Tag Archives: CRM

Junxure releases Version 9 of its CRM with updated security features and interfaces

Posted on September 13, 2011 by in Software

Leading up to this week’s FPA Experience 2011, the largest annual gathering of financial planning professionals, Junxure today announced the release of Version 9 of its CRM software.

The latest version offers additional security features and updates to the Import Wizard interfaces. In the press release, Junxure president Greg Friedman said, “Junxure 9 delivers the tight controls that will be necessary for the success of upcoming custodial interfaces.”

Click here to read the full press release (eReleases.com)

Also, additional details on Version 9’s features can be viewed in the company’s September 2011 newsletter.

Is Salesforce the future of adviser CRM?

Posted on September 9, 2011 by in Software

My commentary below was originally included in September 9’s Bits and Bytes post, but I pulled it out because it deserves to be featured in its own thread.

Custodians and technology vendors are doing all they can to win the business of advisers. The one tool used by the majority of firms is CRM. So in theory, if one can deliver the “best” CRM solution, one will likely win the majority of business from advisers. Salesforce seems to be the common thread in the CRM space heading into the final quarter of 2011 (see September 9’s Bits and Bytes for details).

My Thoughts on Salesforce

I think it’s safe to say that all roads in adviser CRM developments are leading to Salesforce. After all, they’re one of the leading providers of a CRM platform to enterprises. They had 45,000+ attendees at last week’s Dreamforce conference. They have Chatter, a built-in social collaboration product, to expand the platform’s functionality. And they have mobile apps.

But most advisers know that out-of-the-box, Salesforce is not designed for the way they do business. It needs customization, sometimes extensive and costly customization. To solve the customization issue, several providers exist that build and support overlays to the Salesforce platform. See AppCrown and Concenter Services. Then there’s the customer service and support element. I hear from frustrated advisers that they can’t get decent customer support once they sign on. And all Salesforce plans require an annual contract, so if 90 days go by and the firm hates Salesforce, there are no refunds.

And now, TD Ameritrade, Schwab Intelligent Technologies, and even Orion Advisor Services are customizing Salesforce. So which one will have the best (or better) custom overlay? And which one will provide the best support to its advisers?

I feel the vendor/custodian that figures out how to provide the best customer support to its advisers will win the war in CRM. Building the best custom overlay is just the battle.

Junxure Refreshes Website, Updates Timing of Cloud-based Product

Posted on August 24, 2011 by in Software

In a press release today, CRM Software Inc., the makers of Junxure, announced its new website design, highlighting an increased emphasis on practice management consulting in addition to their desktop CRM offering.

Click here to view the press release (PDF).

The company also updated its timeframe regarding the release of the cloud version of its CRM, called Junxure Essentials. The company expects to release Junxure Essentials in Q4 of 2012. Most in the industry, myself included, anticipated a release in Q1 2012.

Click the image below to view the updated Junxure website.

Junxure

FPPad Bits and Bytes for August 5

Posted on August 5, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

I spent much of the week attending a retreat to help plan the future of the financial planning profession. Add to that my commitments for Morningstar, Blueleaf, and the Journal of Financial Planning and I had a nose-to-the-grindstone schedule.

But still, you can count on my Friday updates to deliver the best tech related articles from around the financial planning industry. Here they are:

Ebix may hit a CRM sweet spot for some RIAs from RIABiz.com

[I used SmartOffice CRM from E-ZData back in 2006-2007, now part of the Ebix family. It has the potential to grow in the financial adviser space, but the CRM has a lot of work ahead of it.] For advisors looking for a happy medium, say a company with some heft whose people – and maybe even the inner workings of its computers – know the difference between an advisor and a carpet wholesaler, Ebix might be worth a look.

VirtualPlanning from Financial-Planning.com

[Think you need to meet clients in your office all the time? Think again. Here are some spotlights of advisers using remote tools like Skype and RingCentral to meet with clients on their terms.] In an era when clients can easily reach their accounts online, many planners are cutting overhead and staff and working remotely.

The Mobile Advisor from Financial Advisor

[Another article on advisers working remotely, only this time the focus is on eliminating operating overhead and infrastructure, rather than identifying specific technology to facilitate remote working.] In the wake of economic pressures on financial advisory practices, some have chosen to dramatically downsize their firms, opting to fire staff, work without an office or even give up certain types of clients.

CRM: An Untapped Engine for Growth from AdvisorOne.com

[Schwab Advisor Services VP Neesha Hathi explores survey results on advisers using (and not using) CRM effectively.] By taking advantage of these key untapped growth drivers in CRM, advisors can boost their success in three areas.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 3

Posted on June 3, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

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

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

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

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

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

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

One-Click Calling from CRM at MorningstarAdvisor.com

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

FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 25

Posted on March 25, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

This is the final week to prepare our Cultivating Clients in a Connected World presentation for FPA Retreat 2011. We’ve been busy refining slides and notes to deliver a message we feel advisers need to hear about how technology is changing the way they work with clients.

In the meantime, we’ve collected the best technology-oriented articles from around the financial planning community. Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Fidelity slips in ahead of Pershing on Google phones with WealthCentral for Android from RIABiz.com

Fidelity announced yesterday that it has released WealthCentral Mobile for the Android platform, making it the first custodian to hit the Android Market with an RIA-centric app

Junxure moving to the cloud amid market pressures from RIABiz.com

Greg Friedman, president of San Rafael, Calif.,-based CRM Software, is announcing that his company’s industry-leading customer relationship management product, Junxure, will have a cloud-based version of its software come January 2012.

Choosing Software That Works for Your Advisory Firm-Part 2: Assess from AdvisorOne.com

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

And finally, this week’s blog post at MorningstarAdvisor.com, Create an iPad Icon for Your Website.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 4

Posted on March 4, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Due to a change in plans, we’re monitoring FPA Business Solutions 2011 from the Twitter back channel (follow the #BizSol11 hashtag) instead of live blogging from the conference.

Despite this setback, we’re still here to provide a high-value Bits and Bytes offering the best in this week’s stories on financial planning technology. Here they are, in no particular order:

Junxure Announces Cloud Strategy from eReleases.com

(Bill’s note: Junxure in the cloud has been a long time coming, but a 2012 release? We were hoping for something this year…) Junxure announced today its strategy for delivering a Web-based CRM product to meet the needs of financial advisors. Junxure will release its cloud product, which has been several years in development, in 2012.

Hitting the Tech Target at Financial-Planning.com

(Bill’s note: While Bruckenstein highlights technology challenges advisors face today [lack of integration, embracing mobile devices, and committing money to technology purchases], I wish FP’s editors had allowed room in this article for some tangible solutions.) What are some of the major technology challenges advisors are facing today? To upgrade their technology, they need to create a budget for that purpose, figure out how to integrate the software they choose and sign on to the power of the mobile revolution to transform their practice.

Solving the Software Compatibility Puzzle from Registered Rep

These days, in addition to the service that reps come to expect, custodians also offer multi-layered technology platforms that can make the difference between a well-honed office and one that is constantly trying to pick up the pieces. But independents are a fiercely self-sufficient crew, and they often like to cherry-pick their own technology applications. So it’s crucial that all these technology tools talk to each other.

2011 Tech Trends at Financial Advisor

Veteran financial technology writer Andrew Gluck posits on six technology trends for 2011.

Seeing Opportunity In Smart Technologies from the Financial Adviser blog by Dow Jones

Next-generation wealth-management clients are miles ahead of the investment industry in their adoption of smart technologies. Wealth firms will have to catch up, fast, or lose ground to nimbler and savvier rivals.

 

 

T3 2011 Conference Live Blog: Redtail Leapfrog CRM

Posted on February 17, 2011 by in General

Next up in the T3 pre-conference sessions featured Redtail Technologies CRM with Tim Minert, Director of Sales and Chris Roberts.

Roberts demonstrated Redtail’s refreshed Leapfrog CRM (Bill’s note: I’m sentimental to the “Leapfrog” name, having spent 8 years in software engineering for the educational toy company) to the standing room only crowd and commented that “most” of what was shown will be included in a release scheduled around March 1.

Redtail has been moving its database over to SQL 2008, which Roberts says increases the overall speed of Redtail CRM, making it “lightning quick.”

For those advisers who use Redtail’s hosted email, the company is migrating to email hosting from Zimbra, further strengthening the reliability and uptime of the hosted email system (Yahoo! Mail uses Zimbra, according to Roberts).

One nice feature of Leapfrog is the new calendar which looks, feels, and functions much like Google Calendar. The company significantly refreshed the CRM’s layout and navigation menus. One enhancement that drew “oohs” from the audience was the ability to use text and/or email reminders for outstanding tasks. Roberts said this alert feature will come later in the year, as the text option requires hardware purchases by the company.

Leapfrog is Internet browser agnostic, and according to Roberts, Leapfrog runs the fastest on Chrome, then Safari, and the slowest on Internet Explorer.

One final captivating announcement is Redtail’s plans for a “Workflow Exchange.” Advisers who design their workflows can publish them to the exchange and share them with other Redtail users and vice-versa.

That’s it for the Redtail session. Please be sure to check back with us for more updates.

T3 2011 Conference Live Blog: Junxure CRM

Posted on February 17, 2011 by in General

(Bill’s note: I brought just my iPad and Apple wireless keyboard to T3 and it’s proving to be a very flexible setup for blogging from the event. I’m being pulled in many directions, so I’ll blog when I have a few moments. Here’s the first in my series for T3.)

T3 2011 opened today with pre-conference sessions where vendors and technology companies demonstrated their products. Most vendors used the opportunity to demonstrate their products, talk about what’s new, and answer questions from the audience.

I first attended a split session with Junxure and Redtail CRM. Here are my notes from Junxure’s portion.

Robert DeFrancis, Director of Client Services and Sales for Junxure presented. Since Junxure is installed locally on most advisers’ servers (though it certainly could be installed on a virtual server), DeFrancis stressed the speed of desktop CRM. He pointed out that waiting 10 seconds for an online CRM’s screen to refresh could cost advisers up to 25 minutes a day in lost productivity.

He demonstrated both Junxure Mobile and ClientView Live, pointing out the Mobile runs well on iPads (roughly 10-15% of session attendees have iPads) My opinion is yes, Mobile runs well on iPad, but I find many screens are very overwhelming with a lot of data (e.g. the Junxure action screens).

Documents linked in Junxure can be viewed on iPads, but Junxure Mobile doesn’t export PDFs to iBooks or other apps. Orion updated their iPad app to do this, and I’d like to see Junxure do something similar.

Generally, I found Client View appealing and Junxure has taken care to design an attractive home page once clients log in. But one drawback is that Client View doesn’t yet support embedded video (e.g. YouTube or Vimeo) on the client home page. For advisers using more and more video in their practice, this is a nice value-add.

More notes like this will come over the course of the conference, so please check back at FPPad for more updates.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 21

Posted on January 21, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Our review of Laserfiche Empower 2011 is still in its draft stages while we’ve been preparing content for the upcoming T3 Conference in February. It’s been another busy week behind the scenes at FPPad, but we’ve selected a few top stories of interest from the past week:

CashEdge Survey Reveals Opportunities Exist for Advisors to Generate New Fee Income Using Aggregation Technology at Yahoo! News

AllData Advisor’s sophisticated aggregation technology offers opportunity to increase fees charged for advice on held-away assets (Bill says, “Yes, but FPPad readers know this already!”)

iPipeline Acquires GaleForce Solutions and Leading CRM Suite at DestinationCRM.com

iPipeline, a provider of on-demand software that supports marketing, selling, and processing solutions for the nation’s top insurance companies, has acquired Vancouver-based GaleForce Solutions, a provider of advanced CRM with client management, productivity, compliance and security tools, and industry-specific integrations to broker-dealers, banks, wealth management advisors, insurance agents, and other financial services professionals.

Will the Real Financial Planners Please Stand Up at Financial-Planning.com

We call this the “financial planning profession,” right? So here’s a topic for discussion: how is it that many people calling themselves a financial planner don’t actually do financial planning work for their clients?