Wealth Management Technology Musings

Wealth Management Technology Musings

Blane Warrene  //  Financial services technology innovator and social media archiver at Arkovi.

 
Feb 15 / 3:43am

iPad for Business - a @zendesk infographic

An interesting view of iPad usage and statistics. We have found the iPad a versatile business tool since day one. We use it for more than just email and calendaring and web browsing on the run. Our business apps include CRM, support desk and remote screen sharing that we actively use on the iPad. 

 


”Infographic

 

Image originally posted on Zengage, The Zendesk Blog

 

Filed under  //  IPad   
 
Dec 16 / 5:30pm

Convert Outlook PST files to Mac OS X Email Clients

I have been searching for a reliable PST conversion tool for some time. Apparently until last week I was looking in the wrong places! Emailchemy certainly has resolved that issue. This handy application can handle a vast number of mailbox formats across Macs, Windows and Linux/Unix. It can write to 7 formats that support dozens of email clients across the aforementioned platforms.

In my case I took a 450 MB Outlook archive PST file spanning 24 months and used Emailchemy to import the messages and mailbox hierarchy into Mail.app on a Mac running Snow Leopard. Processed 3500 messages in less than 30 seconds. There are a number of options including handling attachments.

For $30 - this was not a difficult decision considering i now have this critical history of email integrated into Mail.app and my backup workflow. There are options for household and business use  - though the Emailchemy site does not provide pricing for email migrations. Contact the provider for more information and pricing for your needs.

An interesting option for those looking to simply preserve messaging but not integrate into an email client - there is a conversion to CSV file option.

Emailchemy_9

 
Feb 15 / 4:33am

Seth Godin - "Viral growth trumps lots of faux followers"

Viralgrowth

Many brands and idea promoters are in a hurry to rack up as many Facebook fans and Twitter followers as they possibly can. Hundreds of thousands if possible.

A lot of these fans and followers are faux. Sunny day friends. In one experiment I did, 200,000 followers led to 25 clickthroughs. Ouch.

Check out the graph on the left. The curves represent different ideas and different starting points. If you start with 10,000 fans and have an idea that on average nets .8 new people per generation, that means that 10,000 people will pass it on to 8000 people, and then 6400 people, etc. That's yellow on the graph. Pretty soon, it dies out.

On the other hand, if you start with 100 people (99% less!) and the idea is twice as good (1.5 net passalong) it doesn't take long before you overtake the other plan.  (the green). That's not even including the compounding of new people getting you people.

But wait! If your idea is just a little more viral, a 1.7 passalong, wow, huge results. Infinity, here we come. That's the purple (of course.)

A slightly better idea defeats a much bigger but disconnected user base every time.

The lesson: spend your time coming up with better ideas, not with more (faux) followers.

via feedproxy.google.com

I absolutely agree with this theory. It has been a longer curve to develop connections on social media - but those connections have largely come due to real conversations, mutual sharing of information and/or common links to business. By organically developing a following on Twitter, not only does your content sometimes make it further but perhaps equally important - you have access to a treasure trove of information by those sharing with you.

 
Feb 11 / 7:06am

A Roundup of Advisor CRM Solutions

If you are in or around wealth management then CRM is a critical component to what you do. If it is not - you should stop by a CRM roundup webinar this Friday, February 12, 2010, presented by Andrew Gluck and Advisors4Advisors.com. I am presenting with Neal Quon and we will review the leading CRM providers for wealth managers.  

Neal and I will cover the differences between hosted and non-hosted solutions, as well as why CRM should be important to you and how to embed it into your daily business operations. Vendors being discussed include:
We will review how these CRM systems match up with the business lines of wealth management practices, key features and key integration partners.

 
Jan 5 / 8:34am

Inventory more than just passwords with 1Password on Mac

My original goals in pursuing a password manager were simple - first to keep track of the litany of sites and web applications I use, and secondly to utilizing more complex passwords on each site. I had fallen into the same trap as many others and found myself using the same one or two usernames and passwords over and over. While convenient, not the most efficient security strategy.

Over the last year I have certainly shared the value of using a password manager, and specifically have been touting 1Password for Mac users and RoboForm for Windows users (I purchased and use both). Both of these can be used individually and for business. An excellent way to get rid of the "password notebooks" in desk drawers, passwords posted on Post-It notes on monitors and under keyboards (and even worse practices).

For the Mac user, in particular, 1Password's upgrade to version 3 was a big leap - offering more depth than just password management. Aside from helpful new visual password cards (thumbnail of web site or app) were expanded features for creating a secure "wallet" to manage credit cards and accounts when transacting online, managing identities (your home, work and other profiles with appropriate name, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses). Very nice for pre-filling entire online forms when making purchases, signing up for access or e-newsletters. 

Something I have wanted for a while is a place to securely stow random electronic notes with tidbits of data that would fall into the confidential or private realm. One such example is a recent task I had where I needed my business partner's tax id. Not wanting to write it down anywhere to later be lost or otherwise mishandled - I stowed it in a secure note within 1Password.

Finally - I purchase and register a large number of software applications or web apps online and frequently end up mining through my archived email to find software licenses, keys or other registration information. I can now bring this entire inventory into 1Password. Similar to the password management function, when I enter the software inventory information, with web site links, I get a visual queue of each application I inventory (see example below).

1password

With my backup process, both online and offline, including the core 1Password folders and libraries - I have an excellent continuity solution for accessing anything I use with a password from any location where there is Internet access. A user hint - certainly to insure you maintain a secure repository for all this very useful information, 1Password suggests selecting one very strong password (the only one you need to remember!) to secure access to the application data. My recommendation is to select the setting for requiring re-authentication after a certain amount of elapsed time. Mine is set to 60 minutes.

"The future belongs to people who see possibilities before they become obvious." -- Ted Levitt

 
Dec 17 / 1:50pm

Stay Engaged in Good Times and Bad

An excellent visual reminder via Mark Smiciklas on staying engaged in the social conversation. If your business has determined to leverage the medium as a new channel for interacting with customers and the public - stick to the plan through all seasons. The customer now has more influence and power than the enterprise when it comes to discussions about your products, services, industry et al.

4126503353_cc92b7be77
 
Dec 16 / 7:58am

@SlideRocket debuts audio recording #sliderocket

(download)

SlideRocket is fast becoming my favorite tool of 2009 - and has enabled me to change the way I handle presentations. The more I simplify what I put on a slide and use of more visual queues - this app caters to my approach. Now I can directly record audio into my slides - saving me a step of recording the audio elsewhere. In my case - I have the correct gear for recording quality audio and video on hand. However, it is not much of a stretch for any regular presenter to pick themselves up, at minimum, a high quality USB microphone to accommodate this new capability. A frequent option I recommend is the Blue USB microphones.
 
You can continue to embed previously produced audio and video into the slides - however - for cases where you think narration or some other audio-based content would be valuable - this is made quite user-friendly with the new interface add-on. Equally as important were the thought put into syncing the slide content and transitions (both in slide builds and slide to slide builds) to the new audio option. Thus you can visually organize how your slide builds occur in conjunctinewsly recorded audio.
 
Kudos SlideRocket to a very cool new feature. Now I only hope to see Keynote import join the already great functionality for importing PowerPoint presentations! Keep it up!
 
 
 
Dec 15 / 1:34pm

Tweet from Keynote during Presentations

Being a Keynote user for my presentations I was thrilled to find this tool. In some scenarios it would be fantastic to update Twitter with bits from a presentation and include a hashtag for folks to follow. Keynote Tweet from Ideo Labs watches for tags in your presentation notes (visible to the speaker) and sends a Tweet and optionally hashtags (like #mypresentation) and an @username of the text found between [Twitter] and [/Twitter]. 

Presenting

via jonny goldstein from Flickr

I have written before about the excellent versatility in Keynote for presenters and with this widget - you can integrate the social community at large in your public speaking. There are a lot of e-learning folks harnessing cloud technology to reinvigorate conferences and meetings - this provides a simple tool for anyone engaged in public presentations to put their foot in the waters and take it for a spin. You can go back after the fact and search for your hashtags on Twitter. Take not that Twitter does not archive hashtags for very long - so look for your Tweets within a few days of your presentation. If folks were monitoring your hashtags then you will also find the conversation they started based on your posts.
 
Dec 10 / 12:42pm

Excellent Fundamentals of Using LinkedIn

An excellent discussion by Kristen Luke of using LinkedIn while appeasing your compliance department as a wealth management professional. See Luke's guest post on Susan Weiner's Investment Writing blog. These are good fundamentals in general when using LinkedIn, and for that matter, any social media tool that you can leverage. Understanding the best practices helps get you off the ground quickly. Especially considering LinkedIn has surpassed the 50 million user mark.