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Before we bid a fond farewell to 2003, it's time to hand out our MorningstarAdvisor.com 2003 technology awards. We'll also offer a brief review of some of the stories we covered throughout the year.
As in 2002, I'll hand out awards in three categories: hardware, software, and rookie of the year.
Software and hardware contestants can be either new products, or improved versions of existing products, that are capable of having a positive impact on your practice. They can be either industry-specific products or general-purpose products. Rookie-of-the-year contestants are new products used by financial professionals that may not yet be perfected, but that either break new ground or hold great promise for the future.
And the winners are….
Best Hardware
There were a number of new hardware products that impressed me this year. There were mice and keyboards, new and improved minidrives, the Memory Watch, and many more; however, the single product that impressed me the most was the Mirra Personal Server Solution, which I wrote about in my last column.
The Mirra is brand new, and relatively untested, but it is one of the most exciting new products I've come across in quite some time. It offers easy setup, continuous backups, remote access, and the ability to house client documents for Web retrieval all at an unbeatable price. These servers are ideal for small RIA offices, and they are also highly appropriate for those readers that have networked computers in your home or home office.
I'm going out on a limb by presenting Mirra with our Hardware Product of the Year Award, but I can't think of an industry more in need of Mirra-like products than ours is, and based on conversations with a number of current Mirra users, I feel confident that the Mirra Personal Server Solution will prove to be extremely popular with readers of this column.
Best Software
Selecting the top software product of the year presents a real challenge. All of the major software producers have upgraded their products, and there are some new programs that caught my attention as well. After serious deliberation, however, my selection for software product of the year has to go to EISI's NaviPlan.
EISI has just done an outstanding job of taking an already good product and continuing to make it better. EISI is the only financial planning software company that offers a full line of products capable of being used both offline and online. Their two flagship products, NaviPlan Standard and NaviPlan Extended, are available as either desktop or Web-based applications. They also produce custom applications for large enterprises.
Currently, the Web versions are only being sold as enterprise software, but some time in 2004 they will be offered through an application service provider, which means that all users will be able to choose the Web version if they desire.
My review of NaviPlan Extended closed by saying, "NaviPlan Extended remains one of the few outstanding comprehensive financial-planning programs available to planners today". I still believe that to be the case, and the next version, due in the spring, will, based on what I've already seen, continue Extended's tradition of excellence.
NaviPlan Standard, a less comprehensive goal-based planning program, is one of the best-selling financial-planning programs in the industry, and with good reason. It is flexible, and much easier to master than Extended is.
NaviPlan service and support remains among the best in the industry. Software is updated in a timely fashion; service representatives are responsive.
Developers of financial-planning software face some tough competition, and in this crowded field, EISI's NaviPlan continues to distinguish itself.
Rookie of the Year
When my editors and I initiated the Rookie of the Year category, we anticipated that winners would be drawn from small companies with new products that were promising, but possibly not yet perfected. In all fairness, though, I can't discriminate against a product just because it happens to be produced by the largest software company in the world, so I'm awarding the Rookie of the Year Award to Microsoft OneNote, which I reviewed in September.
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