E*Assist Captures New Market Opportunity in the Cloud with Force.com

E*Assist LLC is a new company that develops business growth and compliance management solutions for the financial advisory community – leveraging cloud computing.  When the founders saw an opportunity for a total practice management system for wealth advisors, they built a new solution from the ground up using Force.com as the foundation—in less than three months.

It all began when E*Assist CEO Ted Tsung, an online trading pioneer, noticed profound changes taking place in the wealth management field. As the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, unprecedented numbers of people are seeking financial advice; market uncertainties are also driving a growing need for guidance. With financial services facing increased regulation and creating a need for additional processes, Tsung saw an opportunity to help wealth advisors (including independent broker dealers, registered investment advisors or RIAs, and independent agents) increase productivity and sustain growth--while managing the complexities of today’s regulatory marketplace.

By building from scratch, company founders were free to think out of the box. Tsung quickly determined that the best way to serve the market was to build his business in the cloud. And as the fastest platform for building and deploying enterprise applications, Force.com was the ideal choice to meet the new company’s needs.

The Force.com Choice

“We wanted to do something revolutionary by designing a practice management system that put the customer at the center,” explains Jeremy Condie, president of E*Assist. “It was immediately obvious that building this system on Force.com would be the fastest way to get from idea to reality.

Condie and Tsung were confident that Force.com could support a complete solution that would encompass the entire client lifecycle, which includes prospecting, on boarding, portfolio creation, and more. Previously, most financial advisors used disparate, unrelated applications — including email, compliance, CRM, and portfolio management — making it difficult to synthesize information or provide efficient service.

“Force.com, which is capable of both complex customizations and virtually plug and play integrations, had the functionality E*Assist needed,” Condie says. “When users of our Force.com-based solution bring up a client record they can immediately see all relevant information, including how the client’s assets are performing.”

Another key reason why E*Assist chose Force.com? Inherent support for collaboration. An on-demand solution is easy to deploy – all that’s required is a browser – and upgrades are transparent, with no integration disruptions, intricate technologies dependencies, or vendor lock-in. “We needed a solution that could be deployed across disparate companies and geographies, and provide immediate integration with their systems,” says Condie. “With Force.com we could deliver that right away. If we’d tried to develop it from scratch, it could have taken years—or more.”

Also crucial was Force.com’s proven scalability, reliability, and security. “This is very, very important data. We couldn’t dream of building a total practice management solution without the proven capabilities of Force.com,” says Condie.

Force.com provides best in class service delivery— protecting data from physical loss and unauthorized use, and guaranteeing that it is always available. This ensures E*Assist can maintain acceptable service delivery as its user base grows. “With Force.com we don’t have to worry about building and maintaining the back end,” says Condie. “So we’re free to focus on providing a true business solution.”

Force.com Advantages

The decision to use Force.com has proven to be the right one for E*Assist.

Company founders have been especially pleased with the platform’s speed and flexibility, and how it helps them outmaneuver the competition. “It took just three months for us to complete our first release,” says Tsung. “Using Java or .NET, it would have taken at least nine months to develop a solution with the same functionality. It is amazing how quickly Force.com allows us to produce and turn around custom solutions and new capabilities for our customers in the cloud. The difference is like night and day.  Force.com allows us to adjust our data model and develop functional prototypes in hours instead of weeks.”

E*Assist has also experienced significant development cost savings with Force.com. Tsung estimates that it would have cost the company at least three times as much in development costs alone to use .NET or Java. And with Force.com, E*Assist doesn’t need to invest in hardware and software to deliver its products, or in the manpower needed to maintain them. “The saving for database and Web presentation that Force.com provides us is at least $1 million each year,” Tsung adds.

These savings have enabled the company to provide customers with competitive pricing models.  Unlike other products targeting the wealth management industry, E*Assist does not charge consulting, integration, or customization fees; clients are only charged a monthly subscription fee. This makes E*Assist even more attractive to potential customers.

Capturing the Market

E*Assist’s innovative solution is already seeing success in the marketplace. Just months into marketing its new solution, the company signed more than 10 new clients including advisory firms, broker-dealers, and investment banks.

Part of that success stems from the company’s decision to list its application on the Force.com AppExchange. Exposure on the online marketplace enables E*Assist to capture high-quality leads, a number of which have turned into sales. “The AppExchange is a great marketing capability,” says Condie. “It is working very well for us.”

As E*Assist’s founders have learned, the sky’s the limit when it comes to finding new opportunities in the cloud. “We originally conceived our product as a solution for individual advisors, in relatively small offices,” Condie remarks. “But as the concept of cloud computing catches on in enterprise, we’re getting a lot of interest from large financial institutions. These are folks with sophisticated systems and complex technologies, who appreciate the benefits that E*Assist and Force.com have to offer.”

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