I’m a big fan of walking for hours daily, up and down the various hills dotting the San Francisco Bay Area. I listen to multiple books on Audible during the walks. Today, I finished listening to “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals”, by Oliver Berkeman, a book I would recommend to everyone. Most Audible authors publish a downloadable PDF summary of their book which lays out the salient ideas, however, this book does not offer a PDF.

This relatively short book is read by the author over about five hours. It is definitely a worthwhile way to spend five hours. The author posts many related good ideas in the form of blog posts at: https://www.oliverburkeman.com/posts.  The appendix of the book has ten take aways. The ninth one is titled, ‘Cultivate instantaneous generosity’, in which the author urges us to act on positive impulses that come to mind without delay, be it helping someone with money, advice, encouragement or calling a friend/relative to express gratitude. Without actions, ideas are good intentions that never see the light of day.

On a similar note, if you are a financial advisor, RIA, wealth or a hedge fund manager, when you think of automating your billing, trading, client or advisor portals, please act on it. A quick call or contact from our website www.arconstech.com day or night, can help you reclaim a few of the average 4,000 weeks of life we are all blessed with.

Send us an email at info@arconstech.com, message us on LinkedIn or Twitter or call us at 650-533-3452

The news cycle past week has been abuzz with the cancellation of over 10,000 Southwest airlines flights. I personally was affected by it. I experienced a flight cancellation within minutes of being issued a boarding pass this Christmas Eve. The over 3,000 passengers awaiting rebooking stood in a line stretching almost a mile long at the Phoenix airport.

This had me thinking of a good experience I recently had with Southwest. A month ago, Southwest offered a big email discount, using which I purchased airfare for mid-January ‘23. A couple of weeks later, Southwest notified they had canceled our flight and issued a refund. I then remembered that I had booked the exact same tickets a few months ago (same travelers, destination and dates). Southwest had discovered it, and proactively returned my money. They also smartly discarded the flights with multiple legs and kept only the nonstop flights. This clearly showcases Southwest’s technology for customer satisfaction. In the news, I read of their missing technology for crew scheduling and excessive reliance on manual processes such as spreadsheets exchange across the network for managing crew availability.

This is akin to the issue I encounter in my business. Many of our prospects, who are financial advisors or wealth managers, handling hundreds of millions of dollars, often use spreadsheets for client billing– a complex problem. However, once they implement our solution, their error rate reduces and efficiency improves drastically. Our solution pays for itself, oftentimes our clients discover accounts which have been incorrectly charged or not charged for months or years. Check out our billing solution called billPort on www.arconstech.com. And please do suggest us to advisory firms who could benefit.

Have a safe and Happy New Year! May Southwest and all of us become more efficient, less manual in 2023.

Send us an email at info@arconstech.com, message us on LinkedIn or Twitter or call us at 650-533-3452

Productivity experts advise against multitasking. However, life has so many demands that single tasking is untenable. I tend to think of multitasking as multi-acting or quick serial task-switching.

 Luckily, in the past 15+ years, technology has given us so many tools and apps, that “good” multitasking is possible. The devices that have enabled it like the iPhone, Air Pods, smart watch, Ring, Aura, Bluetooth equipped products like Muse, Freestyle libre and services like Siri, Zoom, Uber, Tesla AutoPilot or Coursera have untethered us, freed us from thinking of work as something that can just be done only while sitting down at our work desk.

 A recent example of “multi” multitasking I did was hiking 16 miles on a trail with 6 peaks while wearing a weighted vest, alternating between zoom calls, working on a Coursera course, taking quizzes while monitoring blood sugar with Freestyle Libre, responding to text messages and occasional phone calls, remotely opening the garage door for delivery and front door for cleaning service, culminating in reserving a spot for a nice lunch post hike. What a rush it was to get so much use out of time!

 Avoiding bad multitasking still needs discipline & judgement, e.g., not texting in presence of friends & family.

 At Arcons, our products automate your tasks so you can get away from duplicate data entry, avoiding errors and find joy in everyday work tasks.

 In sum, to productivity experts, poohpoohing multitasking, I say, Si, se puede!

 What ideas and tools are you using to get more use of your time?

 #productivity #multitasking #gettingitdone #automation

Send us an email at info@arconstech.com, message us on LinkedIn or Twitter or call us at 650-533-3452

A comprehensive ALL-IN-ONE billing, reporting, advisor/client portal, trading and CRM solution.

Features:

Solutions that scale with advisor needs

Solutions that are flexible and can easily integrate with your existing tech stack

Solutions that can be purchased separately or in a bundle

Solutions that are secure and compliant

Send us an email at info@arconstech.com, message us on LinkedIn or Twitter or call us at 650-533-3452

It will allow you to include a client’s crypto assets as part of the overall portfolio’s invoice and statement.

You can now bill on client’s holdings including crypto assets. Set up the appropriate fee schedule for crypto assets, prices are automatically updated daily and when it is time to bill, create the invoice that will include ALL traditional and crypto assets beautifully listed on ONE INVOICE. 

And with the Arcons Technology client/advisor portal, the invoices can seamlessly be delivered into the client’s document vault in the portal saving time and costs.

 

Send us an email at info@arconstech.com, message us on LinkedIn or Twitter or call us at 650-533-3452

What distinguishes businesses from being either a total catastrophe or pinnacle of success?

It all comes down to one thing: making good decisions. And to make good decisions, you must understand your business from top to bottom.

Technology has transformed the way financial companies’ function. How can we use technology to help you make better decisions for the success of your company?

Many organizations still function on the traditional methods of billings and transactions. Imagine the amount of work it takes to manually track the three thousand plus accounts and the special conditions and requirements that each has. It’s hours and hours of busy, tiring work.

However, by switching over to billing software, you will not only automate tasks but also increase efficiency and accuracy. This is where Arcons’ billPort comes in. Our billing service will keep track of all your accounts and using pre-defined parameters automatically check the valuation and classify the accounts and generate the bill.

Since the process is automated, your company will be more precise, error-free, efficient, and will not miss any potential revenue. Now you can rely on Arcons’ billPort to take care of the billing and you can focus on what’s important to you.

Benefits of having Arcons billing services:

• Time efficient
• Eliminates human errors
• Cost-effective
• Can avoid double invoicing
• Send invoices immediately
• Promotes faster payment

Arcons technology is a leading provider of investment management solutions since 1998.

This month we launched a free trial version for billPort which is a comprehensive solution for client billing and revenue sharing. It integrates with porfolio management systems like Schwab’s PortfolioCenter, APX, Axys, Black diamond etc. and with custodians such as TD Ameritrade, Schwab, Fidelity, etc. for seamless data transfers. Firm looking for this solution will now be able to play with it for a month and see how it fits their needs. They will able to perform all activities, like create fee schedules, create households, define revenue sharing rules, do the billing and create invoices.

The best part of this trial is that a starter data set of 70 households with 200 accounts is prepopulated for you. You will simply need to sign up and start using the solution. No need to setup households or add accounts. In a few button clicks, you are good to go and start exploring the features.

Click here to register for a free trial for billing.

Happy exploring!