mnbondguy:

Has DL told  the truth about anything to you guys in the last 18months? Anything??

  Let me check my notes from the weekly "ahhhhh call" as we call them and I'll get back to you, but at this point I would say no....  

Mucker, where did you get the 5800 # ?

I thought we were at 6800 at the merger, not 7200...

[quote=shredder]Mucker, where did you get the 5800 # ?

I thought we were at 6800 at the merger, not 7200...[/quote]   Manager

albert:

I think more like 5500 left by my count.

  Wait till FY AGE bonuses are paid...  And those will be regretables!!!

[quote=albert]Paul,

Why not just use the AGE system instead of the WS system? I was better no question. I do not get the logic to step down all the AGE guys and upset them so badly. Why not step up the WS guys. Clients hate the online access compared to the AGE stuff as well. Another miss. When we were told that we would use the best of both systems was that just BS or did something change that made that not possiable.[/quote]
Three reasons:
1) How the AGE system was built did not meet the Bank ie Charlotte's requirements so it had to be rewritten.

2) It would have required moving Envision to the AGE platform. That meant no new enhancements to Envision for almost 2 years. That would have really made the WB brokers mad . Managment realies to much on that product to allow the competition two years to catch up.

3) Wach Sec outsources a lot of the development and maintenance to third parties. One in particular. This allows them to have a huge cost savings on systems. They would not be able to do this with the AGE system.

What you are experiencing is what every other acquired firm faced. What DL found out is he would lose some people but most would just complain but not move. Meanwhile they would keep improving SS to placate the brokers who stayed.

This one has gone a lot better than when Pru lost the BOSS system. I have not seen any articals in the Journal about the entire system being down for a couple of days 

This has to be the worst system ever. There is no way this is a merger of equals, best practices coming together, taking the best things from each firm and combining them,etc, etc, etc.

  For the guys that have been around for a while, we are back to the days of QP, QS, QA. Tell me how you run a report that isn't 30 pages in length that shows portfolio holdings, when it was purchased and exclude reinvestment costs from mutual funds.   I can't find one.   Contact management: there is no way in hell it should take 3 minutes to find a phone number, enter a note or just look at previous notes. Bring back Brokervision. It is better by leaps and bounds. Bring back Portfolio Diversification, Bring Back OTPP. They were simple to use and the client didn't need to take home 25 pages of disclosures and information they really didn't want. Don't get me wrong, when your putting together a complete financial plan this system is better than OTFI. But if you have a client come in and want to just print off a simple portfolio holdings page, its 10 pages at the least.    If anyone else feels this way please let your higher ups know. This is 5 steps backwards compared to what we had. Don't let them tell you anything different.   Its a PIG with Lipstick. 

[quote=cmein1999]This has to be the worst system ever. There is no way this is a merger of equals, best practices coming together, taking the best things from each firm and combining them,etc, etc, etc.

  For the guys that have been around for a while, we are back to the days of QP, QS, QA. Tell me how you run a report that isn't 30 pages in length that shows portfolio holdings, when it was purchased and exclude reinvestment costs from mutual funds.   I can't find one.   Contact management: there is no way in hell it should take 3 minutes to find a phone number, enter a note or just look at previous notes. Bring back Brokervision. It is better by leaps and bounds. Bring back Portfolio Diversification, Bring Back OTPP. They were simple to use and the client didn't need to take home 25 pages of disclosures and information they really didn't want. Don't get me wrong, when your putting together a complete financial plan this system is better than OTFI. But if you have a client come in and want to just print off a simple portfolio holdings page, its 10 pages at the least.    If anyone else feels this way please let your higher ups know. This is 5 steps backwards compared to what we had. Don't let them tell you anything different.   Its a PIG with Lipstick. [/quote]   It helps to be familar with the new op system before you boldly proclaim what it can and can not do.    You want to print off a client holding report?  Its simple to access that right off smart station.  You can print for just an account or for an entire household.  Its right there at the portfolio insights tab.  You can just print equity, fixed income, funds or all.  Realized gains and losses, estimated income and a eff frontier for the account.  It can be as detailed or generic as you want. This system is no where near as good as Boss 300 was but that said, it does a lot of the things you claim it doesnt do.  Not perfect by any means but you really need to know the full capabilites of the system before you make the kinds of comments you are making.  No way do you know what it can and cant do in 3 or 4 days of using it.   Contact mgt is new and Im not impressed but then, Ive never been impressed by any firms contact mgt system.

[quote=cmein1999]This has to be the worst system ever. There is no way this is a merger of equals, best practices coming together, taking the best things from each firm and combining them,etc, etc, etc.

  For the guys that have been around for a while, we are back to the days of QP, QS, QA. Tell me how you run a report that isn't 30 pages in length that shows portfolio holdings, when it was purchased and exclude reinvestment costs from mutual funds.   I can't find one.   Contact management: there is no way in hell it should take 3 minutes to find a phone number, enter a note or just look at previous notes. Bring back Brokervision. It is better by leaps and bounds. Bring back Portfolio Diversification, Bring Back OTPP. They were simple to use and the client didn't need to take home 25 pages of disclosures and information they really didn't want. Don't get me wrong, when your putting together a complete financial plan this system is better than OTFI. But if you have a client come in and want to just print off a simple portfolio holdings page, its 10 pages at the least.    If anyone else feels this way please let your higher ups know. This is 5 steps backwards compared to what we had. Don't let them tell you anything different.   Its a PIG with Lipstick. [/quote] It is not as bad as you make it out to be....just narrowed a client review to 7 pages. Been w/ AGE 20 yrs and this system will be a step forward, not backwards....you'll just have to invest some time to get used to it.

Mucker:

[quote=albert]I think more like 5500 left by my count.

  Wait till FY AGE bonuses are paid...  And those will be regretables!!![/quote]   At the end of Jan it was 5400> and dropping like WFC stock.

Smartstation isn’t so bad but not nearly as good as folks were lead to believe.  Way too many tabs and  especially too many drop downs layered upon drop downs.  There is a real need to consolidate and simplify.

  Contact management leaves a lot to be desired.
A much worse situation and more serious issue is a back office, that used to be one of the finest in the industry, that is almost universally inept.  People on the other end of the line just have no clue what they are doing. An issue that should be about a one minute affair ends up taking hours.   Speak to 3 people and get 4 different answers.  Or you may get transferred around like a hot potato for half the day.  That is extremely inefficient and the phrase "best practices" should be banned until further notice.  A complete mess that alone, justifies strong consideration of an FA moving his/her practice.   People were made a lot of promises about what kind of firm and culture would emerge from the WS/AGE merger.  "Give us time. Give us a chance".   Many promises made, far too many undelivered.   WS is in trouble and mgt needs to step up, show some leadership,  fix a lot of things before the wheels come completely off.      What a shame.  A HUGE opportunity has been missed.  Instead of nickle and diming the client, squeezing the FA payout, and letting the backoffice fall into shambles... they could have moved in the direction of AGE and had THE best firm on the street for both clients and all employees not just FA's.     Mabye it's time to clean the WS leadership out, find some old school AGE people, and turn this thing around.

Ferris Bueller:

“Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks.”

  Wargames?  

Thanks for the detail Paul.

Sam  Can't understand how you give smartstation such a pass. It is the same disease as your complaint about back office support. They do not get it and do not care as far as I can tell. Count me in with Cmein. It just plain makes it harder to do your job. Also, the best of both was obviously a LIE because nothing of the AGE world survived.

[quote=albert]Thanks for the detail Paul.

Sam  Can't understand how you give smartstation such a pass. It is the same disease as your complaint about back office support. They do not get it and do not care as far as I can tell. Count me in with Cmein. It just plain makes it harder to do your job. Also, the best of both was obviously a LIE because nothing of the AGE world survived.[/quote]   I am not saying everything about Smartstation is better, many things are not.  However, there are many upgrades as soon as you learn the tricks to operating it.

albert:

I would settle for an easy way to look at an account.

  If 16 clicks is not easy for you, I can't help.

Feedback from the fine Smart Station folks…

  "BV wasn't scalable" OK, so this justifies having info you need for the same client in 4 different tabs?  This justifies no notepad, this justify's 5 clicks to change a date on the calander?  This justifies the click madness.  You can't even enter a to-do or task while looking a a clients positions without toggeling back and forth while adding 16 clicks!   "We ran a Contact Management pilot program with 1,500 WB advisors and they like it" This shows what they think of us AGE people.  Of course the WB FA's like it, they had nothing!   Had they used BV they would be screaming bloody murder like the rest of us!!!   There is more, but I'm so fired up I can't even type....Keep using Excellence First, e-mail your regional, e-mail DL...  I HAVE!   I'm not letting this go!   Either they FIX it, change it or improve it or no amount of retention will keep me there!!!   Again, I can buy my own software and use Outlook and save 40% of my gross by going indi!