Tag Archives: Tamarac Advisor

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 24

Posted on June 24, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

I’ve been in 100% focus mode this week, working on new products and services for FPPad’s consulting business. eBooks are a part of that development, too, so if there’s a hot topic in which you’re interested (e.g. iPad for advisers, social media compliance, etc.), please let me know.

Here are this week’s stories of interest.

Advisers: How do you know when it’s time for an upgrade from InvesetmentNews.com

Financial advisers, whether solo practitioners or members of a multiperson firm, need to think regularly about whether their technology is keeping pace with their business needs. Experienced advisers and technology experts have plenty of advice and experiences to share.

Portfolio management, reporting spawning new players, products from InvestmentNews.com

[Davis Janowski had a busy week this week!] Advisers seeking portfolio management software have choices beyond venerable offerings such as Advent Axys and Schwab PortfolioCenter. Take, for example, the demonstrations of two portfolio management and reporting systems that I received last week: PowerAdvisor and Atom Align Cloud Service.

Review: How Redtail got hot fast among RIAs and how it plans to leapfrog itself from RIABiz.com

[I reviewed Redtail’s upcoming Project Leapfrog release in May’s Morningstar Advisor column, A Popular CRM Gets an Upgrade] Fondly named after CEO Brian McLaughlin’s red-tailed golden retriever (not the hawk or the beer), Redtail is a Sacramento-based company living the American dream.

LPL Financial Provides Advisor Access to Social Media from FA-Mag.com

[If you read this month’s Morningstar Advisor column, How to Make Social Media Compliance Automatic, then you already knew Erado was on LPL’s preferred vendor list. Now the deal is official.] LPL Financial becomes the latest independent broker-dealer to allow its advisors to use social media, signing a multiyear deal with Erado Message Control Solutions that will provide monitoring that meets Financial Industry Regulatory Authority requirements for review of online marketing, officials said Wednesday.

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 10

Posted on June 10, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

I’ve spent the week catching up on a backlog of work, vendor demos, phone calls, and reading due to May’s busy travel schedule. Tungle.me deserves recognition for helping me keep my sanity while scheduling all the calls and demos this week. If you haven’t heard of Tungle.me, read my column for Morningstar Advisor A Simpler Way to Schedule Meetings and try it yourself.

Now on with this week’s stories of interest:

Cabinet NG Creates New Class of Web-Based Document Management with CNG-WEB from CabinetNG.com

Cabinet NG, an on-premise document management software application, extends its functionality to the web with its latest release of CNG-WEB, making document capture and access from remote locations easier than ever.

One RIA’s unvarnished views on Advent, Black Diamond, Tamarac, IAS, Orion and Schwab PortfolioCenter after an odyssey of test drives from RIABiz.com

Take six portfolio management applications, drop them in a bucket, shake it around with a dose of trials and due diligence, and out comes one winner (in theory). Here’s one adviser’s perspective on hashing out a portfolio management solution for his practice.

Choosing Software That Works for Your Advisory Firm—Part 7: The Keys to Success from AdvisorOne.com

The seventh update in a 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.

Advent Brings APX to Pershing NetX360 from Marketwire.com

Advent Software, Inc., a leading provider of software and services for the global investment management industry, today announced that Pershing’s introducing broker-dealer and independent registered investment advisor (RIA) customers will now have access to Advent Portfolio Exchange® (APX) through NetX360™, its innovative, open-architecture technology solution.

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 6

Posted on May 6, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Today is the final day of FPA Retreat 2011, and Bill will soon be flying to Baltimore for a short weekend visit before returning to Dallas next Monday. As the events at Retreat unfolded, we’ve taken brief breaks to cover the best of technology news for advisers this week.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

TechCheck: Archiving for QuickBooks gets quicker from InvestmentNews.com

This InvestmentNews update covers a new Quickbooks integration in eFileCabinet Inc., a free social media policy resource, and news of the partnership between Trust Company of America and Black Diamond Performance Reporting.

TradeWarrior and TradePMR Announce Integrated Partnership from MarketWire.com

TradeWarrior and TradePMR announced today an integration between the two firms. The partnership provides TradePMR advisors with the ability to seamlessly export their client data files into TradeWarrior’s powerful rebalancing and trading system. The affiliation marks the first time TradePMR has made rebalancing software available to their advisors.

Lean on Me at FA-Mag.com

The major custodians are taking a leaf from the page of the independent broker-dealers who, in the best of cases, look beyond their advisors’ need for trade execution to the entire area of practice management.

Dropping Out of the Tech Arms Race at RegisteredRep.com

But even while confidence has slowly crept back among advisors, as the market has cooperated as well, many are still holding tight to the lessons of the past few years — spending on technology, but with a new kind of financial savvy and discretion.

Read Bill’s column for the May issue of the Journal of Financial Planning, Five Misconceptions About Document Management

Financial planners have benefited tremendously from new technologies introduced in the digital age by being able to conduct much of their business while on the go. However, one area of the digital movement that financial planners have been slow to adopt is document management technology.

The Tech Needs of Advisors on Advisor TV at Financial-Planning.com

At the Tiburon CEO Summit, Stuart DePina, CEO of software provider, Tamarac Corp., discusses what firms need to do with technology to service clients more effectively.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 15

Posted on April 15, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Did you file your tax return yet? We managed to file a few days before the potential government shutdown.

But if you’re still scrambling to complete those last few client returns (or extension filings), here’s a 60-second breakdown of this week’s top stories in financial planning technology so you can get back to your forms.

The inside story of a giant RIA’s move to Tamarac from Advent from RIABiz.com

The thought process behind $2-billion Signature Estate’s move from Advent to Tamarac for its portfolio management technology.

Mobile Apps 101: 10 Must-Have Applications for Every Advisor from Financial-Planning.com

Whether it’s an iPad, Android, BlackBerry or iPhone, just about everyone these days is walking around with a digital appendage to keep themselves constantly in the know and able to communicate with friends, family and business associates around the clock.

Read this month’s MorningstarAdvisor.com column Avoid E-mail Audit Headaches to determine how technology can prevent last-minute scrambling to assemble e-mail records for examiners.

And finally, read part three of an interview AdvisorWebsites.com conducted with Bill on financial adviser technology:Bill Winterberg Talks Technology: Part 3 (read Part 1 and Part 2)

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 18

Posted on February 18, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

We’re attending the T3 Conference as you read this (follow the Twitter backchannel under #T32011), but through the magic of the Internet we’re able to post our week in review of all things tech in financial planning.

This week’s stories of interest start out with the recent request by the SEC to review advisers’ use of social media:

SEC Wants To Follow You On Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube… at Forbes.com

(Bill’s comment: Reporter Halah Touryalai raises the fair point that the SEC might have better issues to tackle than to babysit advisers’ social media profiles. But such is the consequence of the regulatory enviroment to which advisers are subject. All it takes are a few tweets from fraudulent advisers to ruin it for everyone. Can you imagine “RT @bernardmadoff: Just one week left to enroll in our 8% monthly guarantee fund. Accredited investors only please!“)

File this one under: “There Are Better Things The SEC Can Be Doing.” Financial advisors’ online activity on social media websites is being scrutinized by the SEC, according to a compliance consulting firm and a report in Investment News.

FINRA to Look at Social Media–Again at Financial Advisor Magazine

The issue of how to deal with social media isn’t going away for regulators of the securities industry.

CRM systems for the big guys from InvestmentNews.com

For larger advisory firms, choosing the right CRM system is like selecting the right marriage partner.

TradeWarrior and AssetBook Announce Integration Partnership at Marketwire.com

TradeWarrior and AssetBook are pleased to announce an integration between their software programs. The integration partnership between the two companies will provide AssetBook users access to TradeWarrior’s powerful rebalancing and trading capabilities. This integration marks the first 3rd party rebalancing integration available to AssetBook users.

T3 Begins Thursday; Follow the Conference Twitter Backchannel

Posted on February 15, 2011 by in General

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 February 4

Posted on February 4, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

The mega-storm that blew across the Central and Eastern United States glazed the streets of Dallas with ice, so we’ve been juggling our schedule this week with primary care responsibilities for our two-year-old son.

We’ve postponed four days of work, but we still made the time to monitor the industry’s best tech-related stories for your education. Without further ado, here they are:

Silent Partner at Financial-Planning.com

(Bill’s note: If this testimony isn’t enough to make advisers want to run out and sign on to Tamarac Advisor X, I don’t know what is.) As breakaway RIAs, we also knew that our business would not survive on investment acumen and our new independent business model alone. We knew that our operations could make-or break-our dreams.

Third-party vendors vouch for TD Ameritrade’s API at first general session at RIABiz.com

Three third party vendors sat on a panel at the first general session of TD Ameritrade’s 2011 national conference at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego and explained why they’re buying into the custodians’ approach to creating a big ecosystem of technology in the RIA business. The company is making its data readily available to all legitimate comers.

The Lab at Financial-Planning.com

As custodians battle for the hearts and minds of advisors in the years ahead, Fidelity possesses a weapon that no other firm can currently match: The Fidelity Center for Applied Technology, known as FCAT.

Tamarac is a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner at TamaracInc.com

Tamarac Inc., a leading provider of integrated portfolio management software and services, today announced being awarded Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status with competencies in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and hosting for its Advisor CRM offering.

BlazePortfolio announces release of Atom Align 1.3™ at BlazePortfolio.com

BlazePortfolio today announced the public release of Atom Align 1.3™, the web-based portfolio rebalancing and trading solution for investment professionals

Another Choice Among Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customizations

Posted on September 7, 2010 by in Software

Keeping up with all the flavors and variants of CRM is a daunting task. One iteration that I don’t have much experience with just yet is Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Tamarac Advisor is built on Microsoft Dynamics, but other than that, choices are limited for advisers interested in leveraging the software giant’s CRM application.

Lauren Carlson, a CRM Market Analyst for Software Advice, brought one more Dynamics customization to my attention. Look for it in her article titled Microsoft Dynamics CRM Industry Solutions: Our 15 Favorites at SoftwareAdvice.com.

If you know of or are using other Dynamics customizations, leave a comment and let me know.