CRM: Salesforce
We were previously on the old server-based version of Junxure. It was a clunk factory. With Junxure, the flexibility wasn’t there. It was its own big beast. We knew we needed to get something that we felt was more scalable and was going to grow with us. Salesforce has been that. We are now on the Salesforce Sales Cloud, but there is potential in the future to switch to the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.
Something we think about whenever we’re on a new system is, “How easy is it to get your data out?” Because in Junxure the way they had the data structured behind the scenes, the poor developers who had to try to get this data out, it was blood, sweat and tears. Some of it we even left behind. We ended up saying, “Let’s keep moving.”
With Salesforce, the integrations are great. The custodians are doing a better job of getting integrations into Salesforce, too.
Rebalancing: iRebal/Orion Eclipse
One of the big projects we’re working on is replacing the server-based version of iRebal [now a technology offering of Schwab and built into Schwab Advisor Center in its latest iteration]. And iRebal is awesome in what it does, but, obviously, it only does it by itself [the server-based version]. That’s not something with a bright future in front of it. iRebal is our last server-based software. We have a hosted server for that one little guy. We’re going to be happy to get off that.
We’re in the process of moving from iRebal to Orion Eclipse. We’re pleased with some of what they’ve done this year, getting that where it needs to be.
Portfolio Accounting/Reporting: Orion
We just hit our 10th anniversary with Orion this year. We had [Schwab] PortfolioCenter before that. At the time it was all about scalability. We were outsourcing some of the portfolio accounting. The fact that Orion would do a lot of portfolio accounting was attractive. It was also attractive to see the way the systems and reports ran. We were taking data out of PortfolioCenter and sending it to somebody to make reports out of it. Because what PortfolioCenter had was not cute. We were reaching the upper limits of what we could reasonably fit in PortfolioCenter [Editor’s note: Envestnet | Tamarac acquired PortfolioCenter from Schwab in 2019].
We are happy with the Orion integration with Salesforce. It allows the team to see most data about a client in our Orion accounts in Salesforce. We can, for example, in a money move case, link up the account to that case. Then we can see whether they have cash, which registration it is and know some more about that account than if somebody was typing it in.
Financial Planning: eMoney
With eMoney that’s a sore spot in terms of integration. I understand they are starting to offer some APIs. That might be something we investigate. It might be something, that, as an industry, if eMoney is not as integrated, it’s going to be hard to not look for something else.
Tax Planning: Holistiplan/Bloomberg BNA Tax Planner
We started, in the last few years, using Holistiplan, which is very cool. It has automated some of what we were already doing. [Because of that] we’re looking to see if there are more clients we might want to bring tax analysis to that we felt like we couldn’t [serve with tax analysis] before, now that we have Holistiplan. There’s an [additional] cost associated with that, but that one has been good.
We were using Bloomberg BNA Tax Planner—and we still do—because I think it is a little more robust than what Holistiplan can do [in some cases]. We need Bloomberg BNA Tax Planner for some specific client situations. It wasn’t that we switched from one to the other, we were doing a lot of manual work to try to look at those clients’ taxes. Then, we were able to automate using Holistiplan.
As told to reporter Rob Burgess and edited for length and clarity. The views and opinions are not representative of the views of WealthManagement.com.
Want to tell us what's in your wealthstack? Contact Rob Burgess at [email protected].