Although much has changed with regard to advisor technology over the last decade, one thing has remained remarkably constant: Microsoft Office among advisors. Yes, some advisors now own Macs, so perhaps they use Apple iWorks from time to time, but almost every advisor I've come across, whether he is a Mac or a PC user, owns a copy of MS Office. A growing number of advisors use Google Apps and other tools to supplement their MS Office apps, but they, too, rely on MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, etc. for more demanding tasks.
While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with MS Office, the fact that it is desktop-based can be a constraint to the advisor or firm that wants to move to the cloud. The traditional Microsoft pricing structure can also create headaches for the typical advisory firm. If you hire a few interns or temps for the summer, do you really want to go out and purchase additional MS Office licenses, even if you will only need them for a limited period of time? Don't you wish there were an MS Office alternative better suited to the needs of your firm? Well, perhaps there is.
Microsoft recently unveiled Microsoft Office 365. This new offering is the MS Office you are familiar with, delivered through the cloud. As such, it includes a business class server and security backed by Microsoft. With Microsoft Office 365, advisors can access documents, calendars, e-mail and Web conferences anywhere, anytime.
Microsoft offers three versions of Office 365. The base plan, for professionals and small business, is suited for companies of approximately 25 employees without an IT staff-in other words, the vast majority of independent RIA firms. According to the 365 Web site, this version is available for as little as $6 per user, per month. As we shall see, it will cost a bit more for advisors to get the suite they are most likely to need.
For larger firms, Microsoft offers the Mid-sized Businesses and Enterprises plan. These plans, labeled plans "E1" through "E4," start at $10 per month. The "E" plans offer more advanced services such as active directory integration, advanced e-mail archiving, 24/7 administrative support and full enterprise voice capabilities on the premises. Again, for the tools an advisor is likely to need, you'll pay a bit more, but the good news is that you only pay for the functionality that each employee needs, and you can provision or de-provision tools in real time as your firm's needs evolve.
The third version, for educational institutions, is of little interest to financial advisors.
I initially tried out the base offering for professionals and small businesses, and, as I suspected, this is the one most individual readers would likely be interested in. The offering has a great deal of appeal, but those hoping to replace their desktop versions of MS Office 2010 with a fully functional online version for $6 per person, per month will be disappointed.
The core $6 offering consists of four components: Microsoft Office Web Apps, plus hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Lync. The behavior of Microsoft Office Web Apps depends somewhat on your software configuration. If you do not have a local version of MS Office installed (MS Office 2007 or 2010 for Windows; MS Office or MS Office 2008 or 2011 for Mac), you have access to limited versions of MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint and MS OneNote.
The limited versions may be sufficient for some home users or as a supplement for advisors on the go, but it is no replacement for MS Office. The Word app has serious limitations. To name just two: It can't track changes and it does not provide document protection. The Excel app only provides a small subset of the full program's features. The PowerPoint app is also bare bones. You can create a very simple presentation on it, but pretty much all of the features under the design tab, the animation tab, the slide show tab and the review tab, as well as many others, are missing from this version. I did not work enough in OneNote online to come up with a full comparison, but like the rest of the offering, it offered the basics without the more advanced features.
For those of you unfamiliar with Microsoft Exchange, it is a server-based product that is hosted, in this case, on Microsoft servers. MS Exchange provides e-mail hosting that can be accessed online using the MS Outlook Web App, or through a local (or cloud-based) version of MS Outlook. Exchange also provides an address book (contacts), individual and group calendaring and instant messaging. Many advisors are currently either maintaining their own in-house Exchange server or paying a third party to host Exchange for them, so this should be familiar territory.
SharePoint is a hosted group team site. It provides a facility for members of your firm to collaborate. SharePoint allows you to store documents and collaborate on them. It can be used to store company documents, including user manuals, policies and procedures, etc. Documents can be organized into libraries. This requires users to check out and check in documents, which facilitates tracking document changes and provides an audit trail of who has accessed a document and when he or she has accessed it. You can track team events projects and even host a discussion board on a SharePoint site.