The FUSE Notification Platform

Another Cutting Edge Innovation from Orion

Orion Advisor Services has long had a well-deserved reputation for innovation in the financial advisory technology industry. They were among the first providers to participate in TD Ameritrade’s VEO and VEO One platforms. They were among the first to create mobile apps for their advisors. They introduced video market commentaries, a creative way for advisors to add video commentaries to periodic performance reports. They partnered with Riskalyze to offer Autopilot, a digital advice platform for advisors. They created the FUSE Conference that brings together some of the industry’s leading developers to collaborate for the benefit of their joint advisor clients. They also developed a true open source client portal that allows Orion and their partners to provide a consolidated digital experience to end clients.

Now, in yet another effort to improve the lives of their advisor clients, Orion is building the FUSE Notification Platform. The Platform which we expect to be officially announced at the FUSE conference in September, is currently still under construction. It is expected that when completed, the user interface will be similar to that of the Orion Client Portal.

Orion is creating a platform with a single question in mind: How do they make integrations tighter, and make it easier to use best of breed software providers, without losing the efficiencies that have traditionally plagued multiple system installations?

The concept is simple: tap into the existing notification capabilities that are built into many existing software products/platforms, and allow them to be shared among all those providers participating in the FUSE Notification Platform.

According to Orion CEO Eric Clarke, the goals of the platform are as follows:

  • To accept alerts/notifications from integration partners into the FUSE Notification Platform
  • To allow integration partners to consume alerts/notifications into their own applications/platforms
  • Make it extremely simple for users to connect integration partners
  • Make it simple for integration partners to send/receive notifications

By the time FUSE 2016 rolls around, Clarke expects Redtail, Riskalyze, Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and of course Orion alerts to be embedded in the FUSE Notification Platform. Other partners will be added thereafter on a regular basis.

I’m not going to get into the technical details of how the FUSE Notification Platform works, but interested developers can contact Orion directly for the documentation. Suffice it to say that it appears to be well designed.

According to Clarke, his hope is that the platform becomes a community project. This makes sense. When it comes to projects such as these, cooperation across many firms is necessary for success, and there are synergies to be had when developers at multiple leading firms collaborate for the good of all.

Clearly, the collaborative idea is not new. Perhaps the best example of collaborative success in the space is the TD Ameritrade VEO platform where TD Ameritrade provides the infrastructure, but 105 VEO partners provide input and intellectual property to make it better. TD Ameritrade in fact is building similar alert/notification functionality into its next generation VEO One platform, but that functionality is obviously limited to advisors who custody with TD Ameritrade, and initially at least, advisors would need to custody most, if not all of their assets with TD Ameritrade to obtain the maximum benefit from VEO One. If successful and widely adopted, the FUSE Notification Platform could have applicability to a much broader range of advisors.

As is the case with all new technologies, the devil is in the details. In order for this project to be successful, it needs to be easy to use for all involved, and it needs to work seamlessly. It also requires the buy in of a significant number of other technology providers for it to reach its full potential.

While it is way too early to tell how this initiative will ultimately play out, Orion Advisor Services deserves a great deal of credit for investing their own money to help their partners collaborate for the benefit of all their common advisor clients. This is the type of leadership that one expects from leading providers of technology to advisors. Our hope is that other providers lend their support to make this project a success because the ultimate winners will be the advisors Orion and their partners serve.

Joel Bruckenstein
Joel Bruckenstein
Joel P. Bruckenstein, CFP®, is Publisher of the T3 Tech Hub (formerly the T3 newsletter) and the producer of the Technology Tools for Today (T3) Advisor Conference, the only annual technology conference for independent advisors, as well as the Technology Tools for Today (T3) Enterprise Conference. He also hosts other technology summits in partnership with thought leaders in the financial services industry (e.g., Brian Hamburger of MarketCounsel) and his own by-invitation-only fintech summit every summer. In 2020, Bruckenstein will produce for the first time a new one-day intensive called T3 Cyber University. Bruckenstein is an internationally acclaimed expert on applied technology as it relates to the financial service industry. He is the co-author of three books: Virtual Office Tools for a High Margin Practice, Tools and Techniques of Practice Management, and Technology Tools for Today’s High Margin Practice. Bruckenstein’s monthly technology columns appeared in Financial Advisor magazine and Financial Planning magazine for many years. In addition, he works in tandem with industry influential Bob Veres, publisher of Inside Information, to produce an annual technology survey for the financial planning community. Bruckenstein accepted the fifth annual Leadership Award bestowed by Bob Veres' Insider's Forum, a conference that brings together the leading figures of the financial planning profession during a main stage presentation at the Insider's Forum held September 6-8, 2017 in Nashville, TN. Bruckenstein has for more than twenty years advised financial service firms of all sizes on improving their technologies, processes and workflows. For more information about Joel Bruckenstein and the services his firm offers, please visit www.JoelBruckenstein.com.

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