Problems come and problems go, but linking adviser tools so that data entered once can populate several software programs — that's a problem that seems eternal.
The onerous, time-consuming work that has to be performed so that information is consistent on a variety of software programs was the topic of considerable adviser discussion at the recent Business Solutions meeting of the Financial Planning Association in Chicago.
"While we want to take care of our clients with the best tools available, it remains irritating that so little of it really seamlessly talks to anything else," said Kevin J. Hermening, a certified financial planner at Hermening Financial Group LLC of Wausau, Wis. The firm manages $91 million in assets and employs eight.
One employee at the firm is responsible for maintaining data and ensuring that it appears consistently among NaviPlan, a financial planning program from Emerging Information Systems Inc. of Winnipeg, Manitoba; PortfolioCenter, a portfolio management program from Schwab Institutional of San Francisco; and Maximizer CRM, a customer relationship management program from Maximizer Software Ltd. of Johannesburg, South Africa.
To address the integration problem at her firm, Sheila M. Chesney, a financial planner with Chesney & Co. in Sheldon, S.C., hired Trumpet Inc. of Phoenix, which provides document management services to advisory firms.
Trumpet focused on linking PortfolioCenter with portfolio re-balancing software from Tamarac Inc. of Seattle. It also integrated Chesney's customer relationship management system, Junxure, from CRM Software of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., with PortfolioCenter and the firm's Worldox document management system, from World Software Corp. of Ridgewood, N.J.
The software integration has enabled Chesney to simplify its quarterly portfolio reporting and frees Ms. Chesney to spend more time focusing on clients. Her firm manages about $75 million in assets.
One organization that is addressing integration problems is Your Silver Bullet LLC of Portola Valley, Calif., a confederation of 22 adviser-focused software companies.
Participants are vendors with overlapping customer bases who see an opportunity in creating software that can communicate without extensive programming.
"We realized that developing one-off interfaces between companies was not the end game; it was a temporary fix at best," said Gregory Friedman, the group's founder and managing member. He is also president of CRM Software and of Friedman & Associates, a Novato, Calif., firm that manages $220 million in assets.
Despite the efforts of suppliers, integration seems a distant goal.
"I don't think anyone, even Morningstar, has reached that integration Nirvana," said Chris Boruff, president of Chicago-based Morningstar Inc.'s adviser business and an FPA conference panelist.
To help avert integration issues, planners should assess a vendor's "level of openness" about their systems, said panelist David W. Grace, president of Interactive Advisory Software of Marietta, Ga. "If vendors are fairly tight-lipped and non-responsive, then those technology dollars would be better spent on someone else's product," he said.
'OPEN AS POSSIBLE'
"For us being as open as possible has just made good business sense," said Ken Golding, vice president of technology for CRM Software, the firm behind Junxure.
Several advisers complained that custodians aren't doing more to integrate their systems.
"That should come as little surprise," said Tim Welsh, president of Nexus Strategy LLC, a Larkspur, Calif.-based technology consulting firm to advisory businesses."They see it as not in their best interest. Look, would you want to make it easier for your clients to leave you, even if it did benefit the industry as a whole?" Mr. Welsh said.
However, an executive with iNautix USA, an affiliate of Pershing Advisor Solutions LLC of Jersey City, N.J., supports the efforts of Your Silver Bullet.
"We are actively working with third-party solution providers who are affiliated with Your Silver Bullet to provide [advisers] with an array of tools and data services," Jagdish Rangwani, chief operating officer of iNautix, wrote in an e-mail.
E-mail Davis D. Janowski at [email protected].
