Laser App Software launches mobile version, Laser App Anywhere

It is easy to imagine how much business would slow down these days at numerous broker-dealers without…

It is easy to imagine how much business would slow down these days at numerous broker-dealers without the 29,000 forms that Laser App Software Inc. maintains in its online repositories.
Today, during its annual conference the company has announced Laser App Anywhere, its new web-based platform for advisers to use on any Internet-connected device.
‘Anywhere’ is a mobile forms-filling solution for financial advisers that can be used anywhere they have a secure Internet connection.
It is browser-agnostic, having been tested on most of the popular tablet devices currently on the market including the new Google Nexus 7, though advisers in overwhelming numbers are selecting the Apple iPad as their tablet of choice (that is the tablet of choice among almost 86% of advisers that took our annual technology survey — to be published in next week’s issue).
When accessed on the iPad, for example, the typical broker-dealer form fits perfectly by default, since most forms tend to reflect the standard 8 ½ by 11-inch paper size by tradition.
“Pulling up and submitting a form on your smart phone would be a choice of last resort but it would work,” said Robert Powell, vice president of sales and marketing at Laser App.
The idea is that using the Anywhere system forms can be saved, printed, or electronically signed and securely transmitted by the adviser to his or her broker-dealer’s back office.
“We have tried to take the needs of everyone into consideration, registered reps, registered investment advisers as well as the broker-dealers and those in the back office,” he added.
“Another thing we had to keep in mind was that the system had to be so easy it doesn’t require professional services installation to set up and operate at the broker-dealers, we had to make it as turnkey as possible since only the largest b-ds tend to have in-house developer staff,” Mr. Powell noted.
Features will be managed by business-side and administrative personnel using a straightforward and fairly intuitive dashboard user interface.
Laser App Anywhere integrates or soon will, with lots of third-party service providers and applications as well including several industry leaders in the CRM and document management and e-signature spaces.

TECHNOLOGY QUESTIONS

In my interview with Mr. Powell I wanted a little better understanding of how this system differed from the well known Laser App enterprise platform.
In a nutshell, rather than being built strictly for desktop usage, the Anywhere system relies on adherence to the HTML5 set of specifications as much as is possible. That and CSS3 style sheets. This is all helped because Laser App forms are built as pure HTML pages backed by XML behind them. This makes them render on any browser yet allows the backend databases to keep correct track of all the fields and data.
While the e-signature piece has not been released yet, it is expected in the weeks ahead will include integrations with various Laser App vendor partners in the space including but not limited to Docusign, Echosign, Sign-X, and Topaz.
I had Mr. Powell elaborate on how all this cross-vendor integration would work and he explained that it relied on the various partners make use of the Laser App software developer kit.
Documents pulled, completed and sent by adviser users will look identical to the way the enterprise system functions, however, instead of saying “launch to the desktop,” the Laser App Anywhere system recognizes the device and says “send the identical data/message but this time to Laser App’s servers hosting the system.
This last description points to another aspect of the Anywhere system that is a differentiator or departure from Laser App’s traditional model.
The system is being hosted by Rackspace, a very well-known hosting company, and is being hosted at a higher level of service and security than your garden-variety non-mission-critical consumer app would get.
Much of this has been done because it is the first time that Laser App is really dealing with client data touching their servers. While that data is not residing or being stored long-term on their servers it might, for example be momentarily retained there while an adviser is completing some other task or collecting additional information before being sent on its secure journey for permanent residence in the systems of a broker-dealer or custodian.