Writing
Technology & AI
Where artificial intelligence helps an advisory firm, where it is oversold, and the test I hold my own company to.
16 pieces
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Technology & AI
Where AI actually helps, and where it does not
The category is being sold with a level of confidence the technology has not earned. Some of it is useful right now, and it is not the part being demonstrated.
Technology & AI
What AI-native should actually mean
The phrase has been applied to almost every product in this industry, including ones that added a chat box. Here is a test that distinguishes them.
Technology & AI
Nine questions worth more than a demonstration
A demonstration shows the path the vendor rehearsed. These questions show the product.
Technology & AI
Why your numbers do not match
Two systems, same account, different answer. It is one of five causes and it is usually the second one.
Technology & AI
The seams are where the cost is
Every system in your firm probably works. The expensive part is the space between them, and it does not appear on any invoice.
Technology & AI
What an AI policy needs to cover
Your staff are already using these tools. A policy written now is a policy; written later it is a remediation.
Technology & AI
Automation you can still explain afterwards
The automation is the easy part. Reconstructing why the system did what it did, two years later, is the part that has to be designed in.
Technology & AI
Why this software feels a decade behind
It is not incompetence and it is not indifference. Four structural reasons, only one of which is anyone’s fault.
Technology & AI
Clients judge three things and none of them is your dashboard
Firms spend on the portal and the reporting. Clients form their opinion somewhere else entirely.
Technology & AI
The model is the least differentiated part
Buyers ask which model a product is built on. It is close to the least informative question available.
Technology & AI
The data you generate and do not own
Your firm produces a decade of valuable information. A surprising amount of it belongs, contractually, to someone else.
Technology & AI
The spreadsheet that became infrastructure
Almost every advisory firm has one. It started as a workaround and now three processes depend on it.
Technology & AI
What to automate first, and what to leave alone
Firms automate what is annoying. The better order is what is frequent, understood, and cheap to get wrong.
Technology & AI
The portal nobody logs into
Firms keep rebuilding it. Usage keeps not materializing. The reason is not the portal.
Technology & AI
Four times the right answer is not yet
Nobody writes the article arguing for waiting. It is frequently the correct decision and it is never the exciting one.
Technology & AI
The security questions worth asking in a small firm
You hold exactly the data an attacker wants, with none of the staff a large firm has. A short list beats an unread policy.
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Portfolios & risk