Choosing Daily Valuation System

[Guest DBQBenefits]

My firm is considering upgrading our administration capability from Balance Forward to Daily Valuation. We had been outsourcing our Daily Val admin to another party. We would look to bring those plans back in-house and convert existing plans to Daily. Does anyone use the OmniPlus ASP version. Which system is better for Daily val, Relius or SchwabRT(Trustmark)?

Thanks

[Guest Dreaderick Tatum]

What's Omniplus ASP? I've heard of Omniplus & Omniplan, but not an ASP version. What's different?

How big is your firm and whats the potential for growth? Quantech & Trustmark are geared towards smaller/cookie cutter shops whereas Omniplus is usually what large/national firms use and is quite a bit more expensive. Also, all three systems are good at different things. I've read that Trustmark is weak in the compliance area.

You could also look more around these boards, I see towards the middle there's a Quantech & Trustmark board. You might get a more response if you posted your question there.

[Guest Ken Simons]

OMNI ASP is an on-line processing solution where they mainitain the OMNI system and you process on-line via the internet.

As to Relius being used in only small cookie cutter shops, there are many many firms that process over 500 daily plans (some up to 3000) with anywhere from 50 to 500,000 particpants. Some firms have plans over 15,000 up to approx. 35,000 EEs in one plan. If that meets your definition of small cookie cutter shops and your firm is a large financial institution that will be doing daily along with your shareholder services, Relius may not be right for you. Otherwise, give us a call

Ken Simons

VP - Relius Admin.

[Guest Pete Kirtland]

An ASP delivered recordkeeping system offers many advantages over the traditional "installed on your LAN" version, including:

- start up fees are significantly reduced

- very easy to work from anywhere with an internet connection

- significantly reduced fees with regard to the continuous upgrade of hardware (that becomes someone else's problem)

- The amount of time necessary to get up and running is reduced to the time necessary to be trained (no installation required)

- And more often than not the data enjoys a significantly higher level of security at an enterprise level hosting facility than it would on most TPA's networks.

And yes, if you haven't figured it out yet I am very biased towards the ASP model. We use it for many applications including accounting and client relationship management. You can learn more about ASPs on our website at www.401kASP.net

Pete

[Guest James]

ASP are changing the software industry overall. Microsoft's .Net strategy among others will standardize how ASPs are viewed by consumers. The impact of ASPs to the pension industry will be very significant.

[BFree]

what does ASP stand for?

[Guest Ken Simons]

Application Service Provider:

Normally, all the hardware is hosted by the Service Provider and you process from your office using an internet connection (generally business grade). hosted hardware in a daily environment may include the database server, web server for employee internet, and VRU.

As Pete says, startup costs are normally less expensive, although sometimes ongoing costs are based on number of participants rather than a fixed dollar amount. And you eliminate the new release install syndrom (although you still need to be trained on new features).

[Guest JohnXXXX]

Generally speaking, the OMNI system is for largest plans.

But also, its architecture is back in the dark ages. I simply can not believe that a product being sold today has VSAM as its primary file structure.

Or that it has these monsterous 20,000 lines of code COBOL modules. And many, many of them. It is a good thing that IBM makes such powerful computers. You need them with this beast.

And of course, I know someone will mention DB2. But this system was not written from a relational point-of-view. The DB2 hangs onto it just like another file structure. Clumsy, old fashioned to say the least.