Posts By Ben

Ben Poole, Marketing Coordinator, can be contacted at benp@orionadvisor.com.

MEET ORION ON THE ROAD

Find out why Orion empowers advisors at NAAIM’s Uncommon Knowledge 2010 conference on May 3rd – 5th in Orlando, FL. At a time when attention to client needs is critical, we’re able to execute integrated portfolio accounting to fit Advisors’ business model and facilitate growth. Visit our booth and get answers to your questions about model trading and performance reports.

Orion builds integration by setting data standards

Eric Clarke discusses benefits of technology standards for advisors in Investment News magazine (April 5). Technology standards are no longer simply industry chatter. Read the full article.

Free Webinar: Turn Your Prospecting System Into Your Retention System

Turning your prospecting system into your retention system is the focus for this month’s Orion Practice Management Webinar Series. Rich Groff, founder of the Financial Edge Workshops and Coaching Series, is our featured speaker on Tuesday, March 30th at 3:15 PM CDT. Register NOW for Today's Event.

10 signs the RIA movement is really heating up in

Orion’s INTEGRATED Portfolio Accounting Service Bureau makes top ten list explaining the RIA industry movement. Read the full article.

Orion is outshining competitors in the eyes of some RIAs

Orion’s portfolio management systems are winning on service and innovation. Read the full article.

Orion will take a page out of Facebook to help RIAs be more efficient

Orion is creating a page in its portfolio management systems that will execute the bells and whistles of the famous social media website. Read the full article.

A closer look at Orion's portfolio management software and what's coming next

Eric Clarke gives RIABiz an inside look at some of the things that differentiate Orion, as well as some of the new features that will be rolled out in Orion’s June software release of Advisor Desktop. Read the full article.

Cloud Computing and Security

Eric Clarke was quoted in Waters Magazine on the topic of Cloud computing, specifically how the use of Cloud technology and Hybrid Clouds are set to deal with the security issues faced by the financial industry. Read the full article.

Getting Technical, Financial Advisor March 2010

Eric Clarke discusses outsourcing and integrating the core applications of your business while avoiding the pitfalls and distractions of your back office tasks. Read the full article.

How To Build A Better Financial Planning Practice

Using business metrics to analyze growth trends in your business and ensure smart growth. Read the full article.

Eric Clarke speaking to FPA 2010

Eric Clarke will be leading a discussion at FPA 2010 Business Solutions in Dallas, Texas called Creating Operational Efficiencies through Leveraging Outsourced Relationships and Technology Integration. The session will be held at the FPA 2010 Business Solutions Conference in Dallas, TX, March 2 at 2:45 PM.

Webinar: Getting Closer to Your Ideal Clients

Creating advocates without talking and getting closer to your ideal clients is the focus of Dan Allison's presentation on this month's Orion Practice Management Webinar Series. View the replay of the presentation, Creating advocates without talking.

Performance Reporting For Advisors Going Independent

Visit Andrew Gluck's blog for a recap of the webinar exploring the processes and workflows of performance reporting for advisors. For advisors going independent, producing monthly or quarterly performance reports is unfamiliar ground.

Without documenting the process and choosing a technology platform to implement a system, performance reporting can be overwhelming.

View the replay of Performance Reporting for New RIAs for an in-depth look at the necessary steps all advisors face when reporting performance to their clients.

How to Duplicate Clients, Attract Prospects and Create Advocates Without Talking

Join us February 23rd for a best practices webinar featuring Dan Allison of Feedback Marketing Group. Dan will be discussing effective strategies that help Advisors duplicate their best clients and attract appealing prospects, while simultaneously creating advocacy without compromising their professionalism or integrity.

View the Replay for this event.

Social Media for Advisors: Webinar with Andy Gluck

Learn how you can more effectively reach clients, prospects, and allied professionals where they spend their time... Online!

Recorded Webinar: Social Networking for Advisors.

Download the slides.

3 Crucial Business Metrics You Need to Follow

The keys to an Advisor’s success truly involve minimizing expenses while increasing revenue and margins. But the catalyst to this achievement is tracking the right information, and using it strategically. Daniel will discuss how maintaining three crucial metrics can help Advisors track their business “drivers” while empowering them to make better business decisions.

View the full recorded session.

4 Ways to Increase Your Success Through Public Relations

How to manage your brand, how to develop and make news, the importance of the ’shark cage’, how to control your company’s image, and more.

Listen now to the recorded audio.

Tech Tools Help Advisers Study Investors

Financial advisers generally prefer to manage a small number of high-net-worth clients rather than a large number of small accounts, but recent advances in automation technology could change this dynamic. Thanks to online banking and social networks like Facebook and Twitter, consumers are becoming much more comfortable interacting with customizable web interfaces...

Read the full article.

Four Mistakes Advisors Make When Delivering their

Stacy Havener from Arrow Partners spoke with Orion about creating a good marketing & distribution plan. Stacy exposed four major areas of frustration that can cause a good plan to fail for Advisors, and how to avoid those pitfalls. View the presentation slides.

SEC’s Proposed Amendments Signal a Shifting of Audit Costs to Advisers

Proposed changes stand to affect more than 9,600 advisers who have the authority to deduct fees from custodial client accounts. These firms would be subject to an annual surprise audit at their own expense.

Read the full article on the FPA's web site.

Webinar: Where Consumers Are Driving the Economy Next

Rodney Johnson, President of the HS Dent Foundation discusses HS Dent research trends regarding how consumer behavior and consumption drive the economy. View the presentation.

Two new CRM systems increase firms' efficiency

Read the full article in InvestmentNews.

Costly changes to custody rules weighed

This Viewpoint article appeared in The Family Wealth Report.

Advisers opting for outsourced portfolio reporting

...Time in front of clients is more valuable to an adviser than chores performed in the back office, and performance reporting is a chore... But on top of becoming more efficient, advisers often realize the unintended benefit of standardizing their performance reporting: That can give them more credibility, which is important to investors right now. Read the full article.

Nominate an Advisor!

Do you know an adviser who is making a difference in the lives of others? Reward a charity. Share your story.

InvestmentNews, in partnership with the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation, is now accepting nominations for the Community Leadership Awards. The awards will honor financial advisers for their dedication and contributions to their community.

Nominate an adviser you know or nominate yourself. A $10,000 donation will be made to each honoree’s charity of choice.

Entry Deadline: July 3, 2009

For more information, visit: www.investmentnews.com/communityawards.

Don't make software integration hard

As investment advisers become more tech savvy, they increasingly rely on a wider variety of desktop and Web-based applications to run their businesses. But what happens when two software packages on one system collide? And does the need to operate efficiently make this issue even more critical?

Read the full article online.

Two new CRM systems increase firms' efficiency

Two new customer relationship management systems could help advisory firms save time and reduce overhead.

A significant factor in the application's adoption is its integration with many other applications that many advisers license. For example, it integrates with MoneyGuidePro, a financial planning software from PIE Technologies Inc. of Midlothian, Va., with the portfolio-accounting system of Orion Advisor Services LLC of Omaha, Neb... Read the full article.

An Integration Contender

AdvisorConnect looks to be a reasonable alternative to Fidelity’s WealthCentral.

By Joel P. Bruckenstein

Advisors have been asking for better software integration for a long time. But even though a number of medley packages have been marketed, the vast majority of advisors are as frustrated today as they were several years ago. Read the full Financial Advisor article.

Outsourcing Leaves More Time for Business Building

Orion Advisor Services, LLC Provides Portfolio Management Solution to FTJ FundChoice, LLC. Read the full press release.

Fidelity, Pershing, Schwab, TD in a tech "arms race"

Despite budget cuts across the financial industry, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, Pershing LLC, Schwab Institutional and TD Ameritrade Institutional are spending money to upgrade technology. Read the full article.

TD Ameritrade offers Orion solution to Advisors

TD Ameritrade Institutional has entered into a strategic partnership with Interactive Advisory Software and Orion Advisor Services, an agreement designed to increase the number of advisers who have assets under custody with the firm. Read the full article.

Connecting the Tech Dots

Advisors attending TD Ameritrade’s Institutional Partnership Conference in Las Vegas last month got a first look at AdvisorConnect (www.getadvisorconnect.com), a new technology that links three leading industry applications and services within a single platform. Read the full article.

E*Assist Launches AdvisorConnect Partnership with Orion and MoneyGuidePro

The three partner firms, which are leading specialists in the financial services industry, will make available their respective CRM, Portfolio Accounting and Financial Planning proprietary technologies on the advisor-focused platform. Read the press release.

How Secure is Your Client Data? (FPA Practice Management Solutions)

Ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation about identity theft, and the numbers will stagger you: Every year, an estimated 10 million Americans have their identities stolen. The costly aftermath totals about $50 billion annually. Read the whole article at fpanet.org.

E*Assist Integrates Salesforce.com with Orion

E*Assist has released a brief web demo illustrating their powerful integration between the salesforce.com CRM and Orion system. Watch the demo here: E*Assist Integration Demo.

Family Wealth Report - RIA outsourcer provides advisory-business metrics

Orion Advisor Services provides outsourced back-office services to RIAs and broker-dealers so that firms can focus on client service and business development. Now though, it's providing an additional service to independent advisors called Business Metrics to help them keep track of their firms' profitability. Read the full article or visit http://www.fwreport.com.

Orion Gives Advisors a Critical Look at their Own Business with Business Metrics Report

New Business Metrics Reports from Orion Advisor Services Offer Advisors a Business “Check Up” and Snapshot of Profitability in Key Areas. Read the Press Release or our September Newsletter.