Office Space
As you probably know by now, I am settled in my new office, but there are a few outstanding items to address. I plan to purchase a computer tower with a wireless keyboard & mouse so I won’t have to move my laptop into the conference room every time I want to use the plasma TV. I know it’s just a small convenience, but it will be nice to have something more permanent there. I plan to wait until the markets improve before doing this.
Web Site
There is a little more work to do here. The “front end” or public portion of the site is nearly complete. I plan to add a series of videos at some point. One video will be an introduction to my company. Another would explain my financial planning service and a third will provide an overview of my approach to the investment process.
The back end of the site is under development. It will contain a private, password-protected portal where I (or my clients) will be able to upload certain documents such as tax returns, wills, etc. This will serve as a kind of central repository for important documents. Once it is completed, I will have to decide if I’ll continue using my current CMS software.
Although I like ACT and find it easy to use, it is not very integrated with the rest of my technology. Therefore, I will probably switch to Salesforce.com sometime later this year or early 2010. Salesforce.com will integrate extremely well with the back end of my Web site and will open up some tremendous possibilities.
The company I am using for this development is called Manage-Trak; its proprietary technology is very impressive.
Encrypted E-mail, Anyone?
Manage-Trak also offers a service which will allow me to send sensitive data via e-mail. The data is encrypted and thus protected from theft. For a mere $50 per month, I can further protect the confidentiality of my client’s information. It’s also very easy to use. I’ll write more on this as I become more familiar with the service.
New Custodian
I have received a number of requests from advisors who are considering switching custodians. I read recently that there will probably be a large numbers of brokers migrating from the wirehouse and bank platforms as the economy recovers. I am still pleased with my choice, but I do have a few comments which I will share in my next blog.
Thanks for reading!
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I am interested to learn more about how you develop your office technology and the programs you use on in the conference room with clients. Thank for taking time to keep us all informed.
Regards,
Donald
Hi Donald,
What I use in the conference room is a financial planning presentation, a powerpoint presentation, and maybe an analytical demo using MS Excel. Basically, I use MS Excel a lot. For instance, I just created a spreadsheet to grade mutual funds and ETF’s according to fiduciary standards. I chose certain metrics from Morningstar and rank each fund according to how they stack up to these metrics in their specific peer group. Each fund is given a numeric score from 1 (worst) to 100 (best).
Does this help?
Hi Mike, what further comments about your current custodian
were you still going to make? Thank you.
Hi Elke,
Further comments…only that with any custodian there will be some things you like and some things with which you aren’t particularly pleased. Some of these things are more important than others, so in making a decision on a new custodian, it’s not a matter of which one does everything you need (or want) perfect, but which one comes closest to fulfilling your needs. That said, I am still waiting on the interface between them and Morningstar’s Office Edition to be completed. It would seem that after 4 1/2 months, it would be ready, but alas it is not. There’s a lot to this saga. I like a lot about TradePMR, but I am a little frustrated with a couple of things.