Laserfiche unveils new process management software

The Avante product is geared toward registered investment advisers and independent broker-dealers, banks and other financial institutions.

It is available for $500 per user.

Document management software allows a firm to digitize its paper records into an easily searchable electronic archive. The work-flow features will help your firm create more straightforward and repeatable processes for handling paperwork.

In addition, the Avante system offers secure web access so that remote offices or business partners can access your system in compliance with government- and industry-mandated standards.

Just to help you stay abreast of techno-jargon, IT types refer to this offering as business process management.

Some of you who are familiar with this sort of software, and Laserfiche of Long Beach, Calif., in particular, might be asking, “So how does this differ from its Intuition Pro product?

That product was designed for sole-proprietor shops — firm with two people or more will want to go with Avante.

More than 150 pre-release copies of Avante have already been deployed and Laserfiche has more than 27,000 installations across its product lines.

Avante is built on Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp.’s technology so it can integrate with Microsoft’s operating systems and with Microsoft Office applications, such as Word, Excel, and SharePoint.

For more information, visit Laserfiche Avante online.

Mint.com is popular, but Cashflow Insite steals a march

Most advisers have by now heard of the wildly popular Mint.com website and service, which helps consumers track their spending and saving habits, among other functions.

Many advisers have asked me when it would offer a service that would allow them to work online with their clients.

The answer is a indefinite sometime in the future.

“While there are no plans to get into deep financial adviser software, portfolio re-balancing and asset allocation that utilizes Mint’s existing platform is always possible in the future,” Aaron Patzer, founder and chief executive of Mint, wrote in an e-mail.

But they may be late to market, as Neuralus Inc. of San Diego and Winnipeg has come up with its own service.

Cashflow Insite enables clients and financial advisers to track and compare client spending against budgetary goals, as well as their savings and investments. The site provides “lifestyle models” that divide a person's spending across several categories, though consumers can create their own as well.

The service will cost an adviser $45 per month and allow them to set up 100 clients with accounts.

In coming months, Neuralus plans to allow advisers to import client financial information into a couple of web-based financial planning tools that are familiar to advisers, though it declined to disclose the potential partners.

Neuralus has completed an integration with the popular web-based Redtail customer relationship management application from Redtail Technology Inc. of Gold River, Calif.

For more information visit Cashflow INSITE and Neuralus Inc..