On today’s broadcast, can you really share documents on Dropbox and SkyDrive without violating compliance? How does one RIA manage the security concerns of the bring-your-own-device trend? And does Salesforce create more problems than it solves? One RIA decides to bare all.
So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!
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Today’s episode is brought to you by Hill Compliance Advisors, a virtual compliance consulting firm to RIAs. As a former RIA herself, Cindi personally performs your compliance tasks, allowing you to do what you do best: run your business and spend more time with clients.
With a little help, compliance will no longer feel like the enormous burden it might seem to be today. Follow Cindi’s blog and sign up for her free newsletter by visiting fppad.com/hilladvisors.
Here are the links to this week’s top stories:
NetDocuments Announces ndOffice™ and ndConnect™ to Embed Cloud-Based Document Management in MS Office, and Integrate with SkyDrive and Dropbox from NetDocuments
[On the heels of last week’s announcements by Laserfiche, NetDocuments is out with news of its own. The popular cloud-based document management provider announced two new enhancements that should be very useful for advisors.
First, NetDocuments has reengineered its ndOffice product, which allows NetDocuments to be integrated directly with Microsoft Office applications, including the online Office 365 Web Apps. Instead of temporarily saving documents to a desktop or server and then uploading them to NetDocuments, ndOffice allows users to open and update Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files directly from their NetDocuments repository. That should save a lot of mouse clicks!
And second, NetDocuments announced the scheduled release of ndConnect coming this April. Now *you* may use NetDocuments for your own document management, but your clients prefer to use consumer services like Dropbox or SkyDrive to manage their own files. So how do you get the two services to play nice with one other?
ndConnect is NetDocuments’ way of bridging the gap between these services, as it applies rules and permissions to support file sharing with Dropbox and SkyDrive without circumventing the security and compliance requirements advisors need to follow. So you can continue to meet your compliance obligations for document management while allowing your clients to use their preferred file sharing service.] NetDocuments brings document management directly into MS Office applications and integrates the enterprise content management service with Dropbox and SkyDrive
Why a ‘bring your own device’ strategy is critical for small business owners from InvestmentNews
[Next up is news on the mobile device security front. I bet you wouldn’t even consider running your business today without using a smartphone, and you probably allow your colleagues and employees to use their mobile devices to stay connected with the workplace, a trend identified as “bring-your-own-device,” or BYOD.
But accessing your business and client information on your mobile device does raise serious security concerns. Alex Murguia, Managing Principal of McLean Asset Management Corporation, shared how his firm supports the BYOD trend while also enforcing the security of information stored on mobile devices. And coincidentally, the product he selected just got acquired by VMware this week for a reported amount of $1.5 billion dollars.] Our firm is instituting a Bring Your Own Device policy as part of our new Mobile Device Management strategy.
How one RIA’s faith in Salesforce’s sophistication led to cut-and-paste hell and a major rethinking from RIABiz.com
[And finally, if you’ve been considering an upgrade to your CRM or want to officially cut the cord from Microsoft Outlook (note: not a CRM), you’ve probably considered SalesForce, the 800-pound gorilla of CRMs, as a potential solution. Well one firm recently dove in head-first into a Salesforce implementation, but quickly found that things did not go as smoothly as they had planned.
An article published this week in RIABiz chronicles one RIA’s trials and tribulations with the CRM behemoth and reveals many important lessons learned along the way. So if you want to avoid the frustrations of a Salesforce deployment encountered by one RIA, I suggest you read this account and use it to influence your plans for a more successful CRM transition.] After a dazzling SF demo, Portland Global Advisors planned to dump its advisor-dumb Microsoft CRM for Salesforce but the devil was in details
Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 24, 2014
