Technology is one of the key differentiators when it comes to improving efficiency. With the advent of smart phones and tablets, the productivity of a financial adviser has increased significantly. I have been using Apple iPhone and iPad (I am little biased towards Apple) for my business requirements for the last two years and I find them quite convenient. I would in fact owe 20% of my business success to these gadgets.
Here are 5 apps which I believe each adviser should definitely check out:
1. Dropbox - Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again! Just Download Dropbox on your PC and put all your files in the folder and view it anywhere on your Phone (works on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, iPad, Kindle) or your tablet. What more, you get 2.25 GB space free when you sign up. You can go for paid business plans if you want more space. (www.dropbox.com)
2. My Contacts Back up - My Contacts Backup is the easiest way to backup and restore your contacts all from your phone without needing a computer or synchronization. You can backup all your contacts with a single touch and send them to yourself as a vcf attachment via email. All contacts can then easily be restored any time by simply opening the vcf file in your mailbox. Works with both iPhone and Android.
(http://mycontactsbackup.globile.biz/)
3. Genius Scan – Many a times we are at our clients place and we need to scan an important document like PAN card, Passport etc. It’s very inconvenient to ask the client to email us or we need to go to a nearby cybercafé and get it done.
Genius Scan turns your smart phone into a pocket scanner. It enables you to quickly scan documents on the go and email the scans as JPEG or PDF. In addition to email, Genius Scan provides easy upload to Box, Dropbox, Evernote or any other cloud service app installed on your Android / iPhone. It allows you to build PDF documents with multiple scans.
4. SIP Calculator: We all know the value of SIP in the long term. Earlier we need to carry SIP wheels with us to show our clients various scenarios. Now just this app would do. It’s a wonderful application to compute your SIP value. Enter your monthly investment amount, expected return (in %) and the number of years that you plan to invest to compute the target amount. Just move the slider to set the number of years and expected returns. Available for both Android and iPhone.
Scan biz cards: As an adviser, we meet lot of prospects and we exchange business cards at various networking forums. Are you tired of entering the data manually into your phone? ScanBizCards scans business cards to your smart phone and Outlook contacts - but goes much beyond, and it is also relevant to the iPad, Cloud-enabled and enabling access to your cards from any browser. It works with iPhone, Android and Windows phone and you can websync with any desktop. (http://www.scanbizcards.com/home)
Gajendra Kothari, CFA, CAIA, ICFA is Managing Director & CEO of Etica Wealth Management. He can be reached at www.eticawealth.com
The views expressed in this article are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cafemutual.
