Tag Archives: Intelligent Integration

FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 29

Posted on October 29, 2010 by in Bits & Bytes

Happy Halloween! This week’s edition of Bits and Bytes is full of all treats and no tricks.

Here are this week’s feature stories:

At Schwab IMPACT 2010, Charles Schwab Advisor Services selected the first Intelligent Integration partners. Here’s coverage from the web:

Junxure, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics Are The First Schwab Intelligent Integration Partners from FPPad.com,
Schwab Looks To Integrate Registered Independent Advisers’ Tech Systems from WSJ.com, and
Schwab chooses some giant software partners, apparently with big RIAs in mind from RIABiz.com

Thanks to our sources on the ground (John Stone of Revenue Architects and Tim Welsh of Nexus Strategy) at Schwab IMPACT 2010, we now know the first Intelligent Integration partners announced by the company this morning.

Fidelity arms its RIAs for battle with white-glove brands from RIABiz.com

Fidelity WealthCentral for Family Offices integrates portfolio reporting and trading and allows a view of holdings including alternative assets. Services such as trust, partnership accounting, private foundation services and general ledger export services are included. Most important: it can provide an ultra-affluent client with a dedicated relationship management team and investment analyst/trader.

ByAllAccounts’ Survey Reveals the Top Reasons Financial Advisors Would Consider New Portfolio Management System from Marketwire.com

ByAllAccounts, Inc., the financial advisors’ choice for account aggregation, today announced survey results that show financial advisors are generally loyal to their portfolio management systems of record. Nearly 70 percent of survey respondents are somewhat or extremely unlikely to switch from their current system to a new one in 2011.

And finally, my blog post for October, Convert Business Card Info in a Snap, at MorningstarAdvisor.com

While attending a huge conference such as FPA Denver 2010 has many advantages, one minor drawback of connecting with so many new people is processing the large stack of business cards collected after returning home from the event.

Schwab Intelligent Integration Selection Contest Winner

Posted on October 28, 2010 by in General

True to form, you can’t win if you don’t play.

We received seven entries into our Guess Schwab’s Intelligent Integration Partners, Win Free Coffee! contest. With two correct selections each (Junxure and Salesforce), Tim Welsh and “Joe” received two points and had their names entered into a hat.

I debated about allowing points for selecting Tamarac Advisor CRM; while it’s built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, I’m willing to bet that  Tamarac’s customization of Dynamics makes it different enough that Schwab may not embrace it under their Intelligent Integration ecosystem. Our prediction: in the long run, Tamarac will succeed without needing Schwab’s Intelligent Integration partnership, and Schwab will serve advisers well with the three other CRM systems, so nobody really loses. Ultimately, no points were awarded for selecting Tamarac Advisor CRM.

On with the contest winner. Our impartial name-selector (my son Daniel) picked:

“Joe”

So Joe, check your e-mail to confirm your mailing address. You’ll be receiving your Starbucks gift card shortly!

And thank you to all of you who took a few seconds to add in your guesses. Look to FPPad in the future for some more fun, interactive speculation on the future of adviser technology.

Junxure, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics Are The First Schwab Intelligent Integration Partners

Posted on October 27, 2010 by in Technology

Thanks to our sources on the ground (John Stone of Revenue Architects and Tim Welsh of Nexus Strategy) at Schwab IMPACT 2010, we now know the first Intelligent Integration partners announced by the company this morning.

Executive Vice President and Charles Schwab Advisor Services leader Bernie Clark announced the first CRM partners selected. They are:

UPDATE, 10:19AM EDT: Read Schwab’s press release from Marketwatch.com. And an odd observation; if Schwab is integrating with three CRMs, do they really need to partner with LaserApp to facilitate account form-filling? Why not integrate form-filling directly with the new Intelligent Integration partners? I suppose, though, that by supporting LaserApp, more CRM systems (e.g. Redtail, Goldmine, etc.) can be used to complete Schwab account applications, which helps everybody, but still supports a fractured, non-integrated ecosystem.

Last week we predicted Junxure, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Tamarac Advisor CRM would be among the selections. It seems redundant at first to have included Tamarac Advisor CRM, as it is built on top of Microsoft Dynamics, but in my opinion, Tamarac Advisor CRM is substantially different from MS Dynamics as Tamarac has customized Dynamics’ out-of-the-box functionality to include data and fields relevant to wealth managers and financial advisers.

Now for the next important question: Who won our free coffee giveaway for guessing the correct partners? There are several people who responded correctly with two of the three partners, so tonight we’ll have an official hat-drawing from those names and reveal the winner tomorrow (the impartial name-remover from the hat is at day care right now).

Guess Schwab’s Intelligent Integration Partners, Win Free Coffee!

Posted on October 21, 2010 by in General

Schwab IMPACT 2010The countdown to Schwab IMPACT 2010 is underway. In less than five days, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. will kick off its annual conference for RIAs with a host of education sessions, keynote presentations, and vendor expo events.

One event eagerly anticipated by advisers, vendors, and technology consultants (*wink*) is the announcement of Schwab’s Intelligent Integration partners. The first partners to be announced will be providers of CRM software to the investment adviser industry. Neesha Hathi, Schwab VP for Advisor Technology Solutions, defines Intelligent Integration as an “eco-system where all the applications live together.”

So the $64,000 question: Who will be the first Intelligent Integration partners?

Speculation is fun, and so are contests. So we at FPPad are holding a contest.

If you can correctly identify the Intelligent Integration partners, you win free coffee. How much free coffee? A $15 Starbucks gift card.

So leave a comment below with your guess of the CRM vendors you think will be selected as Intelligent Integration partners.

In honor of the new plain-English Form ADV Part 2, here are some plain-English contest rules:

  • If you correctly identify a vendor, you get one point for each vendor named. If your guess includes a vendor that is not announced as a partner, you lose one point for each vendor named. Oh! Yes, there’s a penalty for incorrect guesses. Otherwise you could write in all the names of CRM vendors in the market and win that way. So be selective. The submission with the most total points wins!
  • One entry per e-mail address. You must post a comment below. We apologize to those who cannot post to Internet forums due to compliance reasons. If you don’t leave a valid e-mail, we can’t contact you if you win. We won’t use your e-mail for anything other than contacting you if you win. Period. But we’d love it if you subscribed to our newsletter while you’re here!
  • Submissions must be posted by 11:59PM EDT Monday, October 25, 2010.
  • Employees of Charles Schwab & Co. and any vendors included in the Intelligent Integration partner announcement are ineligible.
  • In the of event multiple people with the highest number of points, one name will be drawn at random from a hat by my son Daniel. He’s 18 months old and is impartial to the contest outcome.

To start the submissions, here’s our guess on the first Intelligent Integration CRM partners: Junxure, Tamarac Advisor CRM™, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Salesforce.com.

See how easy it is! Now submit your guess.