ProTracker Software Inc. has finally brought its customer relationship management system to the cloud with a web-based mobile application that uses the open-source SugarCRM as its launch pad.
Sugar has spent the past 18 months working with ProTracker's development team to create modules designed specifically for financial advisers, according to Warren Mackensen, president of ProTracker Software who is also the founder of fee-only advisory Mackensen & Co.
“We agonized over which platform we were going to use to do this, and we chose SugarCRM because it's an open-source platform that will give us flexibility in the future,” he said.
“Open source gives us more versatility. We can hook into data tables more readily than on proprietary platforms,” Mr. Mackensen said.
ProTracker Cloud
mobile-client solution offers security settings that benefit broker-dealers as well as registered investment advisers, he said.
Currently, most of the 800 users on the desktop-based ProTracker Advantage platform are RIAs, Mr. Mackensen said, adding that ProTracker doesn't yet have any paying customers as it is still under evaluation.
Some of those evaluators are advisers who now use Advantage.
ProTracker Cloud is offered in three different editions at three different price points.
The monthly subscription fee at the standard rate costs $59 per user, while the professional edition costs $99 and the enterprise edition costs $149. All three editions require a two-factor authentication process, using both a login password and a cell phone code for added security.
Bill Winterberg, founder of FPPad, a technology consulting firm for advisers, mentioned the ProTracker Cloud launch in his video review
of the Nov. 3-5 T3 Enterprise Conference, noting that ProTracker Cloud is the latest CRM to introduce a cloud-based solution.
“This is similar to the concept of overlays from XLR8 and AppCrown, which both customize the out-of-the-box Salesforce platform and tailor it for the wealth management environment,” he said.
ProTracker's cloud-based CRM will reside on Amazon Web Services and allow advisers to manage their practice and client records from any Internet-connected device. It has a function that allows for supervision and regulatory compliance, as well as the capability to allow users to define workflow processes, assign tasks and monitor completion.
Also available are imports from portfolio management and software systems and synchronization of e-mail, Outlook and Google.
“One of the benefits to advisers of us adopting SugarCRM is that there are a million users worldwide, so that gives advisers confidence this platform will be around a long time, as opposed to building it with individual web pages,” Mr. Mackensen said.
