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| > The Practice > Technology |
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| A Promising New Practice-Management Tool |
| by
Joel P. Bruckenstein
| 08-14-08 |
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PreciseFP is a new non-proprietary online client questionnaire from Spectrum Input, LLC. The firm, headquartered in Alpharetta, Ga., was founded by Don Whalen, CFP, a comprehensive financial planner, and IT specialist Sebastian Skwarek. Whalen is active in both NAPFA and FPA, the two leading financial planning organizations. Skwarek is an Adobe Certified Instructor, and a company he owns is an Adobe Solutions Partner and an Adobe Solutions Integrator. Together, these two have tried to improve on a vital part of the financial planning and investment-management process that is often taken for granted: the data-gathering process.
While a small minority of the advisor community give a great deal of thought to and put a great deal of emphasis on the data-gathering process, most don't. Many advisors tell me that they either use a form provided by their broker/dealer, or they use a canned form that comes with their financial-planning or investment-management software. These forms are certainly better than nothing, but as a rule they don't always capture the optimal amount of information or the most relevant. Furthermore, because of their very nature (a paper document printed from a template in a software application or a virtual form within an application) the forms themselves might not provide the optimal utility that they should to the advisor.
Whalen and Skwarek said that they believe that data gathering forms can be improved upon so that they not only gather the right data more efficiently, but so they can also better facilitate the ongoing financial planning workflow process. PreciseFP is their initial attempt to tackle this challenge. I say that this is their initial attempt to emphasize that PreciseFP is a version 1.0 product. As such, I would not expect it to be as flawless or as highly evolved as it will probably be after the firm develops a user base, receives feedback, and makes improvements, but I do expect it to be relatively bug-free and to add enough value that readers want to buy it now.
Initial Impressions
So far, PreciseFP seems to be off to a good start, based upon my initial trials. The product is composed of two parts, an Advisor Dashboard and a client-facing site. To get started, an advisor logs on to the PreciseFP Web site and signs up for a free two-week test drive. Spectrum Input then sends an e-mail with a user name and a link to initialize the account. After logging on to the dashboard, you are transported to an Advisor Dashboard page.
The initial dashboard page allows users to enter their own advisor/firm information. Some of the information, such as account number, name, and e-mail address, will be pre-populated, while other information must be supplied. Some of this information, including picture and contact information, are used to personalize the client-facing Web site.
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Joel P. Bruckenstein, publisher of T3: The Newsletter, is the industry's expert on applied technology for financial professionals. In addition to his monthly columns, Bruckenstein consults with companies large and small to help them achieve higher returns on their technology investment. For more information of Bruckenstein's consulting services, or to have him speak at your upcoming event, please visit www.joelbruckenstein.com.
The author is not an employee of Morningstar, Inc. The views expressed in this article are the author's. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Morningstar. |
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