There were a number of announcements that came out of the recently concluded Advent Connect conference, but the one that intrigued me was the news surrounding the next version of Black Diamond’s Blue Sky platform. Black Diamond was a revolutionary product when it first launched, roughly a decade ago. The firm was subsequently purchased by Advent Software Inc. in 2011. Since that time, Black Diamond has made some incremental upgrades, but the platform was due for a major overhaul, and that’s what will be happening in the coming months.

The overhaul will comprise two main components: an upgrade to the advisor-facing portion of the platform, and an upgrade to the client-facing portal. Perhaps “upgrade” is not the right description for this project. It is more like a major renovation.

The renovation will take place in phases. The investor portal will be the first to receive a renovation. It is currently in beta testing with a full rollout expected at the turn of the year. Black Diamond will then turn its attention to performing a similar renovation on the advisor-facing portion of its platform.

We believe that Black Diamond made the right choice when it decided to begin the renovation on the client side. For years, too many advisors have argued that their client portals are not getting the significant adoption that they had anticipated. These advisors have had all sorts of theories about why adoption was low (e.g., “My client base is too old,” “My clients are not that tech savvy,” “My clients prefer personal interaction,” etc.). The only explanation that these advisors never considered: Their client portal was not that good.

In all fairness, Black Diamond’s original portal was better than many. Through more than 300 advisory firms, Black Diamond serviced more than 50,000 end users on its old client platform. But there was room for improvement. Some advisors felt that the old portal did not adequately address the needs of their firms and of their clients.

The rising popularity of consumer-facing sites such as Mint.com, Financial Engines, robo-advisor Web sites and other new, emerging firms indicates that client-facing portals are being widely adopted and used if they serve the needs of end clients. The software developers that serve the advisor community have awoken to the fact that the end-user experience matters, and they are now in the process of creating software that can effectively compete with popular direct-to-consumer platforms. Black Diamond’s new client portal is a good example of the new breed of technology that advisors can deploy to their clients.

Black Diamond granted me access to an early beta version of its new client portal so that I could experience the new portal for myself. Overall, I was impressed. According to Bjorn Widerstedt, director of product management at Black Diamond, the new client portal was designed with three primary goals in mind. The first was to make it customizable for different types of clients. This makes sense. When it comes to reporting, our experience is that each firm likes to tell its story in its own way. They have different types of clients, and they have different stories. In fact, there are often customization needs within a firm. For example, if a firm is segmented by A, B and C clients, or by type of client, it might want to provide a unique portal experience tailored to the needs of each client segment.

The second goal is what Black Diamond calls the concept of “Beyond Reporting.” By this the company means providing information beyond what performance reports historically provide. This could include enabling two-way communication and sharing of documents through the document vault, or it could mean bringing elements from other applications into the Black Diamond portal or Black Diamond reports.

The third goal, and one that is becoming increasingly popular within the industry, is mobile-first, responsive design. This means, in essence, that there is an expectation that many clients will be interacting with the portal on a mobile device. It also means that the software is smart enough to recognize the device that you are accessing the portal on, so you can optimize the experience for that device. I tried the portal on a desktop PC, an Android phone, an iPad running iOS 8 and even on a Surface RT tablet. I only performed limited testing on these various devices. Although the user experience was slightly different on each device, which is to be expected since it is optimized for each, in every case the experience was highly satisfactory.

Since the application is designed to be mobile first, let’s start by discussing my experience with an Android phone. In the typical phone view, there is a thin bar at the top, a thin bar at the bottom and a “card” in the main portion of the screen. The top bar has an envelope to the left. When you touch or click it, the left navigation bar is displayed. At the top of the bar is the company logo, the advisor’s name and the advisor’s contact information. Below this is a list of notifications. Notifications are an easy way to send short messages with relevant information to clients. Currently, there are three types of notification: highlights, documents and general notifications.

They can be sent to a single client, a group of clients or your whole client base. What’s really neat about the notification feature is that you can use Black Diamond data to define your audience. So, for example, “Send this to every client that holds X,” or “Send this to every client with Schwab accounts,” or “Send to every client that has over $3 million in assets.”

You could send a single client a highlight (a snapshot listing his or her portfolio’s current market value, portfolio income to date, performance to date and net cash flows to date all on a single, preformatted notification). You might send highlights of a model portfolio to the group of clients. These notifications work in a fashion similar to reports, only in miniature. You select the report template (highlights), select the data to be included, the time period and the recipients. The document notifications simply alert clients that the advisor has uploaded a document to the vault for them. The general notifications can be text messages, for example, that the advisor sends out to one client or a group of clients.

At the center of the top bar is a drop-down list that allows you to select what account or accounts the cards in the main section will report on. The default choice is the household, but you can choose an individual account or a group of accounts. To the right of that is a calendar. When you click on it, you can set the “as of” date for the report and the reporting period. The advisor can decide what the client can select here. For example, in my test account, I was allowed to choose any “as of” date for the reports, but my report options were limited to month to date, quarter to date, year to date, last 12 months or last three years. My “advisor” selected quarter to date as the default, but it could have been any of the selections on the menu. The advisor could also have given me permission to look at other fixed time periods or my own custom time periods.

All the way to the right is an icon that can contain a picture of the user. When that is clicked, the user can adjust any settings he or she has permission to change. This is also where the user can log off the site.

The main section of the screen, which on my device covered about 90% of it, contains a single card. A card can be thought of as a single page report template. In my case, the landing page displayed an activity summary (with a beginning value, net additions, gain/loss, ending value, etc.). Since my default report was set for the quarter, that was the information displayed. The net additions and gains/loss line had a plus sign next to them. Clicking the sign displayed the details of how these lines were calculated. There was also a graph displaying the fluctuation in value over the period.

The bottom bar had six dots, indicating that I was on the first of six cards in the deck. To the right, the word “performance” appeared, indicating that the next card in the deck was a performance report summary. Mine was set to display performance by class (overall performance for the household, cash and equivalents, equities, fixed income. A drop-down menu allowed me to change the view to account/asset, goals, tax status or manager. As is usually the case with Black Diamond, you can continue to drill down for more granular information. For example, if you click the arrow next to equities, you can view performance by each asset class. If you click on an asset class, you see the equities that make up the asset class. Click again and you see the accounts where the assets are held. There is a performance graph at each level in my default setup. There is also a benchmark with benchmark performance displayed right below each entry.

It should be emphasized that all of these cards are customizable, and each card has a lot of data settings that can be adjusted to meet a firm’s needs. The firm can dictate what information appears on each card, which cards are included in a deck, whether benchmarks are included, the color scheme of the cards and the order of the cards. Black Diamond currently offers a good selection of card templates, and it is a good bet that many more will be added based on advisor requests.

The next card on my deck was the document vault. Here, you can upload common file types such as PDF files, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. These can include account opening forms, wire transfer forms, market outlooks, newsletters, etc. When you upload a document for clients, they get a notification. When they upload a document for you, you get a notification. This is a good, secure way to communicate and collaborate with clients. Advisory firms have full control over the document vault file structure. They can set up one or more default hierarchies and use those to populate all the vaults.

The accounts card displays the traditional pie chart by class or by asset. You can also convert these charts to a line chart if you prefer. As was the case with other cards, you can drill down for more details. My next card was an allocation against the target, and my final card was transactions.

Since the iPad gives you more screen space to work with, the experience is a bit different. At the top bar, the firm logo is displayed to the left of the notification icon. There is no bottom bar, since it is not necessary for navigation. The main portion of the screen has more of a dashboard feel. When you hold the iPad in portrait mode, two or more cards are displayed. You can scroll down to see additional cards. Here, some cards display as double the size of others. For example, transactions are double the width to allow for the display of additional columns.

On a computer, you have even more screen, so there is a much more full dashboard, with lots of cards visible. If you click on a single card, the other cards disappear for the time being and the card you clicked on moves to the center of the screen. You can also do things like run the mouse over a portion of a pie chart, which shows you a pop-up bubble. These types of things are easier and more comfortable to read on the larger screen.

Overall, the new Black Diamond client experience is a pleasing and robust one. Advisory firms have a great deal of flexibility with regard to granting permissions and customizing the client experience. I like the notification capabilities, particularly the ability to mine Black Diamond data and use it to create custom lists of clients who will receive notifications. I also like the “highlights” concept. I suspect Black Diamond will add more notification templates over time.

The card concept works well. It allows each firm to customize the user experience for its clients, groups of clients or each individual client. I would not recommend creating a unique experience for each client, but it is certainly possible.

There were a few minor issues that I’d like to see addressed. The first is that in the landscape mode, the top bar sometimes interfered with my view of the uppermost cards. This should be an easy fix. The other is the lack of integrations at this time.

The notification functionality would be much more powerful if it integrated with leading custodians and CRM providers. I know that Black Diamond is working on integrating some elements of the MoneyGuidePro financial planning reports into its reporting solution, but there is a great deal more integration work that needs to be done.

Based on what we’ve seen so far, it appears that Black Diamond will be delivering a much-improved client experience to end investors. If the company can pull off the same magic when it tackles the advisor workstation, the future looks bright, but that’s a story for another day.