Salesforce.com is like black licorice among financial advisers; they either love it or they hate it.
Just 5% of all advisers who responded to the 2011 Financial Planning Magazine tech survey said they use Salesforce as their CRM. For a CRM widely used in other verticals, financial services just hasn’t warmed up to the program.
So along comes a company called AppCrown (you may remember them as E*Assist back in the 00s) with the hopes of successfully implementing the AppCrown variant of Salesforce in wealth management firms.
Here’s a short interview with AppCrown COO Franklin Tsung on why he believes the adoption of Salesforce.com will grow among financial advisers and how the company’s “pure play” integrations will contribute to its success in the market.
[What does a custodian do once they have their “technology part (largely) finished?” According to Mike Durbin, Bob Oros, and David Canter of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, the custodian continues to bolt on value-add components to its adviser toolkit, with a nod to expanded practice management, marketing, and valuation and M&A resources.] With nearly all its advisors finally transitioned onto its ambitious new technology platform, WealthCentral, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services is feeling confident in the foundation it’s provided for advisors, especially the breakaways that have been its bread and butter. Now, the second-largest custodian is ready to offer consulting style services — marketing consultations, strategic planning sessions and M&A facilitating — to help create new RIAs, not just attract breakaways.
[TD Ameritrade Institutional’s Veo® Open Access has been available to third-party vendors since January 2011 (see: TD Ameritrade Institutional’s Veo® Open Access to enhance trading, fee billing, and client on-boarding processes), and currently has over 60 vendors integrated in one from or another. Finally, Junxure CRM is integrated with Veo® Open Access to access client account data held at TD Ameritrade Institutional inside Junxure and manage alerts along with Junxure workflow.] Continuing its reputation as a leader in technology integration for financial advisors, Junxure is excited to offer CRM integration with Veo® Open Access from TD Ameritrade Institutional.
[Schwab’s OpenView Integrated Office™ offering (say that three times fast!) will now integrate with web-based document management software NetDocuments. It’s a fairly straightforward pairing, as NetDocuments has been closely tied to Salesforce CRM for a number of years now, and because Integrated Office is a Salesforce overlay, dropping in NetDocuments is a no-brainer. According to sources inside Schwab, access to the program is included in the cost of Integrated Office. My last pricing quote from Schwab was $10,000 per year for two seat licenses and up to 150 accounts, which Brian Shenson announced at the T3 Conference earlier this year.
Oh, and PortfolioCenter ™ gets an update on securities management and fee billing modules, plus the PortfolioCenter Hosted product will be rolled out “soon” at a cost of roughly $48/account/year. And I don’t think that price includes any outsource reconciliation services a-la BOSS.] A Charles Schwab & Co. subsidiary that offers technology services for independent financial advisors announced changes today that improve document and portfolio management systems.
[Woah, Cambridge just laid the smack-down on most major custodians. For the longest time, custodians have alluded to the use of esignature technology like DocuSign to facilitate a truly end-to-end paperless process for most forms. Evidently, Cambridge is now offering just that to its reps, all free of charge (or at least, rolled up in Cambridge’s cut of GDC).] Cambridge Investment Research, Inc. (Cambridge) announced it is launching a new eSignature program for use with clients by its independent financial advisors. Partnering with DocuSign, Cambridge is rolling out an electronic signature option compatible with most desktop and mobile devices used by rep-advisors and their clients.
[In a trend among investment managers, Invesco now offers an iPad app advisers and investors can use to access news, commentary, product information, and videos. You could access all that from Invesco’s website, but why would you want to when you can curl up on the sofa and browse the app in your downtime? By the way, this app is very well executed. No fluff here. See the demo video below.] Invesco, a leading investment manager, announced today the launch of a free iPad® app, available from the App Store(SM), that will provide on-the-go access for financial intermediaries and investors to essential investing resources.
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This is the back of a Town Car. Don’t leave your phone here!
I just flew over 16,000 miles in the last 60 days, passing through airport security and riding in taxis at least a dozen times. Thankfully, I always remember to gather up my laptop and phone before I head to my destination.
But what if you have that one time when you’re in a rush and leave your mobile device behind?
This month’s Quickview update for Morningstar Advisor tells you about one simple setting you can use on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone to increase your chances of recovering your device.
I connected with Neal Ringquist, President of Advisor Software, Inc. and talked about the trend he’s seeing of advisers turning to quick financial planning tools in their business.
One of Advisor Software’s initiatives for 2012 is to supply advisers with that tool, a web-based program it calls goalgamiPro.
“[Advisers] can quickly generate a plan and a conversation with a client, collate the material, so the discussion with the client is about goals. It’s about them, and it personalizes that discussion,” said Ringquist in an interview.
For more information on goalgamiPro and the trend towards quick financial planning tools, view the video interview.
[You’ve no doubt noticed much of the new video content here at FPPad. My YouTube channel is close to 7,000 total views and continues to grow. So it’s about time you consider adding video content for your own firm. My good friend Kristen Luke, owner of Wealth Management Marketing, now offers professional video production services throughout the country. Special discount to FPPad subscribers: if you use discount code VIDFP12, you’ll get $200 off your first 30 second video, $400 off a 60 second video and $600 off a 90 second video. Discount applies to the first video only, expiration 3/31/13.] Wealth Management Marketing introduces professionally produced HD videos optimized for TV, web and mobile viewing.
[The generally secretive Addepar opens up a bit to the reporters at BusinessWeek (it’s ok Addepar, RIABiz and I understand…), but the few details disclosed sound a lot like what Orion Advisor Services and Private Client Resources currently do. Read for yourself.] Joe Lonsdale is also running a new company called Addepar that’s attempting to modernize the software that ultrawealthy families and foundations use to manage their billions. “I work 110-hour weeks,” he says. “I’m always investing and building things at the same time.”
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Tim Walker, Marketing Product Manager for Socialware
Some financial advisers are under the impression that the only way to benefit from social media is to tweet on Twitter or propagate Likes on Facebook. That’s just not true.
Advisers can benefit from social media simply by listening to what others are saying, a technique called “social listening.”
Unfortunately, most software designed to survey the social landscape for relevant updates is targeted to huge enterprises with recognized brands and millions of customers (think Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, etc.). Tools like Radian6 start at $5,000 per month, well beyond the reach of nearly all independent advisers.
Now, Socialware, a social media compliance software provider, just announced its own social listening software called Social Network Listening.
To get more insight on how Social Network Listening can help financial professionals, I connected with Tim Walker, Marketing Program Manager for Socialware for the following podcast.
One item of note: Social Network Listening is currently targeted to institutional financial services companies and broker-dealers, but Walker said that sales to independent advisers is on Socialware’s roadmap for the product.
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Whew, I’ve been on the road almost the entire week. I still have two videos to edit from FPA Experience, plus a number of blog posts that are unfinished, but I’m still making time to cultivate the best news in financial planning technology from around the web.
[Orion clients already had a portfolio reblanacer tool built in to the software, but it’s not nearly robust as a product like Total Rebalance Expert (TRX). TRX has a number of features that self-described “compulsive perfectionist CPA” Sheryl Rowling says can help a firm manage complex strategies and situations when it comes to rebalancing portfolios (see: Total Rebalance Expert CEO Sheryl Rowling on how rebalancing software saves advisers $325,000 per year).] Total Rebalance Expert (TRX) and Orion Advisor Services, LLC, announced today the availability of data integration between the two leading technology platforms for financial advisors. The new integration will enable advisors to automatically bring over Orion portfolio data into TRX to streamline and simplify the rebalancing process.
[Zephyr has an interesting product portfolio including StyleADVISOR, a historical backtesting a risk analytics tool, and AllocationADVISOR, a forward-looking portfolio simulator. Joel Bruckenstien reviewed StyleADVISOR in August for Financial Planning (see: Software Helps Money Managers Detect Patterns)] Informa Investment Solutions (IIS), a division of Informa plc and a leading supplier of software and solutions for the investment industry, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zephyr Associates, Inc. (Zephyr). Zephyr will continue to operate as a business unit within IIS.
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With interest rates stuck at record lows, you’ve likely considered adding alternative investments to your clients’ portfolios for a boost in investment income. Alternatives also, in theory, add diversification to portfolios through the use of non-correlated assets with respect to equities and fixed income.
However, managing and reporting on alternative investments usually means adding a lot more manual processes to your back office procedures.
Thankfully, software and service vendors to financial advisers recognize the challenge and now support tools to facilitate alternative investment management.
I covered one of these tools in this month’s column for Morningstar Advisor.
As a financial adviser, you’re well aware that you can’t use client testimonials in any of your marketing materials. SEC and FINRA regulations prohibit the use of client testimonials (see: Adviser Use of LinkedIn May Violate SEC Rules).
LinkedIn’s latest feature called Endorsements, opens up another issue for financial advisers with LinkedIn profiles. Anyone can visit an adviser’s LinkedIn profile and endorse specific skills and expertise. Considering the broad language against client testimonials, allowing such endorsements should be avoided.
So how do you remove or disable Endorsements from showing up on your profile?
In the screencast below, I walk you though two ways you can prevent Endorsements from showing up on your public profile.
Watch the screencast now and hide any public endorsements on your own profile to avoid triggering compliance violations.
In an email to subscribers this morning, InvestmentNews announced the release of its new app, InvestmentNews Daily for iPad.
InvestmentNews Daily app for iPad
What it says is “the financial advice industry’s first and only real-time news app,” InvestmentNews Daily offers a simple way to view content normally accessed online via InvestmentNews.com.
The Daily
After a quick download, I found the app to be easy to use to quickly review each day’s updates.
What I’d like to see more of in an app like this is a way to curate content, similar to Zite. The app does have a “My Topics” section, but users select from a predefined list of topics, so there’s no way to add custom keywords (say, iPad for example).
Social Sharing
InvestmentNews Daily does have social sharing options, so users can simply click the “+” sign at the bottom of the screen to easily share articles on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn with one click.
Articles can also be saved to “My Briefcase” to view offline when the iPad is not connected to the Internet.
Nevertheless, I’m more likely to use InvestmentNews Daily to get a quick synopsis of the day’s news rather than use their website, that as of late takes a long time to load new pages.
Roll Camera
If I could make one suggestion: video would be a welcome addition to InvestmentNews Daily content. Take a look at Fidelity Investments’ iPad app for retail clients. That’s a good example of blending written articles with video news stories.
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