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

Firms managing more than a handful of accounts are challenged with handling the generation, creation, and distribution of client reports. Whether it is daily, monthly, or quarterly, printed, mailed, or hosted on a client portal, Arcons’ AdvisorPortal and clientPortal are the solutions for you. They are perfect for handling the complexities of managing the automation of the entire reporting lifecycle with great ease.

AdvisorPortal can be used by firms to provide their advisors with one place to view all their relationships, accounts, holdings, transactions, and graphical views of all this data. Advisors can analyze holdings while on a call with the client or remember track actions needed to be performed for clients all in one place.

AdvisorPortal allows you to access all contracts, documents, and correspondence. It is securely stored and easily searchable. No need to fax documents or to make copies, with your secure document vault you can easily share your advisor’s agreement, account opening documents, transfer form, tax returns, wills, and trusts, electronically with clients, other professionals, or family members. You and the clients are alerted when new documents are posted. There are no limits on how many documents you can store!

In the past few weeks, we’ve all heard about the spikes in volume and volatility in the financial markets. Product latency in the cloud has been one factor that has affected many financial technology vendors in recent times. Some applications and services have been rendered completely unavailable during critical periods.

Rebalancing your portfolios is hard enough under normal conditions. Rebalancing solutions should be easy to use, feature-rich, and efficient. They should also be built to handle increased trading and rebalancing volumes.
Built for the cloud, and deployed on Microsoft’s Azure platform, tradePort is Arcons’ answer for an investment management firm’s deployment of their investment strategies.

Arcons’ tradePort is built on Microsoft’s .NET framework and has a robust feature set, including:

• Cash Management
• Householding
• Tolerance Banding and Thresholds
• Tax Loss Harvesting
• Wash Sale
• Unlimited portfolio models
• Super models- composites
• Flexible integration
• FIX enabled

World class software and proven reliability from the industry veterans at Arcons Technology.

Arcons Technology, has been in the financial technology industry for over two decades. Its latest offering is a Cash Flow Projection tool for Single Family Offices (SFO) and multi-family offices (MFO). This tool accurately forecasts the cash flows for all their account obligations.

The Cash Flow tool allows users to manage schedules, trackers, and scenarios.

• Schedules are series of cash flow projections that are expected to happen
• Fourteen Trackers are built in and include Gifts, Donations, Political Contributions, Trust Payments, Loans
• Scenarios combine one or more schedules together in order to project and model their impact

With the Cash Flow tool users have the ability to easily setup other commitments, like an investment or a charity that you expect to be drawn from the next few quarters. Users can set up a pandemic scenario or a generous gifting scenario reflecting different economic conditions. Users could also preview what would happen if all the private equity schedules and draw downs happen at once, and none of the distributions occur.

Main features of Cash Flow projection:

• Cash Rebalancing: Rebalancing the cash is supported based on the thresholds applicable.
• Cash Flow Transactions Approval: The system allows approving transactions before sending them to blotters for cash movement across accounts.
• Forecast cash needs: Forecasting is done on a scenario level for Legal entities with multiple schedules.
• Track balances: Cash Flow keeps track of the balances across portfolios. Balances include cash balances, custodial positions and alternative investment positions.
• Integration: Cash flow tool is fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics® and Salesforce® CRM systems.