Hello, welcome to today's webinar. Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us. You really should not be bending over backwards with your tech stack to get it to play together nicely. Your tech stack should be catering to you, to your needs, and to the needs of your customers. Today, let's talk about the importance of an open architecture platform and how it can benefit you now and in the future. Hi, my name is Jeff Cleaver. I'm a senior product manager here at Orion. I have been working with Orion for over 18 years now. The last 10 of that have been hyper focused on integrations and client experience. I am very passionate about this topic. I have worked with hundreds of advisors who have told me about all the pains and the frustrations that come with getting their technologies to work together and I can relate on my day-to-day basis, I can relate with that and I love working on those problems. And helping solve them you deserve with the investment of your time and your energy and your focus into your business and your technology, that technology to work for you and for the work the way you expect it to work. And so we want to constantly Dr. innovation and drive and and raise the bar in terms of being able to help you reach that full potential with the choices that you've made for your tech stack. But the value of the open architectures tech stack is when you realize that there may be better options. Out there or something's just not working well for your organization that you have the ability to plug and play, to pull out and plug back in new technologies that will benefit not only your staff, but your customers as well. And to make sure that it works the way you're hoping that it will work. And so that it's it's so valuable to have that power of choice and that power of vision when it comes to your technology. And so with all those opportunities comes incredible amount of challenges and I hope that today. I can provide some various insights that I have learned over the years of working with the advisors that can help you get the most out of your technology and your integrations. Let's just quickly look at some of the agenda of some of the insights I'm going to share with you quickly today. First, we're going to talk about an internal assessment and how that really is the starting point for you, getting the most out of your open source or your open architecture platform. And #2, it's implementing implementation strategy. Let's talk about that for a little bit because change is hard and rolling out new technology in an open. A picture platform is only it's good as your ability to implement that, and if you're not able to plug and play, if you're not able to let go of old technology that's not working for you to be able to successfully implement new technology, you're going to stagnate. And then like I said, we'll follow up with some resources for success and how a rank can help you if you are are committed to taking some bold steps in terms of building your own integrations and connecting things together. When we look at an internal assessment, the very first thing we all need to do is identify our greatest needs. It's having honest conversations within our organizations within having honest conversations with ourself to pinpoint what those greatest needs are and to write them down. This is not just a discussion that is in the air, but rather something that we as organizations need to write down to communicate throughout the organization what are our biggest needs. But then once we identify what our pain points are, what's causing us the most friction within our tech stack, the second step needs is to taking the current audit of what we currently have and how the data flows. I don't know how many times I've talked to customers that when they're troubleshooting issues they they haven't identified, they have not written out how their data flows to be able to get to the root cause of some of their pain boy. And I don't just need in that moment where something's not working with with the user flow that they're doing. Days, but rather as an organizationally what's not working that's helping that's hindering their growth because they're not quite fully aware of the technology they are using if they're getting the most out of that and how their data flows. A simple exercise you can do that within our organization is building basically a mind map of your technology. Here I have a right at the middle because Orion can serve as that hub. That that hub not only your user experience, you can use Orion out of our core application. You can use the fullness of Orion within our CRM red tail and be able to do everything and have everything float from out of that application. But also your data, your data flows into Orion from your custodian and that that data from that custodian is going to power all of your. Systems and as you start to identify those key aspects of your business or those key areas in which technology is needed to facilitate your value message, write all those down, agree upon that within your organization, what are we using today? But now how are we using that? How do we plug in all the different details of our organization across these applications? And often as you do that, you're going to quickly identify, I didn't know the data moved that direction. I didn't know we didn't have that piece connected the way that it was supposed to be connected. Who's in charge of that, identifying those key stakeholders, those key people who are going to maximize that technology and to go and spend time researching? Why don't we have things connected this way? But this certainly helps when troubles arise because if something is not working in terms of your data or your process, knowing how things flow in and flow out of your technology is huge in determining where the breakdown in that process or breakdown in that data is. And if we're going to make swaps, if we're going to identify things that are not working and change them out. We need to know the flow of our data and the flow of our users so that way we make the right adjustments to that and are able to plug it right back into the framework. So with a couple of adjustments, we can usually figure out there's a lot more potential in our tech stack for moving data for moving users and to be able to do it in a streamlined, efficient way to maximize the tech that we're using. Alright, so step one is identifying your needs. Step 2 is auditing your current tech stack and how the data is flowing between #3 is our change is necessary. Now that we have a full assessment of how things are going and and what we're using. Do we need to make changes? Are there other options out there that can make a better impact on our business? To do this I recommend you as an organization get together and do as part of your internal assessment a prioritization matrix looks something like this and on your on the horizontal bar. We're talking about solutions that are going to be hard to easy to implement or identifying the amount of the amount of effort it's going to take to implant implement those solutions. And across the vertical bar from low to high, the amount of impact that is going to make on our people and sometimes that impact can be positive, sometimes that impact can be negative. But identifying which of our items are going to have the best chance to succeed and that sweet spot in the upper right hand corner of eye to eye of solutions that are easy to implement and have a high impact in our business, we need to get working on those right away. That's your top priority. Who's going to own that and how are we going to deliver on that? But if you have items that have a very low impact and are going to be hard to implement, implement, maybe now is not the right time with our organization to be able to implement those solutions. Either way, we've now documented what our key challenges are, what solutions we're going to work on implementing, and we can communicate that across the organization so that way we don't get paralyzed with too many priorities. We're all crystal clear on what we're executing on together. And last, constantly look ahead for future development. If you are working with the best out there in terms of tech platforms, they are constantly reinvesting within themselves, redefining the offerings that they provide. It is really important to constantly looking for that future development and what's coming out to to do that successfully. That's talking with your tech businesses, it's it is looking at their Rd. maps, it is looking at their release notes to know what is coming out. In terms of that future development that maybe right now you're not ready to implement, but knowing where they're, where they're headed and what you can use in the future, when you're evaluating any technology platform, there are three questions that I always recommend that you ask and not just evaluating future partners, evaluating your current partners, talking about taking that internal assessment, it's pretty critical that you constantly go back to your tech cloud platforms and ask these questions to know if there's still a good fit. For you #1, how does that integrate with my current technology? Integrations are evolving and changing and improving constantly. Knowing exactly how that integrates with all of your other current technology is a critical question to ask. Do they have an API? And I'm going to extend that out because technology in terms of integration is changing. At Orion, we've just deployed something called data streaming that allows massive amounts of data to be moved between platforms in real time. It's talking and. Asking your platforms, do you have an API? What is the technology that you're investing in to make sure that integration is not only possible, but that it's effective and seeing what they're doing to invest in their integration technology. And thirdly, what is on your tech road map? If you're spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on technology, you deserve to have a free conversation about where that platform is growing, what what are they doing, what opportunities are they seeing, what pain points are they solving for? And every good. Technology platform is going to have a road map of where they're headed and it's great to have a conversation around that. So you know if this is still a good fit for you and it's and is committing continually resources into getting better, not just in their technology but in the problems they're solving for their customers. All right. Well, how do we implement all that? We've decided we're going to make some changes or we've identified a a platform we really want to maximize. Well, how do we implement that effectively? Well, first of all, be ambitious but realistic. Set your goals high, go for goal, but also be realistic. Is the timing good for your business right now? Do we have the right resources, the right man or woman power to to accomplish this? Well, do we have what it takes to be able to accomplish those goals in the amount of time that we have? But be ambitious. Don't don't, don't cut yourself short. You are all the best advisors out there. Make sure that you give yourself that credit and go for something big. But #2 you determine what success looks like, determine what that measurement of success is, and write that down. Make sure those goals are very transparent across your organization. We are going to accomplish X within 90 days and we're going to accomplish phase two of that in 120 days. It's going to look like this. We're going to get this number of users on board it. We are going to have this technology increase our efficiency by 20%. You determine what that success looks like, but how those schools very clear. Always anticipate that change is challenging. It's not can be challenging. It is challenging for every organization, even the best out there. And if you can anticipate that you can be more empathetic towards your users, to your customers, hey changes coming and you can then get ahead, anticipate where that friction is going to get created and what you can do as an organization to to minimize that friction and some ways you can do that is having a beta test group rolling out your technology. Your new process your new whatever to a smaller group of either internal users or external users. To see how it goes, whether it's internal with new technology or you're deploying technology that services your customers, having that small group that can immediately tell you this is great. You're on the right track, good job. Thank you for doing this or you know this isn't going to work for this and this to do this successfully, go through your entire process of end to end on this so your internal users can go. But it really works well here. But in these areas here it's very clumsy and needs some, it needs a little bit more customization. Here or this is really slowing me down here so that way you can solve those problems before you roll it out to everyone. And that actually prepares you for this last one. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Because if you have that experience, you know what's working, what's not working. You know what causes that friction, you know what parts of that change are really challenging to implement. If you commute, if you get that information up front when you communicate, you can clear all that up in front. You can set proper expectations and you can make sure everybody's on the same page. You cannot over communicate with your internal organization or your external organization around these changes. How it's going to benefit them, what they should expect and what actions they need to take place take to be able to execute on that? I always recommend within every organization that they have someone called the tech ninja. Sometimes it's called tech guru. Maybe this is your tech champion, but this is that sole owner over that implementation. So often we just roll things out and people don't know who to talk to. They don't know who the expert is, they don't know who to go to for help. That's your tech ninja. This is your person who's passionate and excited about technology and loves using it on a daily basis. This is someone who's going to be that. Expert for implementation. They've gone through the training. They understand how it's supposed to work. They've been involved every step of the conversation, so they can help align your goals and your metrics of success for how it gets implemented. They're the ones who are going to communicate the timeline and the changes because they have a passionate person is going to be able to communicate those changes in a better way. That gets people optimistic about that change, and they're going to train the initial round of staff and clients to say this is what we're using and this is how we're going to use it. What are the requirements for a person like this? Well, they got to be knowledgeable about technology. Don't always assume that the youngest person in your organization is that tech forward person. We have technology people who are passionate and are good at using technology all across the ages. Men and women both alike, are exceptionally good at using technology. To find someone who is very knowledgeable about systems and processes, make sure that they're reliable, that they're going to show up, that they're going to communicate, they're going to follow through, but also flexible because technology. Demands that, and they open architecture demands that, but also make sure that they're creative and how they communicate, how they train. And then they do that with a lot of enthusiasm. And wrapping up a little bit here, just a couple of areas of focus that I'm going to bring our attention back to. When you are looking at your open architecture platform and looking to get the most out of it, you have to, as an organization, identify your strengths and weaknesses to make sure that you're using technology to boost those strengths and eliminate those weaknesses. And having an open architecture platform is the only way to make those changes in an efficient, but even as frictionless, not without any friction. But but with less friction in terms of making those changes to plug and play the right technology into your organization. You should be reviewing your tech stack, your integrations every 6 to 12 months. Things are changing weekly, monthly and you have to be able to make sure that, hey, are we missing anything? Are we getting the most out of that Ada Ryan, we have a team of experts that can help you with that, whether it's one of our internal or external strategic consultants, whether it is our SME integrations team, either our integrations product team would be would love to talk to you about making sure you're getting the most out of the integrations that you've chosen and if you've got other platforms you're looking at. Being where do they integrate and how do they integrate? Am I gonna make a good choice with that platform? And then collaborating with Orion to building out your integrations, whether that's building out that tech map we talked about earlier or whether you want to build your own integrations to the Orion API and and I would extend again there were data streaming. What that means is if you have an idea that you're not seeing executed on out there and you have the, the developers, the staff, the the vision to be able to execute on that Orion as an open architecture, not just in our plug and play of technologies. But the technology we use ourselves to be able to make those integrations as deep and as powerful as they are today, our API and our on our data streaming, you have the power and the accessibility to access that data and move it the way you want. And not just the data, but through our APIs. It's actually accomplishing the functions you would do within a Ryan through the application itself. You can automate that through the API directly, whether that's updating accounts, updating clients, rebalancing. Assigning different models, having an end to end onboarding flow that goes through a proposal that then generates the new account information Arian that could then potentially even push that information into your custodian and then be able to have that data all flow back into Orion. All of that is possible by using their own API. So really the sky is the limit and you deserve a tech platform that is open in such a way that even if you're the one who has the idea that you're able to execute on it, if you've got the resources and the desire to do that, we'd love to talk to you more about that if you're interest that interests you. Hopefully you've seen just the benefit of having an open source or open architecture platform to give you the power to make the right changes and to be able to grow and power your business the way you want to. Thank you for your time. I appreciate this opportunity to talk with you and I hope I get to talk with you directly here soon. _1732268462650