Whilst we are at the end of the August holiday period, I thought it a good idea for those of our readers who have not been around, just to list some of the AT8 articles and news that has hit the streets over the past month or so:

Publications

E-commerce Matters – Edition 5

This newsletter highlights some of the industry e-commerce activities over the past few months.

We have started a new series of articles for Professional Adviser. They are covering what we describe as Practice Management Solutions, which is a term that covers all aspects of an adviser’s business, ranging from the front-office right through to the links to insurers’ administration systems.

Plum
Swift
True Potential

with many more up coming in the next few weeks.

We took a look at Capita Financial Software’s Synaptic Comparator solution:

Capita Comparator

Sammedia Sponsored Tech Round Table
Part 1
Part 2

Video

We dabbled into the world of YouTube a few weeks back, and covered our very successful Sammedia sponsored Tech Round Table in a very brief video blog, in glorious 720p HD!

Anyway, it’s back to normal next week, with our unique insight on topics, trends and technology.

AT8 have increasingly been looking at overseas practices to see what lessons can be learnt in the financial services market.

One clear market we can learn from is Australia.  The Australian market is in many ways more advanced than ours.  They have had superannuation for a number of years, forcing the general population to invest for retirement.  This had led to substantial assets under management so it is not a surprise that platforms and wrap solutions came to market there before the UK. Many of the technology companies that drive the platforms in Australia have now brought their technology to the UK and are underpinning the UK platforms.  FNZ for example now powers Elevate and Standard Life’s Wraps while GBST (formally Infocomp) powers Macquarie and Novia.

In our work in the UK we have spent considerable time looking at how the Platforms should integrate to the Practice management systems in the UK.  One Australian Professional, now operating in the UK, told me that it was the Practice Management Systems with a focus on the Front Office, providing ATR, Cashflow Planning tools, Asset Allocation tools that had thrived in Australia ‘Post Wrap’ while those focused on more traditional Back office functions like contract enquiry and commission reconciliation have suffered.

Another trend we picked up from a systems house in Australia and that perhaps we can learn from, is that the Wraps have largely been through the phase of trying to provide the whole suite of IT tools to the distributor and  moved back to their core business of fund administration.  The CRM and Sales tools moving very much off platform and back to the practice management systems.
Our focus hasn’t just been on Australia.  We have been taking a look at Financial Planning tools in Northern Europe.  In particular we have looked at Ortec who provide portfolio creation and monitoring software, using complex financial models to help match asset allocation to ATR and to review whether the investment strategies stay in line with the client’s goals.  Their approach appears differentiated to the UK systems and if anyone would like more information then we would be happy to provide an introduction.

We mustn’t forget the US.  A few of the leading US financial planning tools have been anglicised and are now operating in the UK.  Planlabs has been available in the UK through BMC for a while now and last year Voyant launched in the UK and is gaining good market traction already.  Voyant has a Web 2.0 approach with a strong Business to Consumer function that can work in collaboration with the IFA solution.
Looking overseas of course isn’t an exact science, their market drivers are different and systems will evolve with different prioritises, but it can give us a useful insight into some of the trends that may occur in the UK in the near future and besides that it is fascinating and fun.

For those regular readers of our blogs will know that we ‘bang on’ about cloud computing, virtualisation et al a lot!

We’ve just finished a fascinating project to assist in the move of premises of a medium sized business, where the majority of the services they use moved from conventional services to their virtual equivalents, including telephony.

It was especially important for this client, as they were creating a split site between the centre of Birmingham and brand new premises some 3 miles aways in Digbeth – it was here that the virtualisation model would come to fore, as it was important for the outside world to perceive the organisation as a single entity – something that fits very well with a methodology that creates an environment where the only physical telecommunications’ method uses the internet.

For today, I am going to concentrate on their use of Voice Over IP (VOIP) services for their virtual switchboard, a hosted PBX sometimes known as vPBX – there are a number of suppliers of these type of services, but we used for this client Voipfone – for this client we used their offering to create a company switchboard that has 25 extensions, split over the two sites, with automatic call distribution, IVR, (with a personalised greeting to allow for call routing) and the setting up of users in defined business groups, eg Finance or General Enquiries. As with all these type of services, it is a pay-as-you-go model, with no long-term commitments with services, extensions, IVR all being able to be created or stopped as the business need changes.

The conventional vendors of switchboards are, naturally, a little sceptical about VOIP services – they sight call quality as a real issue together with availability and scalability – in reality, though, although the promise of VOIP is ‘plug and play’, you have to be very careful about the way in which you implement it, ensuring that you use high quality, business broadband services coupled with professional handsets – however, with the need to have the two highest costing items, the switchboard and the installation (and rental) of ISDN lines, being removed, the capital cost and ongoing call and service charges are significantly lower – see the Voipfone call charges for examples of the rates compared to BT. You are even not limited by geography, as one of our clients uses a USA toll-free number in addition to his UK numbers and the calls arrive at his office at no cost for the transatlantic hop – he loves that!

Whilst in this example our client has his own server and individual desktops for his computing needs, it is possible to extend the model to provide virtual desktop services also – in this way, programs like the Microsoft Office suite can be rented and used on demand, rather than purchased and put on individual workstations – once again, the key here is the broadband provision being robust and up to the job.

So, to summarise, what we have done here is to create an ‘Office in Box’ – electronically speaking – without the need for substantial upfront investment, the client has been able to create an environment for a few thousand pounds that would 10 years’ ago have costed, perhaps, ten times that amount. With the linkage of their two remote offices, they can perform tasks and communicate seamlessly across the business – and more important, they can scale (or change) their requirements almost instantly, without long-term commitments.

We are very pleased with the outcome and we know we have a delighted customer, which is great – we also were able to move his business in four hours, which we think is great, too!!