In last week’s Blog I described the services and solutions we had recently managed for a business not directly connected with financial services.

This week, I felt it worthwhile to explore further the sort of technologies and services that could assist the financial practitioner and his/her business.

A few months ago, one of our guest contributors, Alex Craig posted a number of blogs about cloud computing, starting with Parting the Cloud around SaaS. Interestingly, Alex’s series of three blogs are in the top 10 most read blogs on our site and even now attract views – Alex describes in some detail the benefits of cloud computing, SaaS and alike and, as regular readers will know, we like SaaS a lot.

To be more specific, there are a number of providers of SaaS solutions in the financial services space – IntelliFlo’s Intelligent Office, True Potential and there are others – without labouring the point, SaaS solutions allow businesses to access feature rich services just be using the internet and, in the main, a PC. The major attraction for a growing business is that it is not necessary to purchase and maintain complex servers, wide-area and local-area networks – and this is true for all aspects of the business. Cloud computing, can provide:

1. Business Practice Management – a term we use to describe the front, middle and back offices of distributor businesses – very applicable to small to medium-sized business, SaaS suppliers remove the need to purchase specialised hardware and it also allows for multiple locations to use the system and not be tied to a single office location. Some vendors have started to allow access via smartphones, eg iPhone;

2. Email – there are a number of providers of Microsoft Exchange email services that supports Outlook, iPhone, Blackberrys etc. that requires no in-house server. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of setting up and running a Microsoft server with Microsoft Exchange, I would recommend avoiding the experience at all costs! An outsourced email provider not only looks after your precious email, they also protect you from the overwhelming volume of SPAM, malware and viruses;

3. Telephony and Fax – I covered this is some detail in part 1 but the same benefits apply – no capital cost, with scalable services to flex as your grow (or shrink) the business. One major advantage that voice over ip (VOIP) has is the removal of the ‘how many lines do you need?’ question – because VOIP is carried over a broadband connection, a single 8Mbit down an 800Kbit up standard ADSL line can carry around 6 simultaneous conversations – so, in effect, for a small business, a single dedicated ADSL line can cope with demand – and all on one published telephone number. Virtual fax services allow for the delivery into your email inbox, without the need for a dedicated BT line – also, outbound faxes can be sent using email, too;

4. Office applications – there are some solution providers that are able to roll-in as a bundle of the services described above and they can offer effectively a one-stop shop for telephony, applications and help-desk. Their offering can include the rental of the Microsoft Office suite, enabling a business to ‘share’ virtual copies of the program and removing the need to have one copy per user, as rarely does every member of staff use Microsoft Office at the same time;

All in all, it is now possible to create a complete virtual office, with none of the heavy-duty hardware, software and capital expenditure that would be required even 5 years’ ago. There is, however, an important issue that shouldn’t be discounted and that relates to taking professional advice about the setting up and procurement of the network services and infrastructure to support your new virtual office. There are many pitfalls and you should choose a vendor that has specific experience of these types of setup – however, once that has been sorted out, in the main it’s ‘plug and play’.

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!!

Last Friday a new IFA website was launched – Meaningful Money (http://meaningfulmoney.tv/). The website that has been produced by Pete Matthew of Jacksons Financial Services in Penzance. I have followed Pete’s use of technology for a little while now and he often leads the way with fresh and interesting ideas, continually using technology to add value to his business. He is a strong believer of using technology in his face to face financial planning and currently uses Voyant to good effect in front of/together with his clients. Despite what some more traditional elements in the industry may say using technology in front of the client, Peter hasn’t found that it has created barriers or devalued his service but has in fact helped to increase the level of service he gives.

With Meaningful Money, he is pushing the boundaries away from the traditional brochureware site of many IFA practices with the quite brilliant and engaging use of video. Meaningful Money is in effect a library of video blogs about financial issues. In the videos, Pete gives his personal insights into how to manage finances and investments, how to plan for retirement and how to financial insure against various scenarios.

His videos cover the core principals of Financial planning, building the foundations of the financial plan, investments and risk management and general topical financial discussions. The videos are delivered in an engaging format, with Peter talking to the camera as he moves around the county. The style builds rapport and relationship (you feel you know Peter well after the first video) before the client has even met Peter.

The boldness in this approach is that it could enable clients to become more financial astute and to selfserve, convincing themselves that they don’t need financial advice. However, the hard truth is that for some clients, this may be the right thing to do and they may not be in the position to justify Pete’s fees yet (when they can I wouldn’t mind betting Peter is on the list of people to contact). The reality though for many clients is that they will realise the complexity of their financial situation and Peter is then ideally placed to help them.

The reach of Meaningful Money is of course is far wider than the Cornish boarders and Pete’s services through the use of technology are now also stretching their reach throughout the UK. Through the use of Skype Video he can contact clients easily and recreate some of the personal chemistry associated with face to face advice but without the cost and time of travelling to remote clients.

Meaningful Money is one of the most unusual and differentiated IFA websites we have seen and we recommend a review of its capability.