Frequently Asked
Questions
We are a one-stop shop for everything IT-related for an RIA or a financial advisory firm with 5–30 employees.
Our services include:
- A cloud platform powered by Microsoft
- Managed IT services
- A dedicated 3-person assigned team in addition to help desk support
- Cybersecurity
Backup and disaster recovery - IT compliance
- Regular reporting and auditing of your IT environment
Some common things that aren’t included are website development and programming.
We believe that RIAs and financial advisors are the small giants in the financial services industry. We love working with RIA and financial advisory firms with 5–30 employees and understand that your requirements for productivity, security, and IT compliance are exponentially more important than another business’s of the same size. Your local IT provider treats you like every other business and doesn’t understand why you require a more proactive, enterprise-level approach.
We have been working with RIAs and financial advisors since 2007 and understand the IT needs of wealth management operations like yours.
Most RIA and financial advisory firms we work with have between 5–25 employees, but we have clients with just 3 employees and many clients with well over 25 employees. We can help structure our services to support your firm at any size and our services are easy to scale as you grow.
Our pricing is all-inclusive and comes at a fixed fee. Your pricing is based on the number of users (employees) regardless of how many devices you have. Pricing ranges from $120 to $160 per user per month depending on the package.
To get an exact price, you can request a quote.
Once we have the green light, we’ll schedule a pre-kickoff call to get started. We’ll work with you to gather the network documentation we need as well as schedule a 30-minute training session for an administrator.
If you are new to the Microsoft platform, you can designate power users who will vet the platform before you go live. Existing Microsoft users can typically skip this step.
If you’re already using the Microsoft platform, you can expect no downtime.
If you’re not currently using Microsoft the downtime will be minimal. We schedule the switchover to happen during a time when your staff is less active on the network. It’s common to do this over a 4-hour period in the evening so when employees come to work the next day everything is up and running for them.
If on-site support is important to you, we offer a package that includes on-site support visits twice per month. However, most of our support can be done remotely and this is how we support most of our clients.
If you do require on-site support, we will send a trained professional to your office using our nationwide partnership with Smart Source.
We have clear response times and standards. All requests are classified based on severity and each classification has a target response rate.
Emergency response service tickets are logged within 5 minutes with a 30-minute response time. These are for critical problems where your ability to conduct business has stopped (i.e. a server, network, or application is down).
Fast response service tickets are logged within 5 minutes with a 30-minute response time. These are for situations where an individual user is unable to conduct business (i.e., a user cannot log into their computer or access their email).
Quick response service tickets are logged within 10 minutes with a 1-hour response time. These are for urgent problems where service is seriously degraded but you can continue to operate for a short time (i.e. very slow network performance, app function is down).
Normal response service tickets are logged within 1 hour and our response time is within one business day. These are for situations where an employee can still work but is not as productive (i.e., they have a slow computer or they cannot print to multiple printers).
Our business hours are Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM. After-hours support happens through a call-back service with our on-call team.
We offer flexibility in how you can connect with us and understand different employees have different preferences to request support. You and your team can reach your designated team or help desk via phone, email, or web-based portal.
RIA WorkSpace has under 20 employees, which includes 15 in a technical role. Your RIA or financial advisory firm would be assigned 3 team members who will work with you on a strategic, operational, and tactical level. They will get to understand your RIA or financial advisory firm and your needs.
Learn more about our Leadership Team.