Tag Archives: Smarsh

T3 Begins Thursday; Follow the Conference Twitter Backchannel

The second large industry conference of the year for independent financial advisers kicks off this Thursday.

The Technology Tools for Today (T3) Conference, a joint effort by T3: The Newsletter producers David J. Drucker and Joel P. Bruckenstein, begins with pre-conference sessions by many leading technology vendors and service providers.

Pre-conference sessions include presentations by Junxure, Laserfiche, Tamarac, MoneyGuidePro, and Smarsh to name a few.

Presentations

I’ll be there presenting two sessions. First, I’ll be a panelist in Friday’s session titled iPad: How Advisors Are Using it Productively along with Sandra E. Goodstein of Goodstein and Associates, LLC, and Russell Dunkin of McKinley Carter Wealth Services. Diane MacPhee, CFP®, Business Coach and owner of DMAC Consulting Services, LLC will moderate the panel.

Second, I’m teaming up with Jo Day of Trumpet, Inc to present Transformative Technology You Can Implement Now on Saturday. We have assembled a slide deck full of resources advisers can add to their practice to make clients and colleagues speak highly of their firm.

Visit the T3 Conference website for the full conference agenda.

Twitter Backchannel

Just as with TD AMERITRADE Institutional’s 2011 National Conference, attendees of T3 are encouraged to use social media to connect and communicate through the backchannel.

The primary Twitter account for T3 is @T3fan and the hashtag being used for conference-related tweets is #T32011.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/t3fan/status/19631983814508545″]

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 28

Again, we’re busy behind the scenes working with new clients, preparing new presentations for upcoming conferences, and writing new content for columns and articles. Blog posts are sporadic, but we still reserve the best tech related stories for Friday’s Bits and Bytes update.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

New Portfolio Management Software For Advisors; AdvisorEdge Looks Good from advisors4advisors.com

AdvisorEdge is a new portfolio management software (PMS) app that is being launched as a result of a patnership between Mike Kelly of Back Office Support Service, and Matt Abar of FinFolio.

Making sense of document storage confusion from InvestmentNews.com

A good document storage system can offer convenience by allowing advisers and clients to share documents securely over the Internet, no matter where they are.

Take Digital Notes, Discreetly from MorningstarAdvisor.com

When attending conferences, advisors may find the process of using a laptop to take notes too obtrusive. Here’s one alternative that makes the process much more inconspicuous.

How a big Atlanta RIA kept sledding with technology after snow paralyzed the city from RIABiz.com

While most Atlantans spent the week ensconced at home, Balentine employees continued with business as usual with the help of laptops, iPads, iPhones, and NetX360.

One Year Later: Revisiting FINRA’s Social Media Usage Guidelines from CMSWire.com

A year ago FINRA, the regulator that oversees brokers and other financial advisors, released guidelines for social media usage. Since then, financial advisors have carefully tip-toed into the social media landscape, thanks to financial networking sites like LinkedFA.com and Smarsh.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for September 24

FPPad goes on vacation today and won’t return until Monday, October 4. So enjoy this week’s Bits and Bytes; it’ll have to tide you over for two weeks!

Ameritas Investment Corp. Selects Smarsh for Email Archiving and Compliance Services from Businesswire.com

Smarsh®, the managed service leader in innovative, secure and reliable email archiving and compliance solutions, announced today that Ameritas Investment Corp. (AIC) has migrated to the Smarsh hosted email archiving and compliance platform

Fidelity® to Integrate Black Diamond Performance Reportingtm within Its Open Technology Platform for Independent Advisors from BusinessWeek.com

Fidelity Investments®, a leading provider of custody and clearing services to registered investment advisors (RIAs), today announced that it has expanded advisors’ access to third-party solutions within Fidelity WealthCentral® by establishing a strategic relationship with Black Diamond Performance Reporting(TM) to integrate its BlueSky portfolio management and reporting platform.

Moxy 7.0 trade order management now available from Advent from InvestmentNews.com

Advent Software Inc. yesterday announced availability of Moxy 7.0, the latest version of the trade order management system that’s so popular with registered investment advisory firms. All told, the software is used by 850 financial services firms around the world.

Smarsh, Socialware Partner to Command Social Media Compliance Market

I’d like to be able to say that I saw this coming, but that’s not entirely the case.

Today, Smarsh, Inc. the leading email archive solution provider to financial advisers, and Socialware, a provider of social media archive and policy enforcement tools, announced a partnership to combine their respective technologies to provide one solution for messaging and social media governance and compliance.

Click here to view the press release on Smarsh’s website.

I’ve written about both Smarsh and Socialware before, and while each company’s products could help advisers comply with regulatory requirements when using social media, neither offered an all-in-one solution. Smarsh dominates the archiving market, but lacks coverage in the social media space. Socialware commands the social media space, but doesn’t specialize in compliant archiving.

So I view the partnership as a very promising relationship in support of an all-in-one social media compliance solution to satisfy FINRA and SEC regulatory requirements.

I hope to be able to check out the offering in the future and report back on its capabilities (either here or in my other media outlets).

Socialware Launches Social Media Archive Service, Rebrands Website

I’ve made several mentions on FPPad about Socialware, an emerging provider of social media archive and policy enforcement tools, but I’ve yet to include a full feature of their services.

Today, Socialware announced several new initiatives to better serve the market of individuals and small and medium businesses (SMBs). The full announcement can be viewed on the Socialware blog.

What do these changes mean to advisers?

Read More…

Email Archiver LiveOffice Jumps Into Social Media Archiving Market

In a press release yesterday, LiveOffice, an email archiving and compliance provider to financial advisors, announced the release of its LiveOffice Social Archive service.

According to the LiveOffice press release, Social Archive is:

the first social media archiving solution to capture and retain content from any public website, including popular social networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as blogs.

Now I debate the statement that Social Archive is the first archiving solution (I’ve tweeted and blogged before about Arkovi Backups, Smarsh, SocialWare, and several others). Nevertheless, LiveOffice joins a short list of providers aimed at providing compliance solutions to registered representatives and independent RIAs who want to use social media websites.

Read the entire press release by clicking here.

Smarsh Customers: Be Patient, Network Outage Disrupting Website & Phone Services

If you’re a Smarsh user, you undoubtedly noticed that email services aren’t working today. To add insult to injury, when their customer service number is called, the number isn’t working.

I first found out from Google Alerts I set up to monitor Smarsh, an email hosting and archive provider for the financial services industry. I saw this post on Compliance Insights, and then turned to Twitter for more information.

According to @roguebob and @safetyinnumbers, Smarsh is experiencing a severe network outage that has disrupted its website service as well as its VOIP phone system.

But the company contacted @safetyinnumbers and assured him that “emails are queueing and not being lost.”

Twitter appears to be the best source for updates at the moment, though the lack of network service obviously makes it difficult for the company to update its own Twitter account, @SmarshInc.

Satisfy Compliance Requirements For Social Media Content

Update: LifestreamBackup recently changed its name to Backupify. The points in this post are still applicable despite the name change!

Many advisers who consult with me regarding the use of social media are justifiably concerned about compliance when it comes to using such services. Advisers can use outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to communicate with others and to broadcast information to targeted niche markets. These tools are fantastic ways to build brand recognition for an adviser or a firm and to identify the level of services offered to the public.

I’ve written here previously how FINRA and the SEC may determine that any message disseminated through social media services constitutes marketing and/or advertising and at the very least should be archived and retained in a compliance file. If you are a representative regulated under FINRA, you likely need pre-approval from compliance before posting any messages through social media services. SEC-registered advisers should consult with their Chief Compliance Officer before posting messages as well.

Now let’s assume that an adviser decides to use social media to grow the business. Terrific! But what can be done to efficiently archive and retain those messages sent through social media services?

Read More…

Smarsh Adds Twitter Message Archiving Service

Smarsh

Smarsh continues to impress me as an innovative force and market leader in email archiving and compliance. They recently announced a Smarsh CRM product to help users be more efficient and productive (a post I’ve had in my drafts section ever since my son was born!).

Today I read an article on a new service that may prove to be very useful and timely to the adviser community.

Smarsh has announced a social media (a.k.a.Twitter) message archiving service at a Twitter conference this week.

Read More…

See my CRM and Productivity Presentation on March 17

I’m busy working on the final slides for a presentation I’m delivering to the Mid-Oregon chapter of the FPA on Tuesday, March 17.  Lunch is served at 12:30PM, the first speaker begins at 1:00PM, and my session begins after 2:00PM. I’ve been asked to provide an overview of the CRM software market (not a small task!) and also provide easy productivity tips that can help financial advisers get the most out of each workday.

If you’re in the local vicinity, I encourage you to sign up for what I hope will be a very informative presentation.

Click here to visit the FPA of Mid-Oregon meeting page.  Cost is just $55 for FPA members, $65 for all others.

Pre-registration (at least 24 hours in advance) is strongly advised for all chapter meetings. To pre-register contact the Chapter Executive Director, Linda Barba at (541) 284-9855. Please leave your name, membership status, sessions attending, and number of guests.