How Orion Advisor Services became a mobile device pioneer and how competitors plan to react

Brooke’s Note: RIABiz CTO Nevin Freeman and I both participated in an interview and demo of Orion’s new mobile app on Tuesday with Eric Clarke, president of Orion Advisor Services. My goal was to write the strategic piece — including getting responses from competitors. Nevin’s goal was to write a review from his perspective as a seasoned technologist. If you read both, you’ll see overlap but we hope you’ll gain unique insights from each.

Eric Clarke looks for every edge to make his portfolio management systems competitive in a field still dominated by Advent Software and Schwab PortfolioCenter.

The founder and President of Orion Advisor Services added video to his system on the heels of creating a Facebook-style “Wall” over the course of the last nine months. Both have their fans, he says. The video can be used by advisors to give market commentary to clients and the Wall keeps advisors apprised of the most relevant happenings in client accounts. Now, he’s making accessibility by mobile means a big strategic priority with the development of an Orion app for Droids, iPads and the like.

As recently as October, however, Clarke was skeptical that the mobile revolution was the next big thing. “I was not a believer that there was much to it,” he says.

Flawed research

Then he realized that his research was flawed. Clarke was basing his vision on how he and his coworkers received information on a mobile basis– using the BlackBerry platform. Its constraints in accessing the Internet made him believe that the mobile revolution was more hype than happening.

“It’s a wonderful email and text message machine, but they’re difficult and slow when it comes to web browsing,” he says. “Even the BlackBerry Storms have limited functionality.”

What turned the tide in the Orion team’s thinking was that in their personal lives they began to use iPads, Droids and other non-Research-in-Motion technology.

The Orion Mobile App is available to the 220 practices who use his Omaha, Neb.,-based company’s portfolio accounting services. Those practices encompass 10,000 advisors with 350,000 accounts and $50 billion of assets under management because Orion has TAMPs among its clients that use IARs for distribution.

Option to charge clients

Advisors who want the app (and are Orion users) merely inform the company, which in turn registers them with Apple’s App store.

Another pioneer among portfolio management system for mobile apps is Black Diamond Performance Reporting of Jacksonville, Fla., which released BlueSky Mobile this fall. See: Black Diamond releases BlueSky Mobile for the iPad.

“The app and our plans for mobile come up in just about every prospect discussion I have,” says David Welling, chief solutions officer of Black Diamond. “In my 15 years in the RIA industry, this is the most interest in a new technology that I have seen. We have close to 30% of our clients using the iPad app already, have given away close to 50 ipads to encourage folks to use the app and provide feedback.”

David Welling: We have close to
30% of our clients using thre
iPad app already.

This technological advance is of material significance, according to Aaron Grey, director of operations for Denver (Colo.) Money Manager, which manages $90 million and has been an Orion customer since 2003.

“It’s another example of how Orion is giving us technology that’s as good or better than the wirehouses,” he says. “People working with us don’t have to sacrifice anything in terms of life’s little conveniences.”

Orion currently has four advisors using the App since it was made available on Monday. Denver Money Manager was an early adopter.

Bill Winterberg, principal of FPPad.com of Dallas, Texas, says that apps go beyond mobility and convenience into the realm of flat-out better technology. “Websites aren’t working so well,” he says. “I don’t think — perhaps with the exception of Tamarac and what they’re doing with Microsoft — that I’ve seen client access that’s clean and easy to use. If you have the app, all you have to do is enter the app. Just the first time you enter your credentials.” (Winterberg did his own demo of Orion Mobile App today and will publish his thoughts on his website. He called me after his demo with Clarke to let me know that the Orion app isn’t quite as simple as, for instance, Mint.com in that it only remembers the user ID and not the password. Mint.com’s app remembers both.)

To see Winterberg’s review of the iPad, see: Bill Winterberg outlines the potential benefits and shortcomings of the Apple iPad for advisors

Bill Winterberg: Websites aren’t working so
well.

Now that Orion has gotten the mobile app ahead of some of its big competitors, Clarke believes he’s likely to hold that edge for a while – for the same reason it has a differentiating sales pitch for its non-mobile business.

“Will Advent and (Schwab) PortfolioCenter come out with an App?” he asks. “Considering they haven’t come up with a web portal yet, I doubt it.”

Mobile edge over PMS competitors

What Clarke means is that vendors like Orion and Black Diamond have an easier time bundling up portfolio data into a mobile app than some of their competitors, since all of the data is already stored on their central servers. All they need to do to develop a mobile app is to build a new HTML interface for viewing the data on a small screen, and then wrap that inside an application that runs on the popular mobile platforms. For vendors that have all or some of their advisors running desktop software, getting the portfolio data to a mobile device over the Internet is much less straightforward. See: A closer look at Orion Advisor Services’ software and what’s in store for its next release.

Advent Software declined to comment about its plans for a mobile app. I also reached out to Black Diamond and have yet to hear back.

Lindsay Tiles, spokeswoman for Schwab Advisor Services had this to say in response to a query about plans for a mobile app for Schwab PortfolioCenter.

“Mobile will come into play as part of our strategy with Schwab Intelligent Integration. For example, we’ll be integrating with CRM partners that have apps for advisors. And the turnkey solution we are developing, Schwab OneView Office, will include a web portal and mobile capabilities.”

For more on Schwab Intelligent Integration, see: Schwab chooses some giant software partners, apparently with big RIAs in mind.

Morningstar has a mobile app for retail use right now on iPhone and Blackberry that allows access to its research, articles, news and accounts that subscribers set up online.

It is in the process of adapting this retail App so that advisors can also access client accounts from Morningstar Office.

This professional app is in Beta for Android right now. Morningstar plans to officially release this app for iPhone/iPad/Android/BlackBerry around June or July.

“We definitely understand the importance that mobile apps play, and will play, in advisors’ roles of guiding clients—and as such, we are very committed to continuing to develop the tools and technology that helps them help their clients,” says Michael Wilson, director of marketing for Morningstar Office.

Michael Wilson: We definitely understand the
importance that mobile apps play.

One irony of the new Orion App is that advisors so far are expressing most excitement about it for its marketing value, Clarke says. In the Apple App store, the technology is not listed under Orion but under the RIA practices name. Advisors are excited about the cachet that comes along with this. “Clients can say: my advisor has its own App.” It’s also listed under Orion for advisors.

Another advantage of having it on the App store under the advisors name: the firm can charge clients for the service. No RIA has done this yet but Clarke says that he expects that some will.

One reason, the technological side may be trumped by marketing for now is that clients and advisors are somewhat limited in what they can access – mostly performance reports.

Just phase one

“This is a limited subset of what we’re trying to push out,” Clarke says. “This is just phase one; we’ll be migrating more functionality.”

As for the BlackBerries that proved a red herring for assessing the mobile revolution in the Orion ecosystem: they are being slowly phased out with about half of the company’s employees now on the technology of other providers.

Still, Clarke is considering one final nod to the pioneer in mobile technology.

“We’re debating whether to have an app in the Blackberry store,”’ he says.