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Client data aggregation is supposed to be a solved problem.

Most modern RIAs use platforms like Addepar, Orion, or other reporting tools that promise “clean” data: centralized account values, real-time performance, visual dashboards, modular reports. But for firms managing clients with complex entity structures and/or private investments, these systems often mask a more frustrating truth: aggregation still breaks. Regularly.

Behind the scenes, operations teams spend hours cobbling together data from portals, spreadsheets, emails, and more - all to maintain the illusion of data integrity.

Even the best front-office dashboards are only as good as the data they receive, and for most RIAs, those pipes are still pretty rusty, and mostly held together by human effort.

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The Myth: “Our Client Data Is Aggregated”

Yes, most RIAs have a data aggregation tool in place, which pulls in custodial feeds and public market positions and creates a clean front-end dashboard.

But, clean aggregation often stops where client complexity begins. What about:

• Capital calls delivered as PDFs from fund admin portals?

• Real estate valuations that arrive annually (if at all)?

• K-1s from complex partnerships?

These assets aren’t truly “aggregated.” They’re collected, interpreted, and manually entered by ops teams working across inboxes, spreadsheets, portals, and shared drives. The result is inconsistent tags, missing client context, and dashboards that often reflect only a portion of the client’s actual financial world.

Data aggregation tools are powerful when data is structured, current, and complete - but they don’t solve for upstream intake. They don’t read PDFs, normalize naming conventions, track approvals, or reconcile cash movement across entities. They assume clean data, and clean data is rare.

Atomic Insights helps close that gap. By centralizing and automating data intake, tying transactions to workflows, and layering in real-time checks and audit logs, Atomic helps ensure that what flows into your reporting platform is accurate, consistent, and documented.

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What Better Looks Like, and How Atomic Helps

Solving aggregation issues starts before client data hits a dashboard. It begins with building reliable upstream infrastructure: how does your clients’ data reach your advisory teams?

This means centralizing intake across capital calls, tax notices, valuations, and payment requests, keeping information out of inboxes and scattered folders. It means standardizing labels and naming conventions across entities and platforms. It means tracking payments and workflows as they happen, rather than chasing records down later.

Atomic enables RIAs to do exactly that:

• Intelligent document ingestion via email + OCR: With Atomic’s OCR engine, ops teams can simply forward a capital call or valuation notice by email (no need to download, rename, and save documents, or manually re-enter data). Atomic automatically extracts key payment details, generates a draft payment request, and attaches the original document, streamlining the entire intake process.

• Integrated data feeds from Arch and Canoe (coming soon): Atomic is actively developing integrations with investment aggregators like Arch and Canoe, which will significantly reduce the need for manual effort and PDF downloads. Atomic aims to enable a cleaner, more connected flow of investment data into RIA workflows and reporting processes, especially for complex, multi-entity portfolios.

• Structured, repeatable workflows with automated data input: As your data pipeline shapes up, your teams’ efficiency depends on the processes that guide it. Atomic empowers ops teams to initiate, review, and approve payments within a single, consistent workflow. Payment requests allow teams to auto-fill known vendors and accounts, initiate multi-step approvals, and track each step in an audit-ready log. The result: fewer missed details, cleaner downstream data, and more confidence at each step.

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Final Thought: Aggregation Isn’t Enough

RIA service and operations teams are already doing the hard work of chasing down documents, cleaning data, and bridging gaps across systems to make their dashboards look complete.

While data aggregators can help you visualize what’s there, they can’t fix what’s missing, messy, or mis-categorized.

That work happens further upstream. Atomic Insights enables RIAs to strengthen the pipes, not just the presentation.