The RIA Operations Tech Stack (2026): A Buyer's Map by Workflow

An RIA tech stack has eight layers: the CRM, portfolio management with reporting and billing, custodians, financial planning, documents and e-signature, meeting notes, compliance and archiving, and an automation layer that moves work between the rest. Operations teams rarely struggle inside any one layer. They struggle at the handoffs, where a household in the CRM has to become custodian paperwork, an account in the portfolio system, a line on a bill and a record for the CCO.

So this map is organized by workflow, not by vendor. For each layer you get what it does for operations, the products firms commonly run, what breaks between it and the next layer, and which connections Caddi has there. At the end are four common stacks, each with its own page of the workflows that cross it.

1. CRM: the system of record for households

What it does for ops. The CRM is where a household exists: members, relationships, registrations, contact details, beneficiaries, service cases and the tasks that hang off them. For operations it is the source every other layer should read from, and the place every finished piece of work should be written back to.

Common products. Salesforce, usually Financial Services Cloud or a Salesforce-based advisor package such as Practifi or XLR8; Wealthbox; and Redtail. Firms with a Salesforce admin and complex processes tend toward Salesforce; lean teams tend toward Wealthbox or Redtail. Our guide to CRMs for financial advisors compares them.

What breaks at the next layer. The CRM household and the portfolio system's household drift apart. A spouse is added in one and not the other, an account is assigned to the wrong household, an address changes in the CRM but not at the custodian. Most native syncs move values; few tell anyone that the two systems disagree.

Caddi connections. Salesforce, Wealthbox, Practifi and HubSpot. Redtail is not a Caddi connection today.

2. Portfolio management, reporting and billing

What it does for ops. This layer holds accounts, positions and transactions reconciled from custodian feeds, produces performance reports, runs the fee calculation, and at many firms handles rebalancing and trading. It is where billing errors surface, usually right before a billing run.

Common products. Orion, SS&C Black Diamond, Envestnet | Tamarac and Addepar. Orion and Tamarac are common at firms that trade and rebalance in house. Black Diamond is known for performance reporting and its client portal. Addepar is built for complex wealth, with alternatives and entity structures.

What breaks at the next layer. New accounts arrive from the custodian feed before anyone has set their fee schedule or model. Billing groups do not match the CRM household. Closed accounts keep billing. Each of these is an exception someone has to find, and the fix usually lives in a different system from the one that shows the problem.

Caddi connections. Orion, Black Diamond, Tamarac and Addepar. Other Envestnet platforms are not Caddi connections today.

3. Custodians

What it does for ops. The custodian holds the assets and opens the accounts. Operations spends much of its day on custodian paperwork: new account applications, transfers, beneficiary designations, account maintenance, standing instructions. The forms directory covers the common ones, including custodian account opening forms and ACAT transfers.

Common products. Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing and Altruist are among the custodians independent RIAs use, and many firms use more than one.

What breaks at the next layer. Custodian forms are filled by hand from the CRM, so a name spelled one way in the CRM and another on the form is a rejected transfer. Status lives in the custodian portal, so the CRM does not know a transfer is stuck until someone checks.

Caddi connections. None. Caddi does not connect to Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, Altruist or any custodian platform. It fills the custodian's PDF forms from the CRM household record, sends them for signature through DocuSign, and logs the signed copy back to the CRM. Submitting in the custodian portal stays with your team. See how to auto-fill custodian forms.

4. Financial planning

What it does for ops. Planning software is mostly the advisor's tool, but it creates operations work: client data has to get into the plan, and plan outcomes (a Roth conversion, a new account, a beneficiary change) turn into paperwork and service cases.

Common products. eMoney, MoneyGuide and RightCapital for plans; Holistiplan for tax return analysis.

What breaks at the next layer. Plan recommendations become action items in someone's notes, not tasks in the CRM, and the paperwork they require starts only when someone remembers.

Caddi connections. None of these today. Caddi works from what the planning step produces after it reaches the CRM or email.

5. Documents and e-signature

What it does for ops. Every signed form, statement, trust document and agreement has to be stored somewhere retrievable, named consistently and tied to the right household. E-signature is how most paperwork gets signed now.

Common products. DocuSign for signatures; Box, SharePoint, Egnyte, ShareFile and Google Drive for storage.

What breaks at the next layer. The signed PDF lands in someone's inbox or a DocuSign folder, not the client's folder, and the CRM step it completes stays open. Collecting documents from clients is a chase conducted over email.

Caddi connections. DocuSign, PandaDoc, Adobe Acrobat, Box, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, Egnyte, Laserfiche and Google Drive. ShareFile and Adobe Acrobat Sign are not Caddi connections today.

6. Meeting notes

What it does for ops. AI note takers record the client meeting, summarize it and write notes and tasks to the CRM. For operations, the meeting note is increasingly where work starts: the beneficiary change, the distribution, the new account.

Common products. Jump, Zocks and Mili are built for advisors; Fireflies and the meeting platforms' own notes are also common.

What breaks at the next layer. The note lands in the CRM, and then the action items wait. Nobody fills the form the meeting called for until the advisor asks where it is.

Caddi connections. Jump, Zocks, Fireflies and Zoom. Caddi does not take meeting notes; it does the work after the note lands. See Caddi vs Mili for how the two categories differ.

7. Compliance and archiving

What it does for ops. Advisers keep books and records under Advisers Act Rule 204-2 and run a compliance program under Rule 206(4)-7. Operations feeds that program: evidence that a procedure ran, who approved what, and where the signed document is.

Common products. Smarsh and Global Relay for communications archiving; Hadrius, Greenboard and ComplySci for compliance workflows and reviews.

What breaks at the next layer. Proof that an operations procedure ran lives in five systems and a spreadsheet, so an exam request turns into a reconstruction project. What counts as a required record for your firm is a question for your CCO or counsel.

Caddi connections. None of these today. Caddi logs every run it does, with what it read, what it wrote and where, and Govern gives the firm one view of the work done by agents and by people. See RIA compliance operations.

8. The automation layer across all of it

What it does for ops. Native integrations connect pairs of systems, and they are worth using first because the vendors maintain them. But they mostly sync data. The automation layer does the work between systems: reading the CRM, choosing and filling the form, sending it, filing the result, opening the next task, and noticing when two systems disagree.

Common products. Workflows built into the CRM (such as Wealthbox workflows or Salesforce Flow), general tools such as Zapier, and AI agent platforms for operations, including Caddi and PitCrew. Built-in workflows are good at routing tasks inside one tool. General connectors are good at "when X happens, do Y" between two tools. Neither fills a custodian form from a household record.

What to ask. Who builds and changes the automation when the process changes, your team or a vendor? What is logged on every run? What happens when a step fails? The automation tool guide for midsize RIAs goes through these questions in detail.

Four common stacks

Most RIAs run a variation on one of these four. Each page lists the workflows that cross that stack, what the vendors' native integrations cover, and what is left to your team.

• Salesforce + Orion + DocuSign: Multi-advisor RIAs with a Salesforce admin and specialized ops desks. Onboarding at volume and billing exceptions.
• Wealthbox + Black Diamond + DocuSign: Independent RIAs with a lean ops team and no CRM admin. Contact hygiene, meeting follow-through and document collection.
• Practifi + Addepar + Box: UHNW advisors and multi-family offices with trusts, entities and alternatives. Document-heavy: capital calls, K-1s, subscription documents.
• Salesforce + Tamarac + DocuSign: Established RIAs with a trading and rebalancing desk. Handoffs from service to trading and billing: distributions, model changes, fee changes.

How to evaluate a change to your stack

1. List your ten most frequent workflows. New account, transfer, address change, beneficiary update, billing run, quarterly review, and so on. Our list of RIA back-office workflows is a starting point.
2. Mark every system each one touches. The seams between them are where the time goes.
3. Count re-keying. Every time someone types data that already exists in another system is a place for a rejected form.
4. Ask each vendor what its native integration covers at those seams. Read the vendor's own documentation; the stack pages above link the ones we checked.
5. Decide who owns the automation. A process that only a consultant can change stops matching the work within a year.
6. Check the record. For anything automated, ask what is logged and whether your CCO can review it.

Where Caddi fits, and where it does not

Caddi is the automation layer. Discover finds the repetitive work in the tools your team already uses. Caddi Automate builds the automation: someone on the team screen-shares the process or describes it in chat, and changes it in plain English as the work changes. Govern gives the firm one view of the work done by AI and by people, with every run logged. AI builds it, verified code runs it, and any model step inside a run is scoped, logged, and reviewable.

Caddi is listed on the Kitces AdvisorTech map under AI Assistants/Agents; see Caddi joins the Kitces AdvisorTech map. At The Planning Center, an independent RIA, COO Matt Mercer put it this way: "We thought our processes were finely tuned, but every one still pointed back to a human. Caddi got the systems we already have to talk to each other, and gave my team back an hour a day."

What Caddi does not do:

• Connect to custodians. It fills custodian paperwork; the custodian portal stays with your team.
• Take meeting notes. It connects to Jump and Zocks and does the work after the note lands.
• Replace a layer. It does not replace your CRM, portfolio system or archiving tool. It works between them.
• Make the decisions. Trades, bill approvals, money movement and anything your CCO signs off stay with people.

For a wider view of the ops seat, see RIA operations challenges and the Caddi for RIAs page.

More for RIA operations leaders

• The Wealth Advisory COO's Guide to AI
• What a Director of Operations at an RIA owns
• RIA acquisition integration checklist
• Client repapering without the NIGO
• Onboarding a breakaway advisor team

Caddi connects to the systems an RIA back office runs on: Salesforce, Wealthbox, Practifi, Orion, Black Diamond, Tamarac, Addepar, DocuSign, Jump, Zocks. See how it runs client onboarding and the operational side of RIA compliance, or the RIA operations overview.