Apple quietly rolled out a new update to iOS this week to patch a critical flaw in the way secure Internet connections are handled.

It’s been dubbed the “gotofail” flaw, as the operating system’s source code had an inadvertent goto command, essentially bypassing the final steps in the security authentication process.

So what you need to do right now is to turn on your device, open the Settings app, tap General, and then tap Software Update to start the download process. The same bug also affects Mac users, so be sure to perform a Software Update on your Mac to patch this security hole.] Like everything else on the iPhone, the critical crypto flaw announced in iOS 7 yesterday turns out to be a study in simplicity and elegant design: a single spurious “goto” in one part of Apple’s authentication code that accidentally bypasses the rest of it.

Schwab OpenView Mobile launches, allows RIAs to create branded mobile apps for iOS and Android from FPPad

[Next up is another story about mobile devices, only this one comes from Schwab Advisor Services. In a press release this week, Schwab announced that it officially rolled out Schwab OpenView Mobile, a service that allows advisors to publish native mobile apps branded for their business. Schwab OpenView Mobile lets advisors perform limited customization of things like logos, contact details, and color schemes and publish the app in the iTunes App Store as well as Google Play.

But Schwab isn’t the first to offer custom branded apps for advisors, as both Orion Advisor Services and Trust Company of America have both been offering this service to their clients for several years at no additional charge. The Faulkner Media Group also publishes branded mobile apps for advisors at a reasonable price.

But for a cost of of $5,000 up front plus $2,000 in annual maintenance, Schwab OpenView Mobile might prove to be a bit too expensive relative to the other third party app solutions currently on the market. I’ll come back in a few months to report on the overall adoption of OpenView Mobile by Schwab’s advisors, so stay tuned.] Schwab OpenView Mobile officially launches, allowing RIAs to publish branded mobile apps to the iTunes App Store and Google Play

LPL Financial to deploy Microsoft Lync for enterprise messaging from Twitter

[And finally, wrapping up this week’s broadcast is a little inside information on how LPL Financial hopes to make its advisors a bit more efficient when collaborating with the home office. According to my sources, aka a tweet from Jamie Cox, LPL will soon be deploying an instant messaging and video chat service from Microsoft called Lync.

Now I know several RIAs have been experimenting with collaboration platforms like Yammer, Google Chat, and Salesforce Chatter, but this is the first I’ve heard of an independent broker’s plans to roll out an enterprise-wide messaging app. Retail pricing for Lync is $2 per user per month, but I don’t have details on what the final cost will be to LPL representatives, if any.
While the apps might seem a little funky at first, it’s clear that realtime messaging and collaboration is really gaining momentum in the enterprise, so if you aren’t at least experimenting with some of these apps, you might want to put them on your technology roadmap for this year.]

 

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 28, 2014

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 28, 2014

FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 22

Posted on March 22, 2013 by in Bits & Bytes

I made it! The new FPPad headquarters is up and running in Atlanta (and if there weren’t boxes and papers everywhere, I’d post a photo).

But right now, it’s back to unpacking for me. So here are this week’s stories of interest:

Personal Phones, iPads at Work: Convenience or Cyber Threat? from Financial-Planning.com

[BYOD, or bring-your-own-device, is a growing trend in all businesses, including yours. Do you allow employees (and you, too) to connect to work-related systems with a personal mobile device? It can be as simple as allowing email or contacts to be synchronized to the device. If so, it’s critical you have procedures and systems in place to adequately protect any sensitive data stored on personal devices. This short review from new FP editor Paula Vasan is a timely reminder, plus you’ll get three mobile device management resources cited by me.] Personal devices can pose a serious threat to businesses if strict policies and preventative cybercrime measures are not put in place, according to a study.

Citrix follows Box’s lead by adding content editing and secure synching to its ShareFile mobile apps from TheNextWeb.com

[Dropbox, Box, ShareFile, etc. are common names heard when talking about cloud file storage and synchronization. Dropbox is wildly popular among consumers, Box is a leader in the enterprise, and ShareFile is growing well among financial advisers (it was also one of my picks for Best Tech of 2012). This week, ShareFile enhanced its mobile app by allowing users to create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations directly within the ShareFile app, as well as allows users to markup and annotate PDF documents. With Box, you can do similar tasks using other third-party apps compatible with OneCloud. With Dropbox, you can’t do this.] Citrix, a cloud, networking, and virtualization technology company, will announce on Tuesday that it is updating its ShareFile file-sharing app with better mobile content editing. What this means is that the service aims to compete against Box and other enterprise-focused file sharing services, hopefully allowing users to be more productive while on the go, even when they are offline.

With a fresh $20M and sharp increase in assets managed, Wealthfront keeps growing from PanoDaily.com

[How is online advice platform Wealthfront fairing? Well, they’re up to $170 million in assets aggregated through the platform. I’d judge by growth in 2012 that the company is on its way to $500 million in assets by the end of 2014. Still, with a fresh round of $20 million raised, coupled with $3 million in Angel and $7.5 million Series A capital, its a significant investment for a questionable return so far. But again, there’s potential here if Wealthfront catches on with the next generation of wealth transfer on the horizon.] Wealthfront, which makes software that acts as a financial advisor for its clients, hasn’t had the easiest road remaking the financial world in Silicon Valley’s image. But it after a name change, a pivot and some key new hires it appears to be growing rapidly.

Erado Announces the Latest Addition to Their Social Media Compliance Solution, Salesforce Chatter from Erado.com

[Erado continues to increase their social media archiving coverage with the addition of Salesforce Chatter connectivity. Smarsh has supported Chatter since October 2012 (see FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 5), and with Erado onboard, I’d expect to see a slight uptick in Chatter use among advisers using Salesforce for their CRM.] Erado, the nation’s leading compliance and archiving firm in electronic communication, officially announced the newest addition to their Social Media Capturing suite, Salesforce Chatter.

 

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 5

Posted on October 5, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Yes, it’s October already. How are you faring on your new technology initiatives for 2012?

If you didn’t attend FPA Experience last week, you still can get a great recap of my Transformative Technology You Can Implement Today presentation from this WealthManagement.com update, From FPA 2012: Transformative Technology That Doesn’t Cost a Dime, and Financial Planning magazine’s story, What’s the Most Important Tech Tool for Advisors?

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Schwab and Salentica Announce Launch of Integration for Independent Investment Advisors from Schwab Advisor Services

[Here’s the history on Salentica’s integration with Schwab: in May 2012, they entered a beta testing, transitioned to a pilot phase in August (see FPPad Bits and Bytes for August 3), and is finally in production to advisers using Salentica’s Advisor Desk. How many advisers can that represent? In the 2011 Financial Planning magazine software survey, 4% of 3200 respondents, or roughly 120, said they use Microsoft Dynamics for CRM. So some smaller percentage of that 120 are probably using Salentica. My guess is it’s less than two dozen.] Schwab Intelligent Technologies and Salentica Inc. announced today that Salentica Advisor Desk™ with Schwab OpenView Gateway™ is available to independent investment advisors after a successful pilot. Advisors who use Salentica Advisor Desk as their client relationship management (CRM) solution can now view real-time information on their clients’ financial holdings within their CRM.

Smarsh Launches Archiving & Compliance for Salesforce Chatter on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange from Smarsh.com

[Smarsh is building off its summer success of releasing Web Archiving (see: Smarsh president Stephen Marsh addresses Pinterest and compliance), and now the archiving vendor captures messages sent through the enterprise communication platform Chatter from Salesforce.] Smarsh®, the managed service leader in secure, innovative and reliable email archiving compliance solutions, today announced it has launched Archiving & Compliance for Chatter on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange, the world’s most popular cloud marketplace for social apps for business. Archiving & Compliance for Chatter enables organizations to capture, preserve, search, supervise and produce organizations’ Chatter files and communications in support of compliance, recordkeeping and e-discovery initiatives.

Fox and Redtail partner on work flow from InvestmentNews.com

[Back in 2011 I reviewed the latest refresh of Redtail CRM for Morningstar (see: A Popular CRM Gets an Upgrade), and at that time the CRM supported basic step-by-step workflow definitions. In it’s latest partnership, Redtail users can now open PDF files of workflow designs published by Fox Financial Planning Network directly within the CRM. As to pricing, the top tier purchase is around $6,000 and includes full training sessions, workflow system, resource center and coaching, with a nominal monthly access fee thereafter. I’ve seen discounts available for AICPA PFP section members, so ask if you’re affiliated.] Fox Financial Planning Network and Redtail Technology Inc. this week plan to announce a technology integration that allows for “one-click” deployment of FFPN’s comprehensive “client service delivery work flows” onto Redtail’s popular customer relationship management platform.

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 27

Posted on January 27, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Today is the final day of Laserfiche Empower 2012, where I’m taking in all I can regarding the company’s latest updates to their document management platform. See my prior posts on the event here:

I also created three mini broadcasts of conference highlights from my phone. Listen to them on my FlipZu page: http://flipzu.com/billwinterberg

 

In the meantime, I’ve been collecting the best stories in financial planning technology from around the web this week. Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Mobile Apps: Clients Want Them, Wealth Managers Are Developing Them from Financial-Planning.com

[You can’t ignore the impact mobile devices are making in the way you run your business. I bet over half of your clients have some kind of mobile device, so are you ready to provide service to them using these new channels?] The wealth management industry is adjusting to clients who increasingly expect that they should have anytime, anywhere access to their account information, according to a new study.

Another tool to help re-balance the books from InvestmentNews.com

[Next to document management software, rebalancing software is likely a guaranteed triple-digit ROI for any financial planning firm performing decent trading volume. Here Davis Janowski scoops a new product called RebalanceMax that’s priced well below the market dominators like Tamarac and iRebal.] Financial adviser Rich Chambers set up a side business, Advisor Innovation Inc. (advisorinnovation.com), to finish development of RebalanceMax and begin selling it to advisers on a commercial basis.

10 Top Tech Trends for BDs: FSI OneVoice 2012 from AdvisorOne.com

[James Green provides a decent, but short, list of ten tech trends discussed in a heavyweight panel discussion at FSI OneVoice 2012. Some trends are succinct and all-too-familiar to RIAs, but it’s a good list to keep in the back of your mind. “Integration” appears twice, and Salesforce Chatter is not a social media tool for use with clients; rather, it’s for internal discussion with firm team members.] At the annual Financial Services Institute’s OneVoice conference in Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday, Spenser Segal, CEO of ActiFi, moderated a discussion meant to inform the attending independent broker-dealer executives about the 10 top technology trends that are affecting IBDs already and those that are likely to do so in the near future.