TRX & Morningstar Office collaborate

Total Rebalance Expert put out a prepared statement Tuesday announcing an agreement with Morningstar Inc. To summarize,…

Total Rebalance Expert put out a prepared statement Tuesday announcing an agreement with Morningstar Inc.
To summarize, what has been worked out is a process that allows advisers to automatically import their portfolio data into TRX from their Morningstar Office portfolio management application (the latter is being used by 3,700 advisers these days according to Morningstar).
This includes importing of accounts, positions, securities, and classifications, as well as transactions and tax lot data from Morningstar Office at the client level “via a single-click import process.”
That data, once in TRX is also expected to benefit from data feeds being brought in thanks to Morningstar’s own data feeds into Morningstar Office.
This all is supposed to speed up the process of getting to the meat of TRX’s mission, which is automated portfolio rebalancing, and provide for efficient tax-loss harvesting. The work between the two surely makes advisers’ lives easier and is a good thing.
I am a fan of what Sheryl Rowling, chief executive of TRX and her co-founder built with Total Rebalance Expert; affordable rebalancing solutions are proving to be a real efficiency boost for advisers, no question about it.
But I’m going to quibble and ask the question, should we continue referring to these sorts of partnerships as integrations?
It sounds like more of a simplified, streamlined import process (much like this one).
I’m sure a lot of work has gone into it and that the data and fields mesh and are better synchronized and go into TRX with less need of cleanup, errors or reconciliation.
Yes, I’m singling out this particular announcement from many I have written about in the past and many others that have gone uncovered.
Let’s begin to reserve the word integration, in a technology sense, to refer to seamless pass-through of data between systems. For now that can refer to data traveling one-way but aim for the goal of it ultimately meaning unfettered bi-directional passing of data.