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Advisors Want “An App for That”:
Helping Them Go Further with Tablets and Smart Phones
Five Keys to Successful Mobile Apps in Wealth Management
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The scenario is a familiar one: A financial advisor is meeting with a client to discuss
sensitive financial matters. She reaches into her overstuffed briefcase and takes out a stack of printouts,
which may or may not be up-to-date by the time the meeting occurs. She then pulls out her laptop,
waits impatiently for it to start up, and when it finally does, struggles to access several different systems
requiring different passwords and multiple screens.The time lags and nervous chatter do nothing to allay
the client’s anxiety, nor do they strengthen the advisor’s value proposition, which is already under strain.
The inability to easily access the right information in an attractive format is no longer an inconvenience for
advisors; it is a threat to their survival in a world where transparency and 24x7 access to information have
become table stakes and quality of service and the ability to add value have become key differentiators.
Mobile technology offers an obvious solution. Tablets, in particular, and the powerful mobile apps that run
on them, allow wealth managers to provide superior service and to engage with clients at a deeper level,
strengthening relationships as a result. They deliver these benefits by providing a unified front-end through
which advisors can launch mobile apps that allow them to tap into multiple information flows, giving them
access to the very latest data—not to mention the capability to perform analyses, run reports, and to take action
on information, such as placing buy and sell orders, all from a single screen. These capabilities allow advisors
to add value by being responsive to client needs on the spot—and this responsiveness is expected. Clients who
use tablets themselves expect their advisors to keep up with the times and have little patience for those who
rely on clunky laptops or mounds of printouts, not to mention that tablets are fun and intuitive. They are always
on, easy to pass around a conference table, and their apps generally do not require training to use, making
user manuals superfluous. Clients and advisors can also access shared information through tablets, helping
them to collaboratively reach an appropriate balance between advisor-directed and self-directed investing.
Where's Our App for That?
The benefits of using mobile apps on tablets are clear, but adoption of this technology by wealth management
firms has been slower than anticipated. Why? Distractions stemming from the financial crisis as well as
deployment challenges have impeded many financial institutions from fully embracing mobile technology. Many
analysts and consulting firms concur, however, that this situation must change soon if companies are to navigate
the changes in client expectations and shifts in the competitive landscape that are reshaping the banking and
wealth management industry. Accenture, Aite Group, CapGemini, PwC, and more have all issued reports that
speak to the necessity of using smart phones and tablets as tools to address the needs of the increasingly
discerning and demanding high-net-worth investor. These reports also contend that mobile technology provides
a means for wealth management firms to become more agile. This capability is critical for responding to new
competitors, the prevalence of which is growing as new technologies allow universal banks, insurance companies,
and non-financial firms to offer financial advice and distribute packaged wealth management products with
minimal upfront investment.
The Five Keys: How to Deploy "Killer Apps" for Financial Advisors
If analysts, consultants, and IT solution providers agree that mobility is a “must have” for future success in the
wealth management industry, then why hasn’t the deployment of mobile capabilities become more widespread?
Partially, wealth management firms have had to deal with challenges resulting from the financial crisis. However,
the primary cause of a lack of mobile adoption is that the cost and effort to build mobile apps raises significant
concerns and ROI of such a deployment seems unclear. To overcome these challenges and address these concerns,
our team has developed five keys to successfully deploying mobile solutions for wealth management.
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1. Leverage Existing Capabilities and Infrastructure. Launching an independent effort to build new databases
and systems to support mobile capabilities is almost always destined to fail. Why? Because size is not on your side.
Financial services companies were among the first to exploit information technologies decades ago and have since
invested vast amounts of time and effort to update and enhance those systems in order to keep pace with organic
growth as well as to integrate acquisitions. Rebuilding these legacy platforms to introduce mobile capabilities is
too complicated, too expensive, and it takes too long. Our experience concurs with analysts’ findings; the answer
is to make the most of existing infrastructure investments not by coding from scratch but instead by introducing
a mobile application layer on top of existing enterprise systems. This new layer seamlessly brings together existing
capabilities that are critical to advisors and makes them available through a variety of mobile devices.
Figure 1. Mobile Application Layer on Top of Existing Enterprise Systems
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2. Define Services, Not Channels. Mobility is not a separate channel. In fact, financial services companies tend
to think in terms of channels, but clients do not. When clients decide to check their account balances, transfer
money, or perform other financial management functions, they simply do it in the most convenient way at any
given time, whether that means logging onto a computer or accessing their accounts via a smart phone or
tablet. The key is they want the experience to be consistent. The same applies to financial advisors. For them,
a mobile solution is another way to “do what they do,” such as reporting, executing trades, and rebalancing
portfolios, and they should be able to perform these functions in the same way regardless of what type of
computer or mobile device they are using. In developing a mobile solution, wealth management companies
should first define the services they want to make available to their advisors and clients. The goal then is to
enable these services by developing an integrated mobile solution that can be deployed across any channel or
device. This solution should also have a unified front-end that delivers a consistent, intuitive user experience.
iPad 1:55 PM 100%iPad 1:55 PM 100%
Figure 2. Mobile App for Clients to Access Services
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3. Use a Mobile Application Development Platform to Deploy a Single, Integrated Multi-Channel
Solution. There are many mobile devices and many different operating systems on the market today. Clearly,
wealth management companies should try to avoid creating custom code for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and
others, as well as building a separate set of HTML code for web-based versions. They should seek to circumvent
another hassle, the need to tweak this code so that the solution displays properly on each type of mobile
device, such as iPads versus Google Nexus versus smart phones. Mobile application development platforms,
such as those offered by MicroStrategy, offer a way around this complexity by allowing companies to build,
code-free, one mobile solution that works for all mobile form factors. Thus, the organization can build and
update one instance and the system will propagate any changes and make device-specific adjustments. Building
on such a platform also allows all of the functions an advisor performs to be integrated into a single multi-
channel solution, which is important for enhancing usability and productivity. The idea is to allow advisors to
do research, perform analysis, build a portfolio, and execute trades all from one spot. This enhances efficiency
by eliminating the need to switch back and forth among disparate systems and devices, which often require
different passwords and have dissimilar user interfaces.
Figure 3. Mobile Application Development Platform
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4. Create One Solution That Can Be Used by Both Advisors and Clients. Some BI providers have developed
extremely robust entitlement capabilities that allow companies to control what users see down to the micro-
level. Through these capabilities, a single mobile solution can be used to deliver appropriate information to both
advisors and clients. For instance, the advisor could rebalance the client’s portfolio through his mobile app and
the client could see what her portfolio now looks like through her slightly different mobile app. The advisor
would have full access to the company’s back-office systems but the client would only have access to her own
account information, presented in a way that supports advisor-client collaboration. Notably, entitlements allow
companies to create this single mobile solution without building several different systems, coding for advisors
versus clients, or degrading the user experience by blocking out information that clients are not supposed
to see. This approach makes the system much easier to maintain, which lowers total cost of ownership.
Additionally, advisors and clients can both benefit from viewing similar information on their respective mobile
devices at the same time. This facilitates productive discussions and helps advisors to be more effective in
presentations. Creating a single mobile solution for both advisors and clients was once thought of as being
desirable but out of reach. By using entitlements to preserve confidentiality, it has now become feasible and
instrumental to success.
iPad 1:55 PM 100%iPad 1:55 PM 100%
Figure 4. Mobile App for Advisors to Provide Services
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5. Have a Deployment Strategy That Facilitates Rapid Response. The mobile space, by its very nature, moves fast.
Wealth managers are already facing challenges from new entrants who are leveraging emerging technologies
to take business away from them. Some are deploying sophisticated web and mobile applications to provide
an enhanced user experience, which is effectively relegating banking services to the back end, making them
a commodity. Others are providing a layer through which customers can do their own planning and trading,
thus displacing advisors. More competitors are inevitably on the way too. Fortunately, technology has a flip
side, it also affords new opportunities. Someday, someone will invent the next great mobile device or a vastly
new and improved operating system. Those that adapt the fastest will gain an advantage. Wealth management
companies, therefore, must be able to rapidly respond to new threats and opportunities. There are two ways to
obtain this agility: 1. Hire the workforce required to rewrite massive amounts of code at a moment’s notice or
2. Build mobile capabilities on an integrated architecture, such as the one MicroStrategy provides, that allows
new solutions to be quickly deployed with minimal manual effort. Additionally, coding mobile apps would
likely fall outside a wealth management firm’s existing core competencies. Leveraging a mobile application
development platform built by a company that specializes in mobile technology and that has already invested in
the development work makes good business and financial sense. For wealth management firms, the following
maxim applies: Don’t waste time and money coding average apps; instead, focus on designing and quickly
deploying great apps by making the most of a framework that already exists.
• Analytics, Grids, & Graphs• Data Visualizations & Exploration
• Mobile Front-end to ERP/CRM• Sell Products and Schedule Services
• Multimedia Content• Mobile Information Channels
Figure 5. Components of Powerful Wealth Management Apps
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Conclusion: The New Necessity
Many factors have held wealth management companies back from embracing mobile technologies more readily.
Lengthy implementations, risk of obsolescence, and economic uncertainty have made companies slow to adopt
new technologies. Today, however, many wealth management companies realize that enabling advisors to access
their business applications when away from their desks is not an option; it is a must. New mobile application
development platforms that employ drag-and-drop technology now enable companies to build mobile apps
on top of existing CRM, trading, rebalancing, and other systems that are critical to advisors and to bring them
seamlessly together all on one app. By adopting such a platform and observing the five keys, wealth management
firms will be well-prepared to give their advisors access to business applications via their smart phones and tablet
devices. This is the “new necessity” not only for staying competitive but also for helping advisors become more
productive and effective and provide better client service than ever before.
Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a leading provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence
(BI), mobile intelligence, and social intelligence applications. MicroStrategy's BI platform enables leading
organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make
better business decisions. Companies choose MicroStrategy BI for its ease-of-use, sophisticated analytics,
and superior data and user scalability. MicroStrategy's mobile intelligence platform helps companies
and organizations build, deploy, and maintain mobile apps across a range of solutions by embedding
intelligence, transactions, and multimedia into apps. MicroStrategy's social intelligence platform includes
a number of applications that help enterprises harness the power of social networks for marketing
and e-commerce, as well as a suite of free consumer friendly apps that use MicroStrategy's enterprise
technologies. The MicroStrategy Cloud offering combines MicroStrategy and third-party software, hardware,
and services to enable rapid, cost-effective development of hosted BI, mobile, and social applications.
MicroStrategy Incorporated • 1850 Towers Crescent Plaza • Tysons Corner, VA 22182 • 1.888.537.8135 • www.microstrategy.com COLL-1096 1012
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Patent Information
This product is patented. One or more of the following patents may apply to the product sold herein: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,766, 6,173,310, 6,260,050, 6,263,051, 6,269,393, 6,279,033, 6,567,796,
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