I recently attended the launch event for Distribution Technology’s ‘Dynamic Point of Sale’ (DPOS) platform at the May Fair Hotel, London.
Cutting through the usual slick Distribution Technology marketing/hype ("…an important day for us; an important day for the industry…"), this launch marks the achievement of another milestone on the road to what will inevitably become Dynamic Office. And, with a few exceptions, this is quite an achievement…
DPOS builds quite literally (sharing the same codebase) on Distribution Technology’s flagship product, Dynamic Planner, by adding:
- Product research
- Fund research
- Quotations & illustrations
- Suitability
- Transaction creation
- Task-based adviser management
- Pre and post-sale file checking
DPOS isn’t just about add-ons, however, as there’s been a complete rethink on the user interface (UI). I wasn’t very keen on the old Dynamic Planner UI as it broke so many usability principles, but Distribution Technology unfortunately saw it as a selling point. So, I’m pleased that they’ve recognised the flaws and gone for a cleaner, more intuitive design – with a side menu bar – based on the same layout as Microsoft’s Outlook. This is a smart move as it plays on a user’s inherent recognition of Outlook’s ‘design pattern’, which instantly makes DPOS much more familiar.
Pop-up boxes (reviled by some) have been removed in favour of inline wizards for completing tasks. With data entry validation at field, page or process level, this is seriously good error handling, further enhanced by minimisation of free text entry by use of dropdown boxes wherever possible.
One element of the UI I’m not convinced by, however, is the relegation of the main menu items in the side bar to the bottom left of the page. OK, it’s what Outlook does, but Outlook is usually deployed as a workstation or server-based programme enabling it to avoid some of the more common browser-related issues; will DPOS’s main menu items be visible in a browser on an 800×600 monitor? I hope Distribution Technology got their usability testing right…
Enough about the eye candy, let’s take a look at some of DPOS’s functional strengths and weaknesses, as well as the ‘mystery’ item…!
The hierarchical permissions functionality which controls which activities and data are available to different types of user is regarded as a core strength of Dynamic Planner, so it is no surprise to see it included in DPOS too. This is a very flexible and extensible feature which ultimately allows for task-based management of advisers depending on such factors as product line and the status of the adviser.
Compared to enterprise-level sales management applications, DPOS’s CRM and Lead Management functions are rudimentary. That said, they are at least the equal of the functions that can be found within competitor’s offerings. There is the facility to upload client lists in a variety of formats, and to then interrogate the data to find suitable clients for a particular campaign. This selection process can encompass demographic, fact-find and needs analysis data. Once a list has been built for a campaign, clients and tasks can be allocated to particular advisers and tracked using the integrated workflow.
The fact-find module which started off life in Dynamic Planner has also been re-written, and expanded to encompass the following sections:
- Investment
- Protection
- Mortgage
- Retirement
- Flexible pension
- With profits analysis
- Drawdown
- Debt consolidation
- Mortgage and protection review
At face value, there appear to be some ambiguities in this list (flexible pension & drawdown as individual items; separate mortgage & protection sections plus an additional combined review of both), but this all makes sense when you realise that the fact-find’s composition is dynamically driven by the user. These separate sections are in effect fast tracks through what can be an otherwise tedious process. Data captured in the fact-find is automatically fed through into the Needs analysis and Research sections thus avoiding re-keying.
The risk profiling options are excellent, with the user able to select their own questionnaire, short or long proprietary questionnaires or a psychometric option. Both the client and a dependent’s questions & answers can be viewed side-by-side, but there is no facility for assisting a user in dealing with the resolution of instances where a husband and wife have different resultant attitudes to risk; DPOS misses a trick here, but so do most other systems.
The same cannot be said for the way that DPOS handles protection; it’s superb. Existing arrangements, including state benefits, are uploaded/ captured on the basis that they support mortgage, debt, partner or dependent, and instantly show the situation on premature death, disability or critical illness, under a series of tabs. On top of this, a gap analysis is carried out which also shows the estimated cost of closing the gap. With links to Assureweb for comparative protection quotes (automatically added to the document store) through to new business transaction, this is the model that the industry should be striving to achieve for all product lines.
Distribution Technology has taken a similar integrated approach when addressing the issue of suitability. Instead of tackling the subject in isolation as is the norm, they have instead beefed up their generic report generation tools and integrated production of the ubiquitous suitability letters into the whole reporting process. This makes a lot more sense for both adviser and client, particularly when you see the functional quality of the reports. The template-based reporting engine is similar in approach to that found in Planlab and Prestwood, with users able to select from configurable paragraph libraries to build personalised reports. However, the supplied default templates are more graphically rich than any competitor and the quality and consistency of these graphics makes reading the report more bearable! Where Prestwood lost marks for not integrating Finametrica’s risk profiling tools properly, DPOS shows how it should be done, albeit benefiting from an in-house risk profiling tool thus making the integration task that much easier. However, DPOS goes further with a very elegant solution to protecting non-editable areas of reports (that can be defined by compliance functions) and tracking changes directly in MSWord using its inbuilt review functions. There is also a direct-to-PDF option for luddites or those under a particularly heavy compliance cosh! This is impressive stuff that has the capacity to make many advisers far more productive than at present.
Investment research functions are the standard fayre (powered by Financial Express) previously available via Dynamic Planner, as is the stochastic forecasting. I’ve expressed my concerns before about investment data quality in general and Distribution Technology’s stochastic model weaknesses in particular, so will not go over old ground here. One interesting aside to this is that Mark Fleet, MD of AWD Moneyextra (DPOS’s launch client), commented that his company won’t consider fund managers who don’t provide accurate and timely fund data. In the context of a recommendation based around
asset allocation, this is a sensible approach that I am surprised is not more prevalent.
At launch, DPOS integrates with just the one investment platform, Cofunds, for creation of transactions, but the depth of this integration was unclear from the live demo. Unfortunately, even from a brief glimpse, there appeared some worrying aspects to the direction the investment transaction capability is heading. Pipeline tracking of transaction orders is not supported (updates to records occur only when a transaction is complete which could leave users with a blackout period), and the presentation of investment data within a series of platform-specific tabs appears completely at odds with the aggregated approach to planning displayed elsewhere in DPOS. To be fair to Distribution Technology, these issues are more a symptom of the fragmented market approach rather than poor solution design, but given the creativity displayed elsewhere within DPOS, I’m disappointed further progress wasn’t made in this area.
The mystery element of DPOS is the Product Research capability. Nothing was shown during the demo, and when pressed to explain more about it, Pat Fitzgerald (Distribution Technology’s Chief Product Officer) played a straight bat replying he wasn’t in a position to announce who they were partnering with, but they intend to provide facilities in the areas of protection, investment and retirement. I don’t think I was the only one present who was surprised that Distribution Technology hadn’t nailed this before launch.
So, Product Research is one for the future, as is an offline version of DPOS with subsequent online synchronisation, and a consumer-facing capability for advised clients.
Even with its flaws, inconsistencies and mystery elements, there is no doubt that DPOS is an impressive proposition with great appeal to the target market of large IFA firms, banks and tied salesforces; Ben Goss and his team are to be congratulated for their endeavours. Friends Provident have signified their intent to use DPOS on their forthcoming wrap platform which will no doubt involve applying some tweaks and improvements of which the wider DPOS using-community should ultimately benefit. Certainly, there will need to be work carried out to move DPOS from its product sale bias towards the natural service orientation of a wrap.
Distribution Technology’s next moves will be interesting. As they broaden DPOS into a fully-fledged back office proposition, they will increasingly come into conflict with established back office providers, and in particular Intelliflo, who currently act as an introducer for Distribution Technology’s Dynamic Planner offering! I also expect Distribution Technology to move further away from supporting smaller IFA firms in favour of the larger salesforces within networks and national distributors, and of course the banks that the canny Mr Goss has been courting for some time now.
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