Good things take time.
That goes for the crafting of software and applications, too.
Junxure Cloud is no exception. I first began to tell readers about the application's impending arrival (originally to be called
Junxure Essentials) this time last summer .
It was at that time that adviser and CRM Software Inc. co-founder Greg Friedman and his partner Ken Golding first showed me some preliminary mock-ups of the interface.
Today I received a demo of a production-ready working demo and I have to say that Junxure Cloud is shaping up nicely.
(
In Pictures: A sneak peek at Junxure Cloud)
Simple, intuitive and streamlined — both in general and in comparison to its ancestor — and by ancestor I do not mean to ding the venerable on-premises version of Junxure.
It is one of the most ubiquitous CRM applications out there and is certainly the most RIA-focused, running in 1,400 firms and having 11,000 users.
Now for the promised details: Finalized pricing will be $75 per user per month, which comes out to $900 per user per year for the annual upfront contract and payment (And that is how firms will pay, not on a month-to-month basis).
UPDATE: A source pointed out to me today (12 June) that there is a three-user minimum for Junxure Cloud, hence that raises a firm's minimum price to $2,700 per year. While that seems reasonable for any multi-person firm I suspect there will be quite a few sole proprietors that were interested in the product and who now will not be (I have now heard from two in this category just one day after the story posted). My gut tells me that this is a vestige of the way CRM Software has always functioned but I have yet to confirm. By that I mean there has, in the past anyway, been a good bit of support costs built into working with advisers. A breakeven-w/a-little-profit-margin point may be unattainable for them at a single-user cost; just conjecture on my part.
There will be an introductory price of $59 per user per month when CRM Software begins taking orders, which they expect to begin in August or early September and will run until general availability is announced. Again, it's subject to change but Mr. Friedman expects general availability in early October.
Junxure Cloud will go into production use with a limited number of firms beginning in August.
“As for our migration path, there are two kinds of people coming to us: Current Junxure users and new customers,” Mr. Friedman said.
Existing customers he said will be provided a somewhat automated migration tool that will allow a firm to conduct a preliminary assessment and do most of the heavy lifting in moving to the cloud themselves, he said.
Firms that have created many of their own customizations for their installation can receive assistance from CRM Software's migration team for an additional fee.
“All of that can be assessed before a commitment is made,” Mr. Friedman said.
And he was quick to add that the company's migration team actually migrates the data and reconciles it so that firms will have a usable database.
“This is not a conversion where you have unreconciled data going in making the system for all intents and purposes unusable,” he said.
One more bit of news, while he was not ready to go on the record with who the provider would be, there will be a suite of third-party e-mail and social media archiving and compliance tools integrated with Junxure Cloud at or soon after general release. This will be at an additional, as yet undisclosed fee.
I will elaborate a bit more on the look and feel as time allows but for now advisers can have a look at our accompanying slideshow to get a get overview of how the interface will look and is organized.
Related Stories:
Cloud version of Junxure on the way [Junxure part of OpenView Gateway]
More on Junxure Essentials; a short slideshow and more details on the CRM offering due out in the fall
Welcoming the latest version of Junxure and a new data tool [see passage discussing first bit of data integration with Schwab
Junxure to unveil two new versions of its software
Welcoming the latest version of Junxure and a new data tool [see second half on Elmwood Data]
CRM Software updates Junxure and ClientView Live
