Conceptually, the all-in-one advisor workstation is appealing, but in practice it often falls short. Advisors would prefer not to spend a great deal of time selecting best-of-breed solutions and dealing with integration issues, but historically, with a few exceptions (Tamarac Advisor Xi and Morningstar Office are two that come to mind), all-in-one solutions have met with limited success. The reasons that others have failed are varied, but it often comes down to one or more poorly designed modules, clunky interface or integration that is not as seamless as promised.
Advyzon, a new product from YHLSoft, has the potential to become one of the relatively rare integrated workstation success stories. We say potential because a few features are still in the works. So these are first impressions based on a test of what’s currently available as well as a preview of the soon-to-be-added features.
Advyzon possesses four characteristics that should impress potential buyers. First, it provides a really good user experience. Advyzon’s main architect, Hailin Li, explains that a user’s good experience with a product is more than just about its ease of use. “A software application can be easy to use, but you may not enjoy using it,” says Li. A good user experience is both simple and pleasant. Advyzon appears to offer both a simple and a pleasant experience.
The second characteristic is an integrated user experience. Advyzon is designed to offer all of the core functionality that an advisor needs in a seamlessly integrated environment. Advyzon acknowledges that some advisors will want to use financial planning software, CRM programs or some other application made by a third party. The company can accommodate that software, and the integrations can be robust, but they will not be quite as seamless as using Advyzon’s all-in-one solution.
A third characteristic of the platform is value. Value does not necessarily mean cheap, though the product is priced very competitively. Value is tied to what you get for what you pay. In this case, you get a lot. You get client and prospect management, portfolio management and reporting (including outsourced custodial downloads and reconciliation), tax-aware rebalancing (due in Q2 2014), a work-flow engine (Q2 2014) an e-mail client (Q2 2014), alerts and business analytics. All of this for prices starting as low as $6,000 annually. We don’t know of anything in the marketplace offering that level of service and functionality at that price point.
The final important characteristics are industry experience and knowledge. It is very difficult for an outsider to build something this broad in scope without an intimate knowledge of the needs of financial advisors. As anyone who has tried it knows, creating a successful product of this nature entails more than just providing the necessary fields and running the calculations, though those factors are certainly important. You must also understand how advisors operate and understand the many nuances of the varied business models they operate under. Li, the chief architect of Advyzon, formerly worked at Morningstar, where he was a principal architect on Morningstar Office and Morningstar Workstation, so he has a great deal of familiarity with the needs of advisors.
A Quick Tour
When you log on to Advyzon, you land on the apps page. The page is populated by tiles similar to the ones you would find on a Windows 8 computer, tablet or phone. They are grouped by subject matter: “Client management,” “portfolio management,” “planning,” “reports,” “announcements,” etc. Clicking on the “client” tile takes you to the client list, clicking on the “accounts” tile takes you to the accounts list, and so on. From the initial landing page, you can toggle to a second landing page, currently labeled “summary.” This page currently comprises a number of widgets about your business—announcements, a to-do list and practice statistics (such as your total number of active clients, your clients with a Web portal, your clients that have joined within the last 30 days, etc.). In the next update, there will be additional widgets, and this section will be totally customizable by the user.
Wherever you are in the program, a few elements remain visible along the top of the page. One is the powerful search engine. When you start typing, it immediately begins delivering results. You can do a universal search, or you can narrow results to a subset of the application, such as clients or securities. It also offers help. If you want to know how to do something, for example generate batch reports, just start typing in the term and relevant results will appear.
Clicking on the bell icon at the top of the page takes you to the alerts section. The alerts are smart and anticipate additional information you might need: For example, if you tell it to alert you whenever stock in XYZ company appreciates 10%, the application will also show you which clients own XYZ stock in case you want to take action on the alert. An alarm icon, meanwhile, provides access to the calendar, and a gear icon controls the program’s settings for languages, currency, time, etc. You can also control automatic, preconfigured system alerts here to, say, notify yourself of a coming client meeting or learn when a client has accessed his Web portal. In addition, you can set default cost basis settings, transaction settings and calculation settings here, as well as disclosure and report settings.
Under the client management tile, there are separate tiles for clients, prospects, contacts, activities and notes and a tile for the client portal (work flow and e-mail tiles will follow). The default icon for each client is a virtual business card with typical information plus an alerts icon and an alarm icon. Each has a counter indicating the number of alerts or future appointments related to the client. Advisors can toggle to one of two other client views. The second is a three-column display that includes the business card, to-dos related to the client and an investment summary. The third view is a spreadsheet with columns for the client type, status, next review date, total assets and more. This view can be sorted by any column.
When you click on a client, you see the main client summary page. It includes things such as a picture of the client; the client’s total assets; recent activities; a place to add a note about him; contact information; a link to the “Web portal preview,” which allows you to view the client’s portal as he sees it; and tiles that link to the accounts, notes, activities, reports, e-mail, billing allocations, financial planning and rebalancing activities for this client. Clicking on the client picture reveals other information, such as family members, other connections such as professionals, his risk profile, his tax information and more. Navigating around this area is intuitive. The only thing you need to know to do is click on the picture.
The accounts list works in a fashion similar to the client list. Each account is represented by something that resembles a credit card. It displays the name of the account, the type of account—whether it’s a 401(k), for example—and the last four digits of the account number. There is also a watermark across the card indicating where the account is custodied. You can tab to the three-column view, which includes the card, an account overview (realized and unrealized gains or losses, for example, or year-to-date, quarter-to-date and month-to-date returns) and a market value view that includes the total account value, the client’s available cash and a few other data points. The third view is the spreadsheet.
Clicking on an account brings up the account summary page. It includes tiles that link your positions, notes, transactions, etc. In addition, there is an asset allocation graph, an account value-versus-net investment chart, a top-five-holdings list and the five most recent transactions. There is also a button that allows you to generate a wide variety of portfolio-related reports from this page. Reports that you create can be posted to the client’s Web portal from here. These are not batch reports, but ad hoc reports that you create for the client as needed. Regular periodic reports can be scheduled, batch processed and uploaded in batches to the client portals.
Overall, the portfolio management and reporting portion of the application looks good. It is not the most powerful system on the market, but it is more than sufficient for the needs of most firms. It allows you to create benchmarks, custom benchmarks, models and custom asset allocations. It addresses two common complaints that I hear from advisors. One is the billing flexibility, or lack thereof. This system appears capable of handling just about any billing schedule that an advisor can devise. The other is reporting. The application includes a report builder that allows the user to custom build his own report pages and save them as templates. You can choose from multiple layouts, and include bar charts, line charts, pie charts, area charts and X/Y charts. You can customize text, insert images, add headers and footers, etc. Furthermore, you can create report packages by uploading documents created in another application for inclusion in your PDF report packages, so, for example, if you create slides in PowerPoint, they could be included in a package.
The financial planning portion of the application is sufficient for light planning needs, but it is not a comprehensive financial planning application. It allows the advisor to create goals using a “wishes, wants, needs” hierarchy; to inventory resources; to perform a risk assessment; and to create an asset allocation and contrast it with the current allocation in list form, in graph form and on the efficient frontier. Advisors can also perform wealth projections into the future, including a probability of success calculation. They can also create an action plan, implement the plan and generate a report.
The business analytics section starts at a dashboard. The dashboard contains widgets, each with useful data points, which will vary depending on the user’s role. So a principal might see data on the most purchased securities across the firm, top advisors by AUM, advisors who have increased assets the most in a period, etc. Advisors would see widgets relevant to their client base. Currently, there are a limited number of widgets available, but more are being added.
There are too many additional features to mention, but a few are noteworthy. Advyzon includes a recycle bin. Anytime a user deletes information—client records or a financial plan, for example—it goes into the recycle bin. This allows it to be easily recovered. There is a context-sensitive feedback button on every page, so if you have a problem or a comment, the folks at Advyzon will know exactly where you were in the application when you sent them the message. There are also impersonation functions, so one authorized person can view what another advisor is viewing. This can be used by a supervisor for compliance purposes, or it can be used by technical support to help resolve an issue.
Advyzon currently supports data from the four major custodians. It includes a functional, visually pleasing client portal.
Advyzon possesses all of the right stuff to become successful in both the independent RIA space and the independent B-D space, but its success is not ensured. YHLSoft needs to finish the features that are in the works and add more widgets. Also, as is the case with any new firm in the industry, it needs to attract a critical mass of users in a reasonable period of time. We don’t think any of the above will impede Advyzon’s progress, but only time will tell.
First Look
April 2014
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