Tag Archive: Axys


The Future of Axys

Filed under: Axys, Client Communication, Custom Reporting, Portfolio Management Systems — 1 Comment
August 27, 2013

Earlier this year, Advent sent an alert to Axys users about Windows 8 issues and how to deal with them, as an interim solution to problems that Windows 8 users can face.  It is good that Advent is proactively alerting users, but I am not recommending that any of my clients move to Windows 8 just yet. Upgrading your office to Windows 8 is premature, unless you are willing to pay the premium and deal with the frustrations typically associated with being an early adopter of the latest Windows operating system.

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If your firm uses Axys, you may be wondering whether a new release is in the works. Though Advent hasn’t publicly set a release date for the next version yet, I expect they soon will. Based on what Advent has done in the past, users should expect a 3.9 release in the near future. That release will likely support Office 2013, and Adobe Acrobat 11, and may also feature improved Windows 8 compatibility.

Though these types of updates seem minimal, they have more substance than you might think. Axys remains a very functional and cost-efficient option for advisors. Compound reports generated in Axys 3.8.5 using Excel 2010 graphs rival output from APX at a fraction of the cost. If your compound reports look dated, find out what version of Excel you are using. Using the latest version of Excel in conjunction with a version of Axys that supports it can give your reports a newer look and feel.

Axys 4?

I would like to think that Axys 4 is in the works, but a major revision would probably mean a name change – perhaps “Cloud Axys?” Longer-term, expect Axys to undergo a technology transformation if Advent wants to keep the platform alive and decides to commit greater resources to future updates that keep pace with technology trends. While the number of APX, Geneva and Black Diamond users have continued to grow, Axys users still account for a considerable number of Advent’s clients.

Historically, Axys was the lynchpin of Advent Software’s success and center of their hub of solutions for their customers. Replacing the PMS of an investment advisor is more complicated than it seems.  It impacts many of the systems at an advisor’s office, as well as the people you need to support your business, the skills they need, and what third-party solutions are available.

It would be ideal for Advent if Axys customers moved to another Advent product in the future. Those conversions and newer software licensing agreements would generate more income, while eventually allowing Advent to phase out Axys without major renovations.  However, Axys users looking at APX, Black Diamond and Geneva don’t always see a clear path.

In the past two years, Tamarac/Envestnet and other competitors have won over some Axys customers. My firsthand knowledge of a couple of advisors who made the move to Tamarac leads me to believe that Advent didn’t need to lose these customers. Through better communication, negotiation or product positioning, they could have kept the business.  On that note, I spoke with an Axys user last week that requested an APX quote after seeing a demo in Q2 and never got one.

Perception is Reality

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“Be where your enemy is not.” -Sun Tzu

Current Axys users represent a ground of contention that will not be ignored by Advent’s competitors and should not be ignored by Advent. At stake is the perception of who provides the very best PMS platforms for investment advisors.  Advent may be willing to let some of their Axys clients go quietly, but in doing so they risk losing those relationships long-term, if not permanently, as well as other advisors in their sphere of influence.  Axys users represent a critical mass that could fuel the growth of  Advent’s competition in the near future.  Left unchecked, Advent competitors garnering Axys users now could ultimately vie for current APX, Geneva, and Black Diamond users down the road.

Obviously, Advent cannot be all things to all customers, but they can make a better effort to keep existing Axys clients in the fold.  In order to do so, Advent must improve communications with Axys users, affirm their commitment to Axys, and continue to add technology enhancements to Axys on a regular basis.

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About the Author: Kevin Shea is President of InfoSystems Integrated, Inc. (ISI); ISI provides a wide variety of outsourced IT solutions to investment advisors nationwide.

For details, please visit isitc.com, contact Kevin Shea via phone at 617-720-3400 x202 or e-mail at kshea@isitc.com.

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A New SEC Requirement for 13F Reports – XML

Filed under: APX, Axys, Compliance, Portfolio Management Systems — Leave a comment
August 14, 2013

iStock_000021815840XSmallAll things change – even things at the SEC.   Previously, investment managers could upload text (aka ASCII) files detailing their holdings to Edgar.  This quarter, a change was made, requiring the file to be formatted in XML.  Investors have 45 days from the end of the quarter to file their 13F reports, so Q2 reports are due today.

Some users that attempted to get these reports done earlier in Q3 expressed frustration with the XML issue and their ability to get more proactive assistance from Advent to address it.  Last week, as the filing deadline approached, Advent reached out to clients, alerting them of the change and directing them to an ASCII to XML conversion tool to facilitate the process.  In my own experience with Advent’s support team, I found them both helpful and knowledgeable in regard to the 13F reporting issues.

Though Advent’s documentation states that the 13F report and conversion tool requires Axys 3.8.5 or higher, the report from Axys 3.8.5 worked fine when we used it on Axys 3.7 with a client.  APX users can use the same utility.  The utility was simple to use and worked well;  the biggest challenge for users is finding the file they need to convert.

The 13F reporting mechanism is functional, but the setup seems cryptic and disjointed.  First-time users expecting a turn-key, intuitive solution will be disappointed.  Fortunately, the details of what is required to produce 13F reports are well-documented in Advent’s help file.

How 13F Reporting Works…

By default, the 13F report only includes the equity asset class.   It is possible to exclude individual securities through the use of the 13F.est file, but it is not possible to include individual securities.  Additional asset classes may be added.  Report-specific labels must be added to the 13F portfolio file to make the report work properly.

When the supporting files are properly configured, the report produces detailed holdings and simultaneously generates an inftable.txt file with the same information.  This file is placed in the specific user folder (i.g. f:\axys3\users\amy) of the person running the report on the network version of Axys or the root folder of Axys on the single-user version of Axys.  When users have generated a 13F report without missing data or error messages, they are ready run to the conversion utility to produce the inftable.xml file and upload the information to the Edgar site.

This quarter, running and filing 13F reports was more challenging than it has been in the past, since users were forced to correctly implement the 13F report in order to successfully generate an XML file.  Based on my experience with users, this was something they had not been doing in the past.  Most users would run the report to get something close to what they needed and then manually modify the text file, rather than keep all of the information updated in the 13F portfolio and 13F.est files.  Going forward, the process will still require that new securities and relevant asset classes be classified specifically for the 13F report, but future report runs should be simpler.

For more info on 13F reporting, refer to the SEC’s document detailing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

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About the Author: Kevin Shea is President of InfoSystems Integrated, Inc. (ISI); ISI provides a wide variety of outsourced IT solutions to investment advisors nationwide.

For details, please visit isitc.com, contact Kevin Shea via phone at 617-720-3400 x202 or e-mail at kshea@isitc.com.

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Getting Data In and Out of Advent APX and Axys

Filed under: APX, Axys, Data Conversion, open systems, Portfolio Management Systems, SQL Server — Leave a comment
April 25, 2013

iStock_000011255731XSmallWhen Advent first introduced The Professional Portfolio (aka Proport) 25 years ago, one feature that contributed  largely to its long-term success was the ability to get data in and out of the program easily.  Advent software has continued to make this feature a priority throughout every iteration of their original portfolio management product line.

In contrast competing products like Centerpiece, which would eventually be purchased by Schwab and rebranded Portfolio Center, appeared to be a black box.  You could see what was being calculated, but could not see the components of the calculation.

Proport files were stored in an open text format and could be easily read and written as necessary.  Axys v1.x, Advent’s premier Windows product at the time, maintained a similar open file structure.  Axys v2.x was the first version to implement a binary file format.  At the time, some users were concerned that the format change would complicate maintenance of existing customized solutions and inhibit their ability to continue to create solutions that exchanged data with Advent’s portfolio management system.

Firms were slow to embrace Axys v2.x and some never upgraded to it.  Perhaps it was concern over the new file formats.  Instead, most firms eventually upgraded to Axys v3.x. Concerns about the format change were moot since Advent also introduced IMEX, which allowed users to import and export files in CSV, tab, and fixed formats.

Exceptions apply, but the IMEX tool facilitates the ability to move data in and out of Axys with relative ease.  The features of IMEX combined with the ability to import transaction and label data through the trade blotter provide a comprehensive means to get fundemental data in and out of Advent Axys and APX.  Additional methods of importing and exporting data follow:

Axys users may write or read data directly to data files if they have knowledge of the underlying data format.  However, this is not a best practice due to changing file formats between versions.  For example, upgrading from Axys v3.7 to v3.8 requires a file conversion process.  Some of the resulting Axys v3.8 files have a different file format, so any process directly writing or reading these files would need to be updated to take the new file formats into account.

APX users may

  1. query the APX database via Excel (and other software programs).
  2. write SSRS or Crystal reports to extract data.
  3. use many other SQL based tools to export and import selected data.

Axys and APX users can

  1. export reports directly to Excel with the push of a button or create a macro that stores report output in XLS and other file formats.
  2. create custom reports via Report Writer Pro, which can easily be changed to CSV format.
  3. modify existing replang reports to build CSV, other text formats, and various Advent file formats.
  4. use third-party Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) products like xPort.

APX (v1.x to v4.x) maintains the functionality of IMEX, but the ability to generate files in a fixed format has been eliminated.  In addition, you can export data to an Axys v3 format.

Due to these capabilities and a host of other Advent features that facilitate automation and integration, Axys and APX users as well as third-party vendors like ISITC.com have developed many custom solutions utilizing Advent Software’s infrastructure to address day-to-day investment operations workflow and reporting requirements.  The building blocks of these solutions faciliate subsequent projects and allow investment firms to further enhance Advent’s portfolio management systems to meet their evolving needs with less effort and cost.

Here is a sample of some VB code we use to integrate and automate data handling of exported Axys and APX data.  The code can be used in Excel with VBA and User-Defined Functions (UDFs) to pull data from Axys and APX like Bloomberg BLP functions are used in Excel. This function is just one of the routines in our library of code that enable us to seemlessly integrate our solutions with Advent’s infrastructure.  I wrote the original source code for this routine twenty years ago and have updated it as necessary to support later releases of Axys and APX.

Using similar resources, integrators can move quickly from prototype to production when developing solutions for Advent users.  In fact, Advent’s most recent annual report continues to cite customers building their own solutions as one of their largest sources of competition.  For instance, a number of firms have created their own Order Management Systems – not that I’d recommend it.

Advisors abhor inefficiency and are typically willing to make a reasonable investment to reduce it.  Automation not only increases efficiency, but lowers risk by eliminating manual processes that may rely on individuals and their exclusive knowledge of manual or semi-automatic procedures.  Some financial services firms have customized their systems to a degree that makes staying on the Advent platform for twenty plus years possible and the thought of switching to another platform regrettable.

Thanks to the way Advent handles getting data in and out of their systems, users can continue using Axys to meet their ever-changing system requirements and leverage most solutions created for Axys on the APX platform.   Similar and potentially better tech options may exist on other competing platforms, but most of those systems lack the maturity, depth of resources, third-party relationships, and corresponding reliability of Advent’s platform choices.  Knowledge and acceptance of these competing products among advisors, employees, and third-party solution providers won’t match Advent for a long time.

As a result, even though technologically superior portfolio management platforms may emerge, many firms will continue using Advent’s best known portfolio management systems for the foreseeable future.

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About the Author: Kevin Shea is President of InfoSystems Integrated, Inc. (ISI); ISI provides a wide variety of outsourced IT solutions to investment advisors nationwide.

For details, please visit isitc.com, contact Kevin Shea via phone at 617-720-3400 x202 or e-mail at kshea@isitc.com.

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Making Sense of the “Competitive Bid” Process

Filed under: APX, Axys, Best Practices, Custom Reporting, Portfolio Management Systems — Leave a comment
July 5, 2012

As a provider of technology solutions for financial services firms small and large nationwide, I frequently come in contact with investment firms of diverse dynamics and decision-making processes.  I am, of course, familiar with the process and discipline of getting

three separate quotes for goods and services, but even after decades of bidding on projects, it is still unclear to me what investment firms actually do with this information.

In some cases, it seems like the decision has already been made and prospects are just going through the motions to fulfill the expectation to follow a procedure and process established by their firm.  Gut decisions sometimes overrule common sense.

One of my clients actually adheres to this discipline for everything and, if the rumors are true, even gets three prices for paper clips.  In my own experience with them, they did, in fact, get three quotes for a single piece of computer equipment that cost about $75.  Considering current wage and consulting rates this arguably may not be a good use of time or money.  Perhaps it’s a more altruistic goal of keeping our economy competitive that drives their policy.

 

Opportunity                          

Recently, I was contacted by a firm looking for assistance with some Axys report modifications.  One of our competitors provided them with a quote for the work they needed.  The prospect felt that the price was too high and they solicited my opinion.  I never saw the quote from my competitor, but heard from the prospect that they wanted 3-4k up front and expected it would cost 7-8k.  In another conversation, I was told that there was also a local company bidding on the work.  That made sense to me – three bids.

I was provided with a detailed specification of what needed to be done and asked to provide them with a quote.  The firm was looking to make some modifications to the Axys report that generates Advent’s performance history data and stores it as Net of Fees (PRF) and Gross of Fees (PBF) data.  Though the requirements seemed complicated initially, it eventually became clear to me that the job simply required filtering of a couple REPLANG routines, and some minor additions.

I shared my impression with the prospect and ball-parked our bid at 3k (a 12 hour block of time) less than half of our known competitor’s bid.   I explained that the actual work was likely to take three to four hours, and rest of the time would be spent on testing, support and maintenance.  My expectation was that we would get the work done in a half day to a day at most and the remainder of our time could be used for any required maintenance or modification later in the year.

 

Follow-Up

After about a week, I called to follow up and found out that the firm was strongly considering having the work done by their local vendor, who told them it could be done for seven to ten days.  “Excuse me,” I said.  “Don’t you mean seven to ten hours?”

“No,” he replied.  He further explained that they really like using the local vendor and would probably use them for the job, which I fully understand.  I have, no doubt, benefited from this sentiment in Boston for years.  At that point in the call, I was thinking that it was more like seven to ten lines of code, but thankfully I didn’t start laughing.  I waited until the call ended.

 

No Risk, No Reward

In the end, your firm’s decision to select one bid over another is a personal one, similar in some respects to the one that dictates an investment adviser’s success attracting new clients and retaining them.  It’s about trust, performance, and the ability to continually communicate that you are worthy of one and capable of the other.  To succeed long-term in the financial services business, you need both.  Through good performance, we gain a measure of trust.  However, without a measure of initial trust or risk, there is no opportunity to perform.

About the Author: Kevin Shea is President of InfoSystems Integrated, Inc. (ISI); ISI provides a wide variety of outsourced IT solutions to investment advisors nationwide. For details, please visit isitc.com or contact Kevin Shea via phone at 617-720-3400 x202 or e-mail at kshea@isitc.com.

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