The tech vendors advisers use — and what they really think of them

I was thrilled to see another iteration of some of our recent technology survey data included in our INTech newsletter the other day. As their limited time allows our data folks plan to continue analyzing and presenting new facets of the results from survey. There is a lot of data packed into this short eight-page white paper, all of it graphically presented. For example, you will find the top CRM, financial planning, portfolio management, document management, compliance, account aggregation and re-balancing applications used by InvestmentNews readers. You will also see overall levels of user satisfaction and some of the most frequent integrations used by advisers with the most popular applications. We also break out the top five CRM systems selected by our readers broken down by firms with AUM over $250 million and those under. There is also a list of the 20 most popular technology applications used by our readers. The tiny but talented team behind this survey (and most others we publish) includes data editor Denise Southwood and data and directory associate Michelisa Lanche, These two put a tremendous amount of time, effort, and painstaking attention to detail into both building the survey and in analyzing the results (frankly, they never get the credit they deserve). We first published some of this data back in a special report on technology in Aug. 22 issue. One update they plan to make soon will be to provide some results based on company — I've had several advisers and vendors write to me asking about some of the results, especially when a firm whose product they use did not make the original set of lists. It is important to note, if you overlooked it, that our original analysis focused on products, not companies. In fact, the satisfaction results we collected were tied inextricably to those results making it impossible to break those results out and apply them to a company overall. As but one example, let's take Laserfiche, which several people have asked me about. The company has two products used by advisers, IntuitionPro and Avante. Avante was selected by 3% of advisers in our survey, IntuitionPro by a mere .5% and in the write-in “other” category 1.5% of respondents typed in plain old Laserfiche. If we had totaled things up by company Laserfiche would have grabbed a 5% share, putting them among the top five. Again, we will present findings here and there as I have time to lobby the data team to hunt for them or they have time to uncover them for themselves. We welcome your suggestions as to additional questions for next year's survey or how you might appreciate seeing other findings presented. Visit the following link to download your own copy of the Adviser technology: Top vendors & usage report white paper (you will need your InvestmentNews log-in). Related stories: Spotlight technology, integration still elusive Getting the biggest technology bang for your bucks How the top RIAs firms are leveraging technology Webcast transcript: Key findings of the InvestmentNews RIA technology study