Advent To Supply CRM for Investment Advisor

Advent Software (News - Alert), Inc., a vendor of CRM software and services to the investment management industry, has announced that Bill Few Financial Group, a Pittsburgh-based investment and wealth advisor and broker-dealer group, has migrated to Advent Portfolio Exchange for client relationship management functionalities.

Bill Few Financial Group, which has $1.2 billion in assets under management, participated in the client validation development process of Advent Portfolio Exchange last year. The company upgraded from Axys to Advent Portfolio Exchange, Advent's next-generation portfolio management platform that integrates front-office marketing and CRM functionality with back-office portfolio accounting and reporting operations.

Bill Few officials said moving to Advent Portfolio Exchange was done to improve the firm's client services, improve compliance and security, and help integrate front-office functions with back-office operations.

"A key benefit of Advent Portfolio Exchange right out of the box was the security functionality. We can set up user IDs and limit user access to specific accounts, which enables us to allow portfolio access to select affiliates," said John Jones, Chief Operating Officer of Bill Few Financial Group, adding that "the built-in CRM capabilities show us all the client's data in one integrated view."

Advent Portfolio Exchange is built on industry standard tools, including Microsoft's (News - Alert) SQL server for data security and simple IT functionality.

Last month Advent announced the second major upgrade to Advent Portfolio Exchange Version 1.5. Company officials say Version 1.5 enables asset managers and single or multi-family offices "the ability to provide outstanding client service in a single solution, thus eliminating the cost and complexity of managing multiple systems."

Advent Portfolio Exchange Version 1.0 launched in September 2005.

Version 1.5, company officials say, "provides asset management firms and family offices with access to a single platform for integrated portfolio and relationship management as well as a link to a customizable General Ledger interface."

Other features include the ability to manage multiple business lines on a single platform, search and select multiple clients or prospects for mass e-mails, and creation of custom dashboards at the portfolio level. There are also customized fields for automated reporting and a relationship-based workflow for CRM functionality.

In May Advent announced that Tower Asset Management, a Beverly Hills-based asset management firm, implemented Advent Portfolio Exchange for enhanced reporting, client service and global contact management capabilities.

The product is basically a browser-based end-to-end portfolio management platform that integrates portfolio management with front-office marketing and CRM functions, as well as back-office portfolio accounting and reporting operations.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

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