Sue Dabarno might not be big on the acronyms, but the president of Winnipeg-based Richard-son Partners Financial Ltd. understands the technology. “I call them Internet phones,” she says, after botching VoIP when referring to Cisco System Inc.’s voice-over-Internet protocol system installed at the firm last year.

Dabarno says the firm’s main concern, from a technology tools perspective, is to focus on what it needs to do to improve the client’s experience. This year, it is adding a high-definition video-conferencing facility so that clients can meet with their advisors “face to face,” so to speak. The firm is also focusing on client reporting, its Web site and improvements in portfolio-management tools.

“We have the best tools on the Street,” says a Richardson advisor — and the numbers support his opinion. The firm received a performance score of 9.2 for the “technology tools” category — the best of any firm in this year’s Brokerage Report Card.

For the category, advisors were asked to assess virtually all the tools in the front office that help them do their business. This catch-all category refers to the speed of the advisors’ desktop computers and the quality and speed of the servers that run several pieces of shared software — including the quoting system, diagnostics, intranet, Web browsers and portfolio-management software.

Overall, scores in the category are up incrementally for the second year running. However, smaller firms such as Richardson and Wellington West Capital Inc. perennially outperform both the national and regional independents, as well as the bank-owned firms. Collectively, the two boutiques scored an average 9.0; the regional dealers scored 8.0; the national independents hit 8.1; and the bank-owned dealers managed an average score of only 7.2.

Making technology work at a small firm is one thing, but when a firm literally 10 times the size of Richardson tries to please its advi-sors, things become difficult — unless it’s National Bank Financial Ltd.: its impressive performance score of 8.5 this year stole the category among the bank-owned firms from last year’s winner, BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc.

NBF rolled out a lot of goodies over the past year, including new computers loaded with the latest operating system and flat-screen monitors. On the software side, it added a customizable research Internet portal, a new Morningstar Canada mutual fund analysis tool and an order-entry system that’s getting “rave reviews,” according to Gordon Gibson, the firm’s senior vice president and managing director in Montreal.

“Up, up, up — no big change there,” he says, referring to tech spending at the firm.

Another firm that focused on improving its technology tools offering is TD Waterhouse Private Investment Advice. The firm’s tech score also jumped — by 0.5 from 2006. Advisors are happy about Thomson ONE and some new diagnostic tools, but they still complain about a patchwork of software that doesn’t function seamlessly.

Furthermore, one-quarter of the firm’s advisors are working on old systems, admits Mike Reilly, the firm’s president and national sales manager: “We’ve put in entirely new systems, so there has been a huge amount of change.”

“It is vastly improved,” says a TD Waterhouse advisor on the West Coast. “But it is still a notch below the rest of the banks. The firm is aggressively trying to move there, though.”

Of note, advisors at Scotia-McLeod Inc. continue to beat up their firm in this category — and for its back-office performance (see story above).

Blackmont Capital Inc. ‘s score jumped by 0.7 from 2006, but it still lags its immediate competition. The firm’s transition to Dataphile wasn’t smooth, advisors say.

“Getting there, but not there yet,” says one Blackmont advisor on the West Coast.

Canaccord Capital Inc. also rolled out Thomson ONE during the year — although with greater suc-cess than TD Waterhouse — and garnered a performance score of 8.9, comparable to that of the boutiques.

Bob Larose, executive vice president of private client services at Canaccord, was modest about this performance and advi-sors were uncommonly tight-lipped about the strong tech scores.

Larose did have praise for the firm’s tech training, however, and that may possibly explain the score. Advisors have had at least six months to work with the new system after the first round of training, and a fresh round is in the works, adds Larose, who is based in Vancouver.

@page_break@”The beauty of our training is it is one-on-one,” he says. “Everyone runs a different business, so they have different needs and questions. We also have a help desk with experts on hand and a champion of the software stationed in each branch, and they can answer basic questions as a first point of contact.”

Most brokerage executives are quick to note that advisors parse out their time to clients first, so persuading them to spend quality time with a trainer in front of their computer to learn about the tools at their disposal can be challenging — even if it would help productivity in the long run.

Most advisors can tolerate new technology, but the veterans can sometimes be a tough sell — no matter how much training is offered to them, says Robert Harrison, president and CEO of Vancouver-based Leede Financial Markets Inc. IE