Tamarac makes it into the club

OCT 12, 2011
Portfolio management, customer management and rebalancing provider Tamarac Inc., has been named to the 2011 Microsoft Dynamics President's Club for its Advisor CRM solution. I'm not sure yet what exactly is involved or measured or how it is measured to receive membership in this, at any rate it does not sound like a bad thing. The award gets presented to the top 5% of Microsoft Dynamics partners worldwide. Tamarac has built its CRM using Microsoft Dynamics. That said, those advisers reading this please don't think you can purchase the CRM portion separately. It is inextricably tied to Tamarac's Advisor X platform and is not a standalone option. The award, according to the prepared statement I read is “a direct result of Tamarac's outstanding dedication to customer satisfaction through the delivery of Advisor CRM, its custom version of Microsoft Dynamics that is tailored for financial advisors.”
    The Microsoft Dynamics President's Club honors high-performing Microsoft Dynamics partners that achieve measured success in both sales and customer satisfaction. Membership is granted based on their continual, committed efforts aimed at offering solutions that meet the needs of their customers. "Microsoft is proud to recognize Tamarac for its outstanding sales achievement," said Doug Kennedy, vice president, Microsoft Dynamics Partners. "This honor is a direct reflection of Tamarac's outstanding group of employees and management team, all of whom should be very proud of this accomplishment. Tamarac plays a very important role in the growth and success of Microsoft Dynamics." Advisor CRM acts as a central access point for the various modules of Tamarac's Advisor X platform. Advisor X uniquely integrates portfolio rebalancing, trading, performance reporting, portfolio management, and client portal applications with Advisor CRM. Tamarac also integrates a growing list of third-party software providers in such areas as financial planning, documentation management, and hosted Exchange Server with Advisor CRM and the Advisor X suite.
Perhaps the folks at Schwab Advisor Services might want to have a few meetings with Tamarac to see how they did it (for those not aware, Microsoft Dynamics is one of the three CRM applications chosen to serve as the hub for its three OpenView Gateway platform choices that are under construction for RIAs at Schwab).

UPDATE:

I just heard back from Matt Stroh, Tamarac's vp of marketing.
  1. The award is given based on an independent third party surveying our Advisor CRM clients and measuring their level of customer satisfaction. And it is also based on exceeding our sales projections. As a side note, Tamarac is proud of its over 97% customer satisfaction and renewal rate across its entire 450+ RIA client base.
  2. We only sell Advisor CRM in conjunction with Advisor Rebalancing and/or Advisor View. Reason being, the main value proposition that Advisor CRM delivers is the deep and meaningful integrations that it has with our other products. Not only is data shared between them, but functionality from both Advisor Rebalancing and Advisor View is built into Advisor CRM contextually where the advisor needs it – at the account and household (rebalancing group and reporting group) level. It is for this reason, that we require an advisor to have at least one of the other products to integrate with Advisor CRM – with the best possible experience being all three products working in concert with each other. This enables staff at an RIA to take action and service their clients in a dramatically more efficient manner, directly from Advisor CRM – which runs natively from Outlook or web. Related stories: Tamarac takes a leap by offering a single solution Tamarac announces new Advisor 9 and outsourced services Fidelity launches new salvo in custodian technology "war' Schwab launches business unit targeting RIAs Custodians putting all the technology pieces together TD Ameritrade Institutional reporting progress on its open API initiative

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