When I first encountered Redtail in the latter half of 2004, it was a small, innovative provider of online customer relationship management (CRM) software to financial service professionals. At that time, many advisors resisted the idea of online applications, so the company's progress was slow. In six short years, however, much has changed.

Broadband connections are widely available now, more reliable and faster. In addition, time has taught the Redtail technology team a great deal about the needs of advisors. Thus, the company has grown its user base of a few hundred users to approximately 26,000 individual users in 5,500 offices.

So it might seem odd that Redtail has now embarked on a bold plan to rip up and start from scratch-to totally rewrite its core CRM application from top to bottom.

Rewriting one's software is fairly risky. But according to company CEO Brian McLaughlin, "There really wasn't any other choice if we wanted to continue to meet the needs of our advisor clients."

According to McLaughlin, the original coding for Redtail CRM began over nine years ago, and the resulting product, released as Our Business Online (OBO), launched seven and a half years ago. Much has changed technologically in the last nine years. Interfaces and Web pages are more dynamic. Web application developers are less constrained in what they can offer.

For example, seven years ago, before the deployment of Web 2.0 tools, Web applications did not have much of the functionality that desktop applications had. You couldn't drag and drop page elements. You couldn't delete an e-mail by right-clicking on it and selecting "delete" from the resulting menu. Now, Web-based programs are capable of much more. But you need a modern software architecture to deliver the better functionality. That's why Redtail has created a new software design. It's Microsoft-based, but relies heavily on the Java framework.

Although the new Redtail CRM (code-named "Project Leapfrog") is still in beta, our initial impression is that users will be pleased with it, though we'll have to withhold final judgment until its final release.

When you log into the application, you land on the dashboard. This area is a new and improved version of what was formerly known as the "Overview." This new dashboard comprises both the overview page and the market news page.

The application offers two toolbars. There is a navigation bar along the top of the page that offers access to the main areas of the program (the dashboard, the calendar, contacts, reports, resources, tools and a section called "Manage Your Account.") The toolbar at the bottom of the page is divided into two sections. At the left, links include shortcuts to the home page and recently viewed items. The company will soon add a "favorites" section and Web links. On the right there are links to alerts and integrations (which you can use to communicate with MoneyGuidePro, Albridge and Redtail Imaging). The integration link is context-sensitive, so it only shows what is necessary depending on where you are in the program. A "What's New" section keeps you abreast of new Redtail CRM enhancements.

The default overview page has two main areas. One is a list area that includes calendar items, recently added notes and opportunities. The other area, on the right side of the screen, includes boxes with a dashboard (a box with an overview of assets under management, the average portfolio size and account status summary); reminders (keeping you up to date on account renewals, account riders, birthdays, checklist tasks, client reviews, wedding anniversaries, etc.); team notices; and lastly, a "Quicklist" feature.

The Quicklist feature is dynamic. If you create a quick list of all clients in the 33027 ZIP code, for instance, and the Lane family moves out of it, they would automatically be removed from the list when you update their address. In essence, quick lists are automatic searches you can run over and over again without having to create another search.

The whole dashboard area of the application is much more powerful than the previous version. If you don't like the position of the lists and widgets on the right, you can move them by simply dragging and dropping them. If you want your reminder box to appear in the top right, you drag it there and the program remembers to keep it there. Each box has a "minimize/maximize" button so you can display more or less information, as required.

In the previous edition, every time you made a change, the application required a total refresh of the whole page. This took its toll on performance. In the new version, with its Web 2.0 tools, much of the information you update is in its own dialog box or container. Only the container gets updated, not the whole page. The result is a noticeable improvement in performance.

In another nod to efficiency and speed, many fields now automatically include drop-down lists. So where you previously needed to type something into a field or search box, you now see a drop-down list that you can pick the appropriate information from. In other cases, you might have to type a few letters. The application will then recognize what you are typing and offer to auto-complete it for you.

Lists have responsive filtering mechanisms. For example, in the calendar list, today's entries are displayed by default, but you can also click on the word "today" in the upper right of the list, and see a list of alternative filters (for last week, yesterday, tomorrow, next week, next month and for items past due). You can also filter the calendar list, and all the lists, by user. That means with the proper credentials you can look at your own calendar, see another employee's calendar or see everyone's calendar. If you select a calendar item, the "selected" button allows you to mark an item as completed, roll it over or reassign it to someone else.

The recently added notes list works in a similar fashion. You can add notes here or filter the display to show you the last 25 or 100 you've done or to show you what's been done in the last 24 hours. In addition, you can choose to filter by an individual user name or by all user names.

The market news page has a customizable watch list, market headlines, a market chart, market winners and market losers. It is not a full-blown market data center, but it does give enough data to monitor the market from within Redtail. Should an advisor require further information on a headline, he or she can click through for the full story. Clicking on a stock symbol in the watch list brings up the Google Finance listing for the stock.

The task lists have also been improved. If I have assigned a task to a subordinate and then I update that task, the person assigned to it automatically receives the update. When the task is completed, the system will automatically dispatch an e-mail letting me know.
In the current version of the software, if you want to change multiple tasks or assign them to someone else, you have to edit each one individually. The new version, however, lets you select all tasks, or a subset of the tasks, and reassign them in a batch.

There's now a daily calendar where there wasn't before. And the old weekly calendar, which was vertical and difficult to navigate, is being replaced by a left-to-right one that mimics the Microsoft Outlook week familiar to many users.

The calendar now offers a great deal of drag and drop functionality. You can drag an appointment from one time/date to another. If you want to increase an appointment from one hour to two, you can drag it to resize it. As you make these changes, anyone who needs to know of the change is automatically notified. For example, if you change a scheduled meeting with a client and your assistant from one hour to two, the system will automatically notify the client and assistant.

As we said before, you can view the calendars of multiple users as long as you have permission, filtering by category as before. But you can also now perform conditional searches-searching, say, all scheduled tasks for next week but excluding maybe phone calls.
Search functionality has been consolidated and enhanced. Previously, Redtail offered two search functions: "Intellisearch" and an advanced search. The new enhanced search function replaces these and allows you to zero in on what you need when a few characters are typed into the engine.

The search engine now accepts "and/or" searches, so you can search for everyone using a certain status or keyword. Currently, it only allows two search criteria, though Redtail plans to expand these. Once you get your list of search results, you can filter them further if required.

Once you've completed your search, the drop-down menus on the right allow you to perform tasks related to your search results. For example, you can print mailing labels by selecting a label type from one drop-down menu. Another allows you to perform exports. You can also run mail merges and reports. In addition, there's an options list. This allows you, for example, to run a mail merge on 100 of your clients and to attach a note to all of them on the fly.

There are numerous other improvements as well. The program handles photos better, has a much-improved reporting engine, new "Opportunities" views and sorting capabilities. The company will soon add support for smartphones to further increase Redtail's usefulness. Two-way SMS support will allow you to text the Redtail database and request data from it, such as a client's phone number. Redtail will text it back to you. By the time you read this, you should also be able to use the system with Copytalk, the mobile service that allows you to transcribe your voice to text. The software is expected to accommodate Financial Profiles before year's end. There's more, but it will have to wait for a future article.

The bottom line is that the new Redtail is shaping up as a more modern, more responsive and more intuitive version of what is already a popular online CRM application. At $65 per month per database (a database can accommodate up to 15 users) it is extremely affordable, too. I'd really like to see some work-flow and checklist templates included (items offered by competitors), and there are a few minor kinks that need to be worked out before final release, but all indications are that the Redtail CRM is poised to continue its winning ways.