On the Workbench at Sungard: Offering a Helping Hand

Most of the software firm's newest upgrades lie in the financial planning and portfolio management areas of its program, like its Cash Flow Consultant product released in September. The program lets advisors help clients create a financial plan for the best time in their life to sell a business, for example, based on cash flow, rather than creating a financial plan around a specific timed event such as a child starting college. But its basic platform is already considered a champ to many independent broker/dealer firms, including Cambridge.

One of its strengths, Call emphasizes, is SunGard's flexibility, which makes the platform easy to integrate with a broker/dealer regardless of it size. The software firm will host the platform on its server, though for larger-end deployments a broker/dealer can host it on its own. Planning Station can also tap into a broker/dealer's back office–critical for any company that wants to offer its advisors the most streamlined workstation possible.