Worth The Wait

It has taken much longer than anticipated, but Junxure CRM (www.junxure.com), a firm that integrates CRM technology, consulting and training for financial advisors, has finally announced the general release of “Junxure Cloud,” its comprehensive, cloud-based suite of CRM/office management products for financial advisors. After trying the application out for a few days, I’m happy to report that it was well worth waiting for.

From the minute you first log in to the home page, it is obvious that it was designed by developers that have a deep understanding of the RIA business. That is no surprise. Junxure’s president, Greg Friedman, is also the president of Private Ocean, a successful West Coast RIA firm. Vice President Ken Golding co-founded Junxure with Friedman, and he has been the application’s chief developer since its launch in 1998, when the two execs developed the initial desktop software.

The home page offers quick access to all of the key information advisors will likely need as they start their day. The page is populated by various tiles, many of which update in real time, much like the live tiles in Windows 8. For example, if you click on the word “actions,” all actions in the system that the user is entitled to see will be displayed. The actions tile has counters that show the number of actions, or tasks, that are past due or due on the day you open the software. There is a separate counter for pending actions not yet due. This way, users can immediately address the most pressing tasks by clicking the links to overdue and due actions. The links take you to the list of these pressing items in a grid format resembling a spreadsheet.

These can be sorted by the date the action was created, by the due date, by name, by type or by subject. You can also drag a column to the top bar to filter the items. For example, if you were to filter by due date, it would create a section heading in the list called “Due Today” and list all items due today, followed by the previous day with its heading, etc.

One improvement that Junxure Cloud boasts over the older version of Junxure is that it can link a virtually unlimited number of related actions and allow you to search them. In the previous version, you were limited to three per action. An action can also have multiple dates for searching. You can designate the day the action was created, a start date and a due date, for example.

Whenever you move from the home page, there are “breadcrumbs” at the top of the page to help you understand where you are and navigate back if you wish to do so. For example, in this case, you would see: “Home-Actions.” There’s also a floating toolbar at the top of the page. When you click on it, you see a miniature version of the home page. You can click on any element here to navigate around the program.

All lists throughout the system have a column chooser icon to the right of the grid. Clicking the column chooser allows one to select additional column headers, which you can then sort by. The list of columns is extensive. Just about anything that is a data field can be displayed as a column and sorted, offering a great deal of flexibility, even to the novice user.