Tag Archives: Mobile Assistant

FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 27

Posted on February 27, 2015 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Envestnet acquires Upside, the laptop you’re using right now could be vulnerable to attacks, and Mobile Assistant releases updates that will speed up your dictation workflow

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

This week’s episode of Bits and Bytes is brought to you by Total Rebalance Expert, the industry’s largest, privately owned portfolio rebalancing software provider.

Total Rebalance Expert

TRX just announced TRX Edge, a completely rewritten rebalancing platform optimized for the web as well as mobile devices. Sign up for a demo of TRX Edge and also download their white paper on rebalancing ROI by visiting fppad.com/trx

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

Envestnet Acquires Upside from Envestnet

[First up this week is a late-breaking announcement by Envestnet that the company will acquire online investment provider Upside for an undisclosed amount. I’ve covered Upside in several broadcasts before, as their automated investment service is meant to be used by advisors, and their service powers Liftoff, launched last year by high-profile advisors Barry Ritholtz of the Big Picture and Josh Brown, The Reformed Broker. Oh, happy belated birthday, Josh!

Now this is the first online investment provider to be acquired by a larger vendor. Remember, Fidelity Institutional did not acquire Betterment Institutional, they simply announced a collaboration with the company last year (watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 17, 2014), so I expect several more acquisitions to be announced this year. You might want to keep an eye on JemStep, SigFig, and Wealth Access, but you didn’t hear that from me!

Now news of this deal broke while I was already in the studio filming this week’s broadcast, so you’ll need to visit fppad.com/154 for more details, like Envestnet’s Thursday afternoon conference call, and see how this acquisition will shake up the online automated investment landscape for advisors.] Envestnet, Inc., a leading provider of unified wealth management technology and services to financial advisors, announced today that it has acquired Upside, a technology company providing digital advice solutions to financial advisors. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Lenovo PCs ship with man-in-the-middle adware that breaks HTTPS connections from ArsTechnica, and

How Lenovo’s Superfish ‘Malware’ Works And What You Can Do To Kill It from Forbes

Test your computer with The SuperFish vulnerability test at Filippo.io

And visit SuperFish Vulnerability from Lenovo Support

[Um, it’s accumulating, so next up is news of the SuperFish controversy affecting users of Lenovo laptop and desktop computers. For roughly four months in 2014, Lenovo shipped 16 million PCs pre-installed with a “visual search” plugin called SuperFish.

While preloaded software that serves up ads is annoying, security experts discovered a vulnerability in the way encryption certificates were handled. I’ll spare you the technical details, but this means if you’re using a Lenovo computer with SuperFish preinstalled, your web browser sessions could be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, potentially exposing some of your confidential information.

So how do you know if you’re infected? I’ve linked to a SuperFish vulnerability test in this week’s show notes at fppad.com/154, and you will also find a link to Lenovo’s support site with instructions on how to remove SuperFish from your computer.]

Lenovo is selling computers that come preinstalled with adware that hijacks encrypted Web sessions and may make users vulnerable to HTTPS man-in-the-middle attacks that are trivial for attackers to carry out, security researchers said.

Mobile Assistant Announces New Version of iPhone App; Integration With Salesforce; Enhanced Integration With Redtail Technology from MarketWired

[I’m going to need a shovel soon, so let’s finish up with news from Mobile Assistant, the popular dictation service advisors use to streamline their note taking workflow. This week, Mobile Assistant released an updated iPhone app that offers an expanded notes section with search features, optional push notifications when dictation jobs are completed, and better visibility into the amount of dictation lines used in each billing cycle.

The dictation service also added Salesforce to the list of CRMs that can import completed dictations to client records, and if you’re a Redtail CRM user, you’ll now be able to sign up for a free trial of Mobile Assistant directly from Redtail without having to retype any of your personal information. So if you’re still in the habit of manually typing in notes after a client meeting, give dictation services a try and see how much your productivity can improve.] Mobile Assistant, Inc., the fastest growing mobile dictation service in the financial and insurance industries, is pleased to announce that it has launched the newest version of its iPhone App in parallel with full integration with Salesforce, the nation’s leading cloud based CRM platform.

Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

Fidelity Investments® Aligns Clearing and Custody Units; Strengthens Commitment to Innovation in Financial Advice Industry from BusinessWire.com

Fidelity Institutional, the division of Fidelity Investments® that provides clearing, custody and investment management products to registered investment advisors (RIAs), broker-dealers, family offices, retirement recordkeepers and banks, today announced the alignment of its clearing and custody units.

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 27, 2015

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 27, 2015

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 19

Posted on April 19, 2013 by in Bits & Bytes

I started a six-week stint of travel across six cities, including several presentations at upcoming conferences.

See my speaking page for my upcoming conference appearances to see if you’re attending one of the events. Please stop by and say hello!

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Pershing Integrates Redtail Technology to Simplify Client Onboarding for Advisors from Pershing.com

[Pershing is not one to flaunt news of new integrations, so here’s a rare example of the company taking a bit more public stance on new partnerships. Here, Pershing now integrates with adviser-favorite CRM Redtail, particularly to push contact information in CRM to Pershing forms. This is useful when prospects are tracked in Redtail, then after some time, are converted to clients. Instead of manually filling in account forms, or using a third-party service like LaserApp, Redtail can now push data directly to NetX360. The fewer points of failure in technology systems, the better!] Pershing LLC, a BNY Mellon company, today announced a significant innovation in its industry-leading NetX360 platform through its relationship with Redtail Technology, a provider of web-based Client Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. Pershing’s integration of Redtail’s solution into NetX360 is designed to help advisors onboard clients more quickly, easily and efficiently.

Comply or die: NRS upgrades ‘manual’ to the 21st century from InvestmentNews.com

[The days are over of maintaining a compliance manual printed out in a three-ring binder sitting on the COO’s bookshelf. Today’s modern office demands more flexible systems, including a higher-tech compliance manual. It’s surprising that it’s taken until 2013 to achieve this, but hey, compliance isn’t exactly cutting edge.] Simply put, Policy Architect is meant to help both registered investment advisers and those affiliated with a broker-dealer stay compliant by allowing for more frequent updating of a firm’s compliance manuals (it helps, of course, if you keep yours digital as opposed to cutting down trees for a binder).

Mobile Assistant Launches iPhone App, “TALK IT” from PRNewswire.com

[Have bad cell coverage, but still need to dictate meeting notes from the road? Now Mobile Assistant has an iPhone app to facilitate this process. It’s not the first dictation service to support a mobile app (CopyTalk did it several months ago, starting this arms race), but definitely is a useful feature to all of the Mobile Assistant users who ever experienced a dropped call or two in the middle of dictations.] Mobile Assistant, the professional quality voice-to-text dictation service for the financial, insurance and sales industries, announces the release of its iPhone Application, TALK IT, this week. Mobile Assistant’s TALK IT is a high quality transcription service and an alternative to inaccurate automated voice-to-text solutions on the market, appealing to financial advisors and insurance agents as an easy way to accurately and securely document client meeting notes.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 11

Posted on January 11, 2013 by in Bits & Bytes

This week’s guest on FPPad On Air is Peter Giza, former CTO at RedBlack Software, LLC, to talk about emerging technology trends that have the potential to change the financial advisory industry for the better.

Note that today’s broadcast begins around 1:15pm ET instead of 4:15pm, so check the FPPad On Air page this afternoon for the link to watch.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Laserfiche 9 Unites ECM and BPM from MarketWatch.com

[I just returned from Laserfiche’s Empower 2013 conference, and I must say there is a lot of excitement surrounding the new business process management (BPM) capabilities in the latest version of the company’s software, Laserfiche 9. I bet most advisers have no way to execute automated workflow in their business, let alone implement BPM. But with a large number of potential document management customers, financial advisers may soon warm up to the possibilities available by using software such as this.] Today, Laserfiche announced the immediate availability of Laserfiche 9 at its annual Empower 2013 conference. The new release unites enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) functionality across the Laserfiche product line.

NetDocuments Launches 13.1 Release with Secure Document Delivery from MarketWatch.com

[Another document management provider, NetDocuments, released some very useful features in version 13.1 this week, including the ability to share documents with users outside of your organization using secure URLs, avoiding the need to force those users to create a NetDocuments account. It’s very similar to the way Dropbox (and others) allow users to create a unique URL that enables access to documents and folders without the need to have a Dropbox account. There are a number of other new features also described in the press release.] NetDocuments today announced the 13.1 release of its leading cloud-computing content management and collaboration service. This latest release contains more than 20 new and updated features, including document delivery via a secure link and a new search engine.

Adding a contact’s Social Media profile addresses to their record from Redtail Technology

[Social is the name of the game these days, so any way you can connect to the social stream coming from clients, the better. Here’s a new feature from Redtail CRM that at least helps you consolidate links to clients’ social profiles. While not as robust as social aggregation solutions like Newsle and Rapportive, advisers can see what clients are posting in one easy click.] You can add a contact’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest or MySpace addresses to their contact records, in order that you might quickly access information that is currently relevant to them.

6 ideas you can implement today from Advisor Websites

[This is a notice for an upcoming webinar hosted by Advisor Websites, Mobile Assistant, and Redtail. All of the vendors will cover tips on getting the most form your mobile devices, how to capture lead information online, and better engage clients through technology.] When? Tue, Jan 29, 2013, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST. Who should attend? Reps or their marketing/administrative staff.

Redtail and Mobile Assistant integration delivers streamlined CRM updates using mobile dictation services

Posted on December 3, 2012 by in On Air

Adding notes to your CRM isn’t the most glamorous part of being and financial adviser, but it’s an essential function that allows you to provide high-quality service to your clients. Fortunately you have options to decrease the time spent updating client records.

In a surprise FPPad On Air broadcast, I connected with Redtail Technology CEO Brian McLaughlin and Mobile Assistant president Corey Westphal to talk about the integration the two companies recently rolled out to its users. I highlighted the integration previously here at FPPad (see: Redtail Adds Mobile Assistant Integration to Transcribe Notes into CRM), but now you can hear the back story behind the idea to integrate and learn how the integration works behind the scenes.

(click to watch on YouTube)

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 20

Posted on April 20, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

My first item of note this week is an Operations and Technology Survey currently being hosted by ByAllAccounts. In return for providing your email address and survey responses, you’ll receive an executive summary of the survey results. I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff.

Click here to take the 5-minute survey.

Now on to this week’s stories of interest:

10 Apps to Keep Your Business Organized from Mashable.com

[He’s a general interest article from tech website Mashable.com with 10 great app suggestions. Kudos to Mobile Assistant for being recommended in tip #9!] We asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs for the mobile apps that keep them on track in their work and on the go. Here are their favorite suggestions.

Advisors Assistant® Now Offers Integration with Orion Services from i-newswire.com

[Advisors Assistant is a top-five CRM program, according to the 2011 Financial Planning Tech Survey, and is very popular with small firms with revenue under $1 million. With a new integration with Orion, Advisors Assistant users can save clicks when wishing to view portfolio information associated with a client record.] Client Marketing Systems, Inc., parent company of Advisors Assistant®, is pleased to announce a new integration with Orion Advisor Services, LLC, an online service bureau and portfolio management system.

Unlike iCloud, Google’s Rumored Cloud Storage Could Be a Privacy Nightmare from Cult of Mac

[I like this article’s balance between opportunities of Google’s long-awaited file storage service and the potential privacy pitfalls of such a service. Advisers seeking client-friendly file sharing solutions similar to Dropbox and Box will want to take note.] Google could easily amass a good deal of data on users of its expected cloud storage service.

Never mind Tamarac, Envestnet is getting RIAs on board with its own stand-alone software from RIABiz.com

[Envestnet’s purchase of Tamarac, Inc. in February for $54 million certainly boosted the company’s technological capabilities, but they continue to win advisers with its own Vantage offering.] Envestnet took its Silicon Valley- and Trivandrum, India-based technology unit and began to offer it as a standalone service called Envestnet Vantage.

Video Spotlight: Corey Westphal of Mobile Assistant on gaining efficiencies through voice-to-text and transcription services

Posted on March 14, 2012 by in Video Spotlight

Dictation services and voice-to-text tools should be well-known topics to FPPad readers. Mobile Assistant is one of the leading transcriptions services for financial advisers and has been featured numerous times here on FPPad.

In the latest video spotlight, Corey Westphal, president of Mobile Assistant, gives an overview of transcription services offered, addresses quality review of all dictations, and details turnaround expectations for users of the tool. Mobile Assistant also supports integrations with popular CRMs including Redtail and Advisors Assistant so notes can be automatically added to client records.

 

(click here to view on YouTube)

FPPad Bits and Bytes for August 12

Posted on August 12, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Enjoyed the wild ride this week? The market must be captivating everyone’s attention, as there’s been a distinct lull this week of tech-related news worth sharing. And I’m in New Orleans to round out this week strategizing on where FPPad is headed over the next few years. So stay tuned.

Now on to this week’s stories of interest:

Did you send a blast e-mail (or several?) to clients this week? Then you should read my column this month at Morningstar Advisor, Tools to Manage Your E-Mail Newsletter.

Automate & Integrate Arkovi Reports with Evernote, Box.net & more from Arkovi.com

[Arkovi continues to expands its capabilities, a very good sign that they’re proactive in support of new social media platforms.] We are pleased to announce today that Arkovi customers can easily automate the distribution, via email, of their Arkovi archives to any email destination. Most compelling, this includes integration with Evernote, Box.net and Zoho Docs along with any cloud storage platform or digital storage destination that provides an email address for adding files.

Bulletproof Your Practice Using Mobile Dictation from Mobile Assistant

[Corey Westphal, President of Mobile Assistant and a good friend, talks about two important features advisers should seek in their dictation solution.] Increased client documentation combined with time savings is hard for most advisors to imagine, but mobile dictation accomplishes both.

Legal analysis: The chances that Wealthcare beats UBS or upends the financial planning community at RIABiz.com

[You use financial planning software. Say MoneyGuidePro. Well then you need to read Ron Rhoades’ contribution regarding Wealthcare vs. UBS at RIABiz] Wealthcare Capital Management (i.e. Financeware, Inc.) alleges that UBS, by providing “financial advice and reports” to clients “utilizing computerized financial advising software and systems, including, for example, MoneyGuidePro” has infringed two patents.

 

Redtail Adds Mobile Assistant Integration to Transcribe Notes into CRM

Posted on May 10, 2011 by in Software

We’re back in our Dallas headquarters, but not for long.

See Bill next week at NAPFA National 2011, then two weeks later at FPA NorCal. If you heard the great feedback about Bill’s session Cultivating Clients in a Connected World at last week’s FPA Retreat, you have a chance to see the session live at FPA NorCal!

Now on with the technology updates.

Redtail Technology, providers of the popular web-based CRM, just announced an integration with Mobile Assistant. This integration allows advisers to use a transcription service to automatically update client records in their Redtail CRM system.

Advisers should have no more excuses about not having time to update records after a client phone call or meeting. Just call up your Mobile Assistant account, dictate your notes, and find them in Redtail the next day.

For all the details on the integration, click here to read the release notes on Redtail’s blog.

Guest Post: 3 Reasons You Should Document Client Meeting Notes

Posted on March 28, 2011 by in Efficiency

We’re pleased to feature a guest post from Corey Westphal, President of Mobile Assistant, a division of U.S. Transcription, Inc., that provides high quality mobile dictation solutions to financial advisers around the world.

Ever return to your office at the end of the day, take out your notes from the day’s meetings, and try to document the important details?  How much information do you remember from the first meeting of the day?

Did you know that 2/3 of our short term memory is lost one hour after our meeting – 90% of client meeting information is lost after 24 hours! Scientifically Proven by Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve

The ability to document detailed client information is critical to the growth and future success of your business.  Information allows you to build deeper more personal relationships with your clients, make more relevant investment recommendations and reduce your compliance risk.

  1. Build deeper, more personal relationships. Top advisors set themselves apart by remembering details.  Do you send that congratulations card for an important event because you recorded it immediately after a meeting? Do you have a good understanding of your client’s family dynamics, biggest concerns both financial and personal, passions and pursuits? The ability to document and act on these personal details can assist you with establishing a deeper connection with a client, building their trust and improving their experience with your firm.
  2. Make more relevant investment recommendations. Fully understanding and documenting clients’ financial and personal goals is an important aspect of the financial planning process.  Over time, it is equally as important to collect information from your clients at all touchpoints to ensure you continue to meet their needs and exceed their expectations.  When meeting with prospects, document why they have made past investment decisions, what they are currently hoping to achieve from a financial perspective and future needs.
  3. Reduce your compliance risk. Documenting client and prospect interactions can serve you well in the future should you find yourself dealing with a formal complaint from a client or responding to inquiries from regulators.

You may be thinking that creating and implementing comprehensive client meeting notes and documentation retention policies can require significant time and resources.  There are many solutions in the marketplace today which can assist you with this in an efficient manner and help to boost your productivity.

Solutions such as CRM systems, mobile dictation and more can help you document and keep up to date the relevant information you need to continue to grow your prospect and client relationships in a flexible and cost efficient manner.  Besides the basics, many of the available solutions allow you to capture valuable information including client body language during a meeting, important upcoming life events and personal goals or concerns.

About the Author:

Corey Westphal brought Mobile Assistant to the forefront of mobile dictation services in 2009, as a division of US Transcription, Inc., which he founded in 1998. Focusing on cutting edge technology and professional quality notes, Mobile Assistant offers a secure, easy way to accurately document meeting notes.  A no obligation Free Trial is available at www.mobileassistant.us or call 888-373-1916.

 

Last Chance for a Free Mobile Assistant 30 Day Trial

Posted on November 12, 2010 by in Efficiency

This is a reminder that today is the last day to submit your name, e-mail, and phone number to receive a free 30 day trial of Mobile Assistant dictation services.

All the details to get the trial are in this post, How To Try Mobile Assistant Free For 30 Days.