In an announcement earlier this week (May 25), Abrdn said AdviserOS will see the current platforms Wrap, Elevate and Fundzone sit together on one common tech stack.
The firm said this approach to platforms will enable advisers to do less, achieve more for their clients and grow their business.
Speaking to FTAdviser, Jonny Black, chief commercial and strategy officer at Abrdn, said: “We've just done a fairly large technology release on what was known as Wrap up until this point and I think that's gone really well.
“We've moved 200,000 customer books and records onto the new system. You get the hiccups, the wait times etc, but everything seems to be pretty normal and we are as of today, three months since that release and things are looking really good.”
Black said in that context, the firm needs to make sure that it takes the lessons from that, rolls them forward and “amplifies them for anything else”.
“We have gone through it in February so we now know what it's like. It’s in our muscle memory in terms of making sure that everything is where it needs to be and making sure the information is where it needs to be.
“We've got the resources on the phone lines ready. We've got the resources in the sales team ready. We will go into a hypercare type period.”
However, he explained that the upgrades to come are much smaller because the firm has already done the heavy lifting.
He said it’s more about switching features and making small changes.
“The actual changes to the platform to come are not large, the work you might not see yet but under the bonnet, it's all there,” he said.
“There isn't a huge technical change to come.
“We've done the foundational stuff already. So the way we transformed the platform in February is that the components are now separable and more modular."
He added: “[For example], we only have to test this little bit rather than historically where everything was coded and intermingled and you had to do top, middle and bottom.”
Advisers’ perspective
Black explained that Abrdn plans to keep engaging with advisers to work with them and make sure that they understand what is going to change and what it is going to look and feel like.
“Our platform consultant and our relationship managers will be out in our clients' offices running training sessions and things like that.
