News
More economical, faster to deploy, continually updated: Top tech companies offer their take on hosted solutions
For the middle market financial planning firm that can't afford either the upfront costs associated with deploying an internally-hosted financial planning platform or the IT staff required to maintain one, companies such as EISI have created third-party hosted solutions.
Alexandra DeFelice's article Software for Rent published at WebCPA.com explores the benefits of hosted software, and gets an inside perspective from the developers of these solutions.
In the article, EISI's Kelly Brown, SVP Strategic Business Development, says that despite the benefits of a third-party hosting service (which include near continuous availability, regular software updates and system upgrades, and access to the same management tools and financial planning software being used by top financial enterprises with custom solutions), attracting interest in an Application Service Provider (ASP) platform wasn't easy at first.
The major concern of prospective users is security.
"There were some hard knocks at first getting people to come over," Brown admits. "We're very good at writing software, but the diligence of hosting services is tremendous. When it comes to clients' confidential information it's too sensitive an area."
EISI launched its NaviPlan Central ASP platform in Q1-2005. By May of this year, 362 firms and 2,600 advisors were on board.
Read more at webcpa.com.
