The MARS Product Suite is specifically tailored for asset management companies. Here are some questions we typically receive about MARS:
Do I need to purchase any hardware or software to use MARS?
MARS can be accessed from anywhere and at any time from your computer’s browser or via a handheld device as long as you have a network connection. SalesFocus Solutions can host your MARS application in our data center which means your organization does not need to purchase any hardware or software to use MARS. For companies who prefer to maintain their systems in-house we also provide an on-premises solution in which you would still access MARS from your computer’s browser, but your company would maintain the MARS database and associated hardware.
I already have a CRM solution can I just use MARS for sales reporting?
Absolutely, one of the benefits of the MARS Product Suite is that it can function as a tightly integrated enterprise-wide solution or as individual modules to serve your specific business needs. For organizations who are already using a CRM solution, MARS modules such as the MARS Sales Reporting module or the MARS 22c-2 Compliance module can added to your existing CRM solution to preserve your investment and optimize your technology capabilities.
Can MARS take in account level sales, assets, and registration information from investment company record-keeping systems?
Yes, We have clients who are taking in trade, asset and shareholder account information from many intermediaries (trust systems, brokerage sub-accounting systems, mutual fund supermarket trading platforms, etc.). Using MARS our clients are able to perform sophisticated business analytics including sales and asset reporting by wholesaler, channel, territory, firm, branch, rep, and shareholder account.
How does MARS handle Omnibus accounts?
MARS reconciles the sales provided by the intermediary to trade activity found in omnibus accounts. This ensures that your firm hasreceived all the sub-accounting detail from your intermediaries. MARS provides tools for the reconciliation of omnibus account activity to detail transaction and asset information provided by sub-accounting agents. This will allow your company to bring in intermediary (wirehouse, 401K, trust, etc.) activity and prevent the double-counting of sales and assets.
Can MARS provide insights into our sales through supermarket platforms such as Charles Schwab?
Absolutely, the MARS Supermarket Platform Module provides the capability of importing fund flows and/or asset summaries from various mutual fund supermarket platforms such as Charles Schwab, TD Waterhouse, Fidelity, Datalynx, etc. Using MARS your organization can view the flows in many different ways including, but not limited to, summaries by fund, supermarket, advisors, channels, territories and numerous combinations of these views.
Can MARS assist us with prospecting and marketing?
Yes, in addition to the native MARS capabilities MARS can be integrated with the Financial Information Group’s Discovery™ line of databases including Discovery-RIA™, Discovery-BD™, Discovery-RR™, Discovery-Insurance™, and Discovery-Trust™. The integration of MARS with the Discovery™ product line provides our clients with data for sales and marketing purposes including: prioritizing sales targets and calls, demographic information, and focused marketing campaigns.
We are looking for a solution to support our compliance with SEC Rule 22c-2, but we are not in a position to add additional staff does MARS provide an automated solution to assist us with complying with Rule 22c-2?
Yes, using MARS, your firm will be able to monitor and manage all compliance activities without additional staff. With our Full-service 22c-2 Compliance solution we do the monitoring and reporting for you. We host MARS in our data center, We set up the data feeds with your Transfer Agent, the NSCC and your intermediaries, we work with your organization to define your 22c-2 and prospectus compliance rules, we maintain and adjust the rules as required, we review the flagged transactions which indicate potential rule violations, we create and manage requests for information from intermediaries, and we can provide reporting for your fund management, CCO and fund board.
Can MARS assist my organization with business analytics and insights?
Absolutely, supporting the feature-rich MARS application is the MARS data warehouse which integrates sales and asset data with product and contact data. MARS allows our clients to obtain business critical information across their entire enterprise and drill down to very specific information. MARS incorporates a query and report writing utility which gives our clients real-time access to the data. At the foundation of MARS is a very flexible and sophisticated Channel and Territory structure which allows organizations to slice and dice their business into whatever distribution channels, geographic territories and reporting exceptions that works best for their business. MARS also allows you to perform “what if” scenarios with your sales channel and territory structure to give you insights into how changes might affect your business. By using MARS you will have total visibility into sales and assets across your entire organization as well as the ability to drill down into very specific areas of your business such as top producing reps within firms. MARS provides your organization with the sales and asset intelligence to make informed decisions.
Do I need to purchase any hardware or software to use MARS?
MARS can be accessed from anywhere and at any time from your computer’s browser or via a handheld device as long as you have a network connection. SalesFocus Solutions can host your MARS application in our data center which means your organization does not need to purchase any hardware or software to use MARS. For companies who prefer to maintain their systems in-house we also provide an on-premises solution in which you would still access MARS from your computer’s browser, but your company would maintain the MARS database and associated hardware.
I already have a CRM solution can I just use MARS for sales reporting?
Absolutely, one of the benefits of the MARS Product Suite is that it can function as a tightly integrated enterprise-wide solution or as individual modules to serve your specific business needs. For organizations who are already using a CRM solution, MARS modules such as the MARS Sales Reporting module or the MARS 22c-2 Compliance module can added to your existing CRM solution to preserve your investment and optimize your technology capabilities.
Can MARS take in account level sales, assets, and registration information from investment company record-keeping systems?
Yes, We have clients who are taking in trade, asset and shareholder account information from many intermediaries (trust systems, brokerage sub-accounting systems, mutual fund supermarket trading platforms, etc.). Using MARS our clients are able to perform sophisticated business analytics including sales and asset reporting by wholesaler, channel, territory, firm, branch, rep, and shareholder account.
How does MARS handle Omnibus accounts?
MARS reconciles the sales provided by the intermediary to trade activity found in omnibus accounts. This ensures that your firm hasreceived all the sub-accounting detail from your intermediaries. MARS provides tools for the reconciliation of omnibus account activity to detail transaction and asset information provided by sub-accounting agents. This will allow your company to bring in intermediary (wirehouse, 401K, trust, etc.) activity and prevent the double-counting of sales and assets.
Can MARS provide insights into our sales through supermarket platforms such as Charles Schwab?
Absolutely, the MARS Supermarket Platform Module provides the capability of importing fund flows and/or asset summaries from various mutual fund supermarket platforms such as Charles Schwab, TD Waterhouse, Fidelity, Datalynx, etc. Using MARS your organization can view the flows in many different ways including, but not limited to, summaries by fund, supermarket, advisors, channels, territories and numerous combinations of these views.
Can MARS assist us with prospecting and marketing?
Yes, in addition to the native MARS capabilities MARS can be integrated with the Financial Information Group’s Discovery™ line of databases including Discovery-RIA™, Discovery-BD™, Discovery-RR™, Discovery-Insurance™, and Discovery-Trust™. The integration of MARS with the Discovery™ product line provides our clients with data for sales and marketing purposes including: prioritizing sales targets and calls, demographic information, and focused marketing campaigns.
We are looking for a solution to support our compliance with SEC Rule 22c-2, but we are not in a position to add additional staff does MARS provide an automated solution to assist us with complying with Rule 22c-2?
Yes, using MARS, your firm will be able to monitor and manage all compliance activities without additional staff. With our Full-service 22c-2 Compliance solution we do the monitoring and reporting for you. We host MARS in our data center, We set up the data feeds with your Transfer Agent, the NSCC and your intermediaries, we work with your organization to define your 22c-2 and prospectus compliance rules, we maintain and adjust the rules as required, we review the flagged transactions which indicate potential rule violations, we create and manage requests for information from intermediaries, and we can provide reporting for your fund management, CCO and fund board.
Can MARS assist my organization with business analytics and insights?
Absolutely, supporting the feature-rich MARS application is the MARS data warehouse which integrates sales and asset data with product and contact data. MARS allows our clients to obtain business critical information across their entire enterprise and drill down to very specific information. MARS incorporates a query and report writing utility which gives our clients real-time access to the data. At the foundation of MARS is a very flexible and sophisticated Channel and Territory structure which allows organizations to slice and dice their business into whatever distribution channels, geographic territories and reporting exceptions that works best for their business. MARS also allows you to perform “what if” scenarios with your sales channel and territory structure to give you insights into how changes might affect your business. By using MARS you will have total visibility into sales and assets across your entire organization as well as the ability to drill down into very specific areas of your business such as top producing reps within firms. MARS provides your organization with the sales and asset intelligence to make informed decisions.
How long does it take to implement MARS?
Most MARS implementations (from contract execution to using MARS in a production environment) take 90 – 120 days. The duration of the implementation can vary due to a number of factors such as: the complexity of data conversion from legacy systems into MARS and the number/type of data interfaces into/from MARS. Beware of vendors who tell you that you can be up and running on your new system in thirty days or less. To gain the benefit of having your contact and product information integrated with sales information usually requires data conversion (from legacy systems to the new system) and always requires interface mappings/installation (TAs, intermediaries, etc) and these two aspects typically take more than thirty days to complete.
Can MARS improve the accuracy and reliability of our sales and asset reporting?
It’s amazing that in today’s high tech world many financial services companies still struggle to obtain accurate sales and asset under management reports. Many organizations find issues with their systems such as data quality (e.g. duplicate firms, offices, contacts), data integrity issues (e.g. top performing reps not identified) and missing data (e.g. offices without firms, reps without offices, etc) all of which contribute to data accuracy and reliability issues. The MARS system will immediately solve your sales and asset reporting problems. MARS includes a data stewardship module which automates the process of resolving trades to reps so that you have accurate data. MARS promotes sales reporting accuracy by ensuring all trades are accounted for and resolved to Firm, Branch Office, Rep and Account levels, identifying trades from new Customers, managing trades from Reps with multiple aliases, cleaning trades in bulk for efficiency and by performing omnibus reconciliation. MARS also has a data quality component which prevents duplicate data from getting into the system by overcoming data input variations due to misspellings, transcriptions, transpositions, acronyms, phonetics, sequence differences, nicknames and many other common errors found in data. With MARS your data will always be accurate and reliable.
My organization seems to spending an inordinate amount of time manipulating spreadsheets or re-working reports to get the data in a form that is best suited for my business needs. If we use MARS can I get access to my sales and contact information in a timely fashion?
Yes. This type of data manipulation is a waste of time and money and leads to time lags between when the data is available and when the business eventually has access to it. MARS eliminates the time lag between transactions and seeing results. In addition to the standard MARS report suite, MARS includes powerful ad hoc reporting and data querying capabilities. This means you have powerful business analytics tools to access your data in real-time in any form you need to see it. Don’t waste time re-working data which should be immediately available to you.
Many financial services companies struggle with getting critical sales data in real-time and have to wait days or weeks for critical information. This creates communication with clients and productivity problems within the organization. The MARS System is built on a relational database and your data is immediately accessible via a web-browser or via handheld devices such as Blackberries and Pocket PCs. This means you never have to wait for business critical information. Imagine having up-to-the-minute information available at the click of a button.
Can MARS respond quickly to business changes?
A common complaint is that it takes too long to respond to business changes such as when firms move or merge with other firms. If your organization still takes days or weeks to catch up to business changes then you can benefit from MARS. With MARS you can manipulate distribution channels and territories as well as easily move/merge firms, offices, or reps from one organization to another and the sales reporting will immediately adjust to the changes.
Can my organization obtain information wirelessly with MARS to maximize the sales team’s productivity and effectiveness?
Many organizations still struggle with trying to provide remote access to information to their sales teams. MARS solves that problem by providing real-time wireless access to contact, activity, sales and data on handheld devices such as Blackberry or Pocket PC devices. MARS allows the sales team to schedule calls, make meetings, update contact information, order marketing literature, view product sales and asset information including rep’s sale notifications, and more – all while on the road. The MARS wireless capability improves sales effectiveness, cross-selling abilities and productivity. In addition, use of MARS on handheld devices in the field will decrease your sales desk administration efforts and free the internal desk to make more outgoing calls. MARS on Windows Mobile® handheld solution is integrated with mapping software to view top producers and other key information geographically;
Most MARS implementations (from contract execution to using MARS in a production environment) take 90 – 120 days. The duration of the implementation can vary due to a number of factors such as: the complexity of data conversion from legacy systems into MARS and the number/type of data interfaces into/from MARS. Beware of vendors who tell you that you can be up and running on your new system in thirty days or less. To gain the benefit of having your contact and product information integrated with sales information usually requires data conversion (from legacy systems to the new system) and always requires interface mappings/installation (TAs, intermediaries, etc) and these two aspects typically take more than thirty days to complete.
Can MARS improve the accuracy and reliability of our sales and asset reporting?
It’s amazing that in today’s high tech world many financial services companies still struggle to obtain accurate sales and asset under management reports. Many organizations find issues with their systems such as data quality (e.g. duplicate firms, offices, contacts), data integrity issues (e.g. top performing reps not identified) and missing data (e.g. offices without firms, reps without offices, etc) all of which contribute to data accuracy and reliability issues. The MARS system will immediately solve your sales and asset reporting problems. MARS includes a data stewardship module which automates the process of resolving trades to reps so that you have accurate data. MARS promotes sales reporting accuracy by ensuring all trades are accounted for and resolved to Firm, Branch Office, Rep and Account levels, identifying trades from new Customers, managing trades from Reps with multiple aliases, cleaning trades in bulk for efficiency and by performing omnibus reconciliation. MARS also has a data quality component which prevents duplicate data from getting into the system by overcoming data input variations due to misspellings, transcriptions, transpositions, acronyms, phonetics, sequence differences, nicknames and many other common errors found in data. With MARS your data will always be accurate and reliable.
My organization seems to spending an inordinate amount of time manipulating spreadsheets or re-working reports to get the data in a form that is best suited for my business needs. If we use MARS can I get access to my sales and contact information in a timely fashion?
Yes. This type of data manipulation is a waste of time and money and leads to time lags between when the data is available and when the business eventually has access to it. MARS eliminates the time lag between transactions and seeing results. In addition to the standard MARS report suite, MARS includes powerful ad hoc reporting and data querying capabilities. This means you have powerful business analytics tools to access your data in real-time in any form you need to see it. Don’t waste time re-working data which should be immediately available to you.
Many financial services companies struggle with getting critical sales data in real-time and have to wait days or weeks for critical information. This creates communication with clients and productivity problems within the organization. The MARS System is built on a relational database and your data is immediately accessible via a web-browser or via handheld devices such as Blackberries and Pocket PCs. This means you never have to wait for business critical information. Imagine having up-to-the-minute information available at the click of a button.
Can MARS respond quickly to business changes?
A common complaint is that it takes too long to respond to business changes such as when firms move or merge with other firms. If your organization still takes days or weeks to catch up to business changes then you can benefit from MARS. With MARS you can manipulate distribution channels and territories as well as easily move/merge firms, offices, or reps from one organization to another and the sales reporting will immediately adjust to the changes.
Can my organization obtain information wirelessly with MARS to maximize the sales team’s productivity and effectiveness?
Many organizations still struggle with trying to provide remote access to information to their sales teams. MARS solves that problem by providing real-time wireless access to contact, activity, sales and data on handheld devices such as Blackberry or Pocket PC devices. MARS allows the sales team to schedule calls, make meetings, update contact information, order marketing literature, view product sales and asset information including rep’s sale notifications, and more – all while on the road. The MARS wireless capability improves sales effectiveness, cross-selling abilities and productivity. In addition, use of MARS on handheld devices in the field will decrease your sales desk administration efforts and free the internal desk to make more outgoing calls. MARS on Windows Mobile® handheld solution is integrated with mapping software to view top producers and other key information geographically;