Tech Tips: Five apps that supercharge your iPad

Apple inc.’s ipad has been a boon for financial advisors. For years before this device’s début, mobile advisors were weighed down by heavy laptops or briefcases stuffed with reams of paper. Now, some – if not all – of this load has been transferred to something smaller, lighter and with super-high definition.

But to get the most from your iPad, you must choose the right applications. Now, for the busy advisor who is on the road often, there is an iPad app to help with virtually every aspect of the working day. Here are just a few:

– Task Management: Gneo ($9.99)

If there’s one thing that a busy advisor has, it’s a long to-do list. And without the proper tools, keeping track of all these tasks can become a pastime all on its own. So, a good task-management app is invaluable.

We’ve tried most of them, but Gneo has captured our attention lately. Designed especially for the iPad and iPhone, this app features a simple, three-pane interface. You simply swipe between tasks, a calendar and – the thing that really sold it for us – the Covey quadrant.

The Covey is a simple, four-square matrix organized along two priority axes: urgent and important. Your various tasks drop into the relevant quadrant based upon the settings you assign to them, allowing you to prioritize them easily.

This app also allows you to tag tasks and set reminder dates and times. Another appealing feature is the ability to create notebooks. These help you structure your tasks more effectively by, for example, creating different notebooks for personal and work matters, or notebooks for different clients. As an option, you can synchronize these notebooks with Evernote, the popular, cloud-based, note-management service, thus ensuring that everything is backed up.

– Customer contact management: Daylite (free on ipad, but requires $279.95 mac os x version)

For something a little beefier that also manages both tasks and clients, you can check out Daylite. This app, which works on the iPad, the iPhone and the Mac, includes an address book that enables you to not only store your contacts but also track interactions that you’ve had with them, such as phone calls and face-to-face meetings.

Daylite allows you to create reminder tasks to follow up with certain people, and you can even group people together.

For example, perhaps you have been thinking about approaching all your clients who have children for a discussion about registered education savings plans. This app allows you to set up certain times of the year for these types of meetings and include the clients who fall into this category.

Groups of client names can also be exported for use in email programs such as Mailchimp, enabling you to manage email campaigns easily for clients who have opted to be contacted in this way.

This is a companion app to the Daylite OS X software, enabling you to concentrate on core activities while on the road, then mop up the more in-depth work when you get back to the office.

– Networking: LinkedIn (free)

No iPad apps roundup would be complete without LinkedIn. This networking service should be mandatory for advisors as a useful way to research new clients. This iPad app shows you your complete LinkedIn dashboard, including messages and invitations to connect to peoples’ networks, as well as their status updates.

Last October, LinkedIn updated its app to take advantage of iOS 7. The networking site changed its app’s user interface, putting the newsfeed up front, so that you can see who is posting new status updates or changing roles.

You can also tap on images to expand them or play videos online without leaving the app. All of this gives your LinkedIn screen a more magazine-like feel.

Next: Data entry
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– Data entry: Camcard hd ($7.99)

Entering business cards into your records can be a dull and daunting prospect. Now, your iPad can do it for you. CamCard HD uses your iPad’s camera to snap a pic of a business card, then automatically reads the information from it by using optical character recognition to enter the various phone numbers, email addresses and office locations into the right places in your device’s database.

This app can then synchronize these new contacts with your iPad’s built-in contact manager – one less task you have to worry about at the end of a busy day.

– Calculator: Life insurance needs calculator (free)

One of the great benefits of using an iPad is its ability to do calculations on the fly, then present easily digestible results during a client presentation. The Life Insurance Needs Calculator (LISA), offered by the non-profit LIFE Happens organization in the U.S., provides a product-neutral way to gather a client’s data and then present an estimate for the life insurance coverage you are discussing with that client.

You input data specific to your client, including required final expenses, outstanding mortgage payments, college funding needs and total annual required income. Then, this app will present an easily understandable analysis of your client’s needs regarding life insurance coverage.

– Calculator: Compoundee hd ($2.99)

“Compound interest” is a favourite phrase for both advisors and clients. Calculating this interest in front of your client can help him or her understand the value of starting an investment regime early. The Compoundee HD app allows you to make calculations about the value of an investment over time.

This app can also provide the necessary investment rate, initial deposit or time duration required to accumulate a certain amount. The app accounts for periodic deposits and withdrawals, inflation and tax adjustments, extra deposits and amortization.

You can also email those results to your client.

– Presentation: Keynote ($9.99, or free with a new ipad)

Client presentations needn’t be boring anymore, and you needn’t carry around tired pitch sheets when you can touch and swipe animated, high-definition slides.

Apple’s Keynote app comes with ready-made themes, slide layouts and transitions.

The charting options should be particularly appealing if you are a financial planner. You can animate charts and make them interactive in order to focus your client’s attention on important aspects of the data. Add photos and other graphics into the mix, along with text containing special effects, and you will not only capture your client’s attention but retain it.

These capabilities will allow you to take your client presentations on the road. But, if you happen to be presenting at the office, you can also use video mirroring to throw your presentation up on a larger screen for added impact.

– Gathering financial information: Bloomberg (free)

Your iPad can be used for creating documents, but it really excels at gathering data. In other words, it’s a “lean-back” device, enabling you to rest in a chair while taking in important information. Bloomberg LP’s iPad app delivers a range of financial information, designed to keep investors abreast of events.

The well-crafted interface of this app delivers various categories down the left-hand side of your iPad’s screen, offering news (including video) and market data. Each of these sections has its own subtopics. The obligatory ticker is at the bottom of the screen. The “home” dashboard has a smattering of everything.

For busy advisors on the go, this app is a great way to sample the most relevant, current data and stay informed before your first client meeting.

With 475,000 apps designed for the iPad now available through Apple’s online store, this is just a sampling of the wide range of apps that could change the way that you work. What other things do you do in your day that could benefit from a little electronic help?