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"Real Time Goes Prime Time" NEW YORK - June 21, 2005 - In an increasingly competitive marketplace for financial advisers, Relegence Corporation (booth 1429) is offering an edge. The real-time news and information vendor is coming to the SIA show with a new offering called Client Track. The company's newest product will provide a contextual meaning to a client's portfolio by providing pertinent news about their portfolio, explains Steve Fadem, Relegence's president and CEO. "If you look at our core product, First Track, as a way to monitor things that are happening that are important to a trader; this takes it a step further to those who want to reach out to their end users." Instead of trying to nuzzle its way into the overcrowded customer-relationship-management arena, Fadem says Relegence has built Client Track to work alongside systems like Siebel or Salesforce.com. "We're not looking to get into the CRM space," he explains. "This is about linking client information within your CRM tool to real-time news about clients' portfolios." Client Track, which will use the same sorting technology the company uses in First Track, offers a variety of tabs containing real-time information on a client's portfolio. In addition to My Portfolio, which provides news about a client's actual holdings, financial advisers can choose the My Interests tab to view news on alternative, but relevant, stocks that may not be in a client's current holdings, and My Firm's Research on any of those held or interested stocks. The product also gets personal, though, says Fadem. A Hometown tab reveals local information that may be important to the client, such as the front-page news in his or her city, while His/Her Workplace offers insight into a client's daily grind. Tabs like Sports or Personal Touch enable a financial adviser to talk about the just-ended Yankee game or a new Cancer drug in the marketplace. Although real-time data is vital for traders, Sang Lee, founder and managing partner at Boston-based Aite Group, questions its vitality for financial analysts. "How important is real-time data for financial analysts to get their jobs done? It certainly wouldn't be a bad thing, but it depends on the cost," he says. "It's certainly not a prerequisite to get their jobs done, but it could be useful in terms of a customer-management tool." Fadem argues, though, that enhanced customer relationships are the lifeblood of a financial analyst, justifying incremental costs. "In the old days, the brokers were about buying and selling all day," he says. "But now that financial advisers are paid on assets, the landscape has evolved into building relationships." Client Track can be integrated into existing CRM platforms, says Fadem, if an institution's existing system is advanced enough to provide an import. If an institution's CRM system doesn't have that ability, Fadem says, it's just a matter of manual population for each client, a process he says takes just a few minutes. Client Track has unlimited scalability and is priced per user.
By Jessica Pallay
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