Your Silver Bullet is a new organization devoted to improving integration among software applications used by financial advisors, as well as promoting new integration relationships (www.yoursilverbullet.net). The aim is to help financial advisors create their own "silver bullet"—that is, their own personalized, best-of-breed technology solutions through the purchase of multiple software programs that can act in concert and share data. The organization also hopes to become an information resource for financial planners, a sort of clearinghouse of information about which programs work together and, eventually, plan future integrations among applications, including timelines for integrations in progress.

According to Greg Friedman of CRM Software, the developer of Junxure CRM software and ClientView office management software as well as a founding member of Your Silver Bullet, the idea for the organization was born at the "2007 Technology Tools for Today Conference," in Miami Beach, Fla. "Two sessions at the conference really lead my partner Ken Golding and me to initiate the formation of Your Silver Bullet," Friedman says. "The first was Andy Gluck's general session, where he said that there was no one comprehensive killer app and that it was unlikely that such an app would emerge in the future. In addition, Andy said that advisors really need vendors to facilitate integration."

The second crucial session was on integration (moderated by myself), in which Golding participated. "The idea was to demonstrate how some programs from different companies actually can work together today," says Friedman. "The room was packed, which confirmed our belief that advisors desperately want their vendors to integrate with one another. It occurred to us that most of the integration work we did was based on bilateral agreements, which is not the most efficient approach. A more collaborative model would be much more efficient." So far, some 17 additional producers of advisor-oriented applications have joined Your Silver Bullet, and more are rumored to be on the way. Many already have bilateral or trilateral integration with other companies; for example, CRM and asset management firm Adhesion can work together. Other members include CRM company Protracker, portfolio reporting company Etelligent Consulting, financial planning firm MoneyTree Software, and document management company Laserfiche.

Creating Standards

Friedman and Golding decided to help create a structure for companies to come together and facilitate integration among members of the group. "Vendors need to agree on some ground rules and standards," Friedman says. "We hope that Your Silver Bullet will play a role in the creation of the standards this industry needs."

Membership is open to any software firm or software consulting firm that meets these four objective requirements:

1. The company has an open database architecture/structure or a well-defined interface (API) that facilitates the exchange of data with other member companies;
2. The company makes a commitment to have or create data interfaces with other member companies where sufficient market demand is present;
3. The company agrees to work with other member companies to solve interface problems and bugs; and
4. The company agrees to abide by the membership Operating Guidelines.

Why, one might ask, is Your Silver Bullet necessary at all? The short answer is that while the overall capabilities and quality of the computer hardware and software used by advisors has improved exponentially over the past 10 years, little progress has been made in the one area that's critical to advisors: integration.

Since the dawn of modern financial planning, advisors have relied on a collection of applications to run their businesses and serve their clients. The typical financial planning firm relies on three core professional applications: client relationship management (CRM) software, financial planning software and portfolio management/reporting software. There may also be a need for applications such as account aggregation, form-filling software and document management software. Finally, general business applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, email and presentation software are required.

For years, advisors have craved greater integration, particularly with respect to the three core applications. The benefits should be obvious. First, true integration offers a single point of data entry. Multiple data entry points and repetitive data entry requirements leave advisory firms more vulnerable to data entry errors. Historically, a firm might have to enter some of the same client data in a CRM system, a financial planning application and in a portfolio management system. This creates three times as many opportunities to make a mistake.

Updates and synchronization are related issues. If an advisor is storing client phone numbers in three separate applications, and the client changes one or more phone numbers, how does the firm insure that new phone numbers are promptly updated in all of the applications? As a practical matter, they often aren't. Firms storing unsynchronized client data in multiple applications will surely experience suboptimal performance; and under certain circumstances, the fallout could be far more serious. For example, if an advisor must urgently reach a client, and has the wrong phone data on file, the delay could have dire consequences.