‘Widgetization’ Is Next Level of Tech Integration: Finance Logix

It’s hard not to get excited when speaking with Oleg Tishkevich. The hyper-animated president and CEO of Tucson, Ariz.-based Finance Logix clearly delights in discussing technology that’s now available to help advisors grow their businesses, but of which too many are still unaware.

Widgetization, his latest focus, is “delivering software in the cloud,” which he describes as the fourth level of technology integration.

“The first level was a single sign-on,” Tishkevich patiently explains. “The second level was the ability to push data somewhere. The third level was the bidirectional sync, or the push as well as pull of data.”

The fourth level, the aforementioned widgetization, is taking various pieces of software and “mashing it together.”

“It’s a Lego set model. You can put it together the way you want, in order to then look the way you want, so you can build a different client and administrative experience.”

By “you” he means broker-dealers and large RIAs, the majority of which buy different software, attempt to put it together and then haphazardly offer it to their advisors.

“We have a limited number of vendors all playing in the same pool,” he laments. “How do you differentiate? You can hire IT guys to build a platform from scratch using these different vendors, which is very expensive and six months later you’ll have to again make costly changes. A better way is to pick and choose the pieces that you want.”