Several of the new technology tools available for advisors offer exciting, flashy features, but few advisors are actually able to take full advantage of them.
“Generally speaking, we don’t feel most advisors are maximizing the full extent of what we are offering,” Orion Advisor Services CEO Eric Clarke told WealthManagement.com via email.
To help close that gap, Orion is launching Orion Social, a new advisor-facing application to increase the accessibility of Orion’s system to improve adoption and use of the technology. A form of online help desk, advisors can use Orion Social to connect with experts through a live chat feature to quickly resolve issues, or they can look up online training tutorials.
“Orion Social brings increased and pinpointed access to Orion subject matter experts and peer-to-peer communication — whether it be for training on how to use the system or learning better ways to take full advantage of what Orion offers,” Clarke added.
Orion Social also includes an online forum for advisors to share developmental ideas, ask for help from their peers or share best practices they’ve implemented in their own firms. Clarke explained that all of the conversations made on Orion Social are sent to the advisor’s email archives for compliance purposes. The program can also use Orion Connect to consolidate case management with the numerous CRM systems that integrate with Orion.
“Orion Social was designed with the intention of truly becoming an extension of the advisor’s team,” Clarke said in a statement. “We want to provide advisors with the ability to engage with our support team and share best practices with each other.”
Clarke added that Orion Social is meant to improve transparency by providing a single location to access all outstanding service requests or submit new cases. There is also a group page about integrations to help advisors learn more about how to leverage tools in conjunction with each other.