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Shareworks, by Morgan Stanley

Score7.1 out of 10

25 Reviews and Ratings

What is Shareworks, by Morgan Stanley?

Shareworks by Morgan Stanley (formerly Solium Shareworks, and with the capabilities of the former Capshare) is a cloud-based equity compensation administration platform. It allows users to collaborate, share, comply, trade, model, support decisions, create reports and control plans more simply and securely.

Categories & Use Cases

Shareworks by Morgan Stanley: High Expectations, Disappointing Reality

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my opinion, my experience with Shareworks by Morgan Stanley has been disappointing, primarily due to issues with international wire transfers. Despite ensuring that all banking information on my end is correct, and after being charged 50 GBP in fees, my funds have not been received. The bank has confirmed no attempts at transfer have been made to my account. I think customer support has been time-consuming and unhelpful, with over an hour spent on calls only to receive vague explanations about banking errors. I think this has not only been frustrating but has also shaken my confidence in their system's ability to handle sensitive financial transactions efficiently.

Pros

  • Nothing

Cons

  • International Wire Transfer Process
  • Fee Transparency and Policy
  • Customer Support and Response Time

Return on Investment

  • Increased Operational Costs
  • Time and Resource Allocation: Significant time and resources have been diverted to resolving these issues
  • Trust and Reliability Concerns

Solium Review

Pros

  • Shows current dollar value of options
  • Shows future options to be displayed
  • Provides value and quantity summaries

Cons

  • Old looking layout
  • Can be difficult if you don't have any financial background
  • Somewhat difficult to navigate

Return on Investment

  • Not Applicable
  • Not Applicable
  • Not Applicable

Other Software Used

HipChat, ADP Workforce Now, BambooHR

Solid equity-comp solution

Pros

  • Provide overview for employees regarding their equity portfolio.
  • Keep equity plans organized from an administrator point-of-view.

Cons

  • Limited functionality to run expense simulations based on different inputs.
  • Limited visuals/graphs possible

Return on Investment

  • Better alignment between HR, Legal, and Finance re IFRS2 expenses.
  • Reduced time spent on calculating quarterly IFRS2 expenses.

Other Software Used

Adaptive Insights, a Workday company, Lucanet, Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud, Oracle Financials Cloud, Tableau Online

Capshare - Improving Cap Table Mgmt

Pros

  • Cap Table Management - automates the cap table process from Excel and gives detail by shareholders or by share class
  • Option Expense - runs monthly option expense and associated journal entries for stock based comp
  • Warrant valuation - can run reports to determine a black scholes based warrant value with different assumptions

Cons

  • The system is slow. Since we have a large cap table it takes over 20-30 seconds to load it once you log on. Additionally it is slow to move between pages
  • It does not support IPO companies. We would have to transition to Shareworks

Return on Investment

  • It has helped us accurately track option expense. Hands down the primary benefit
  • Allows us to pull reports by shareholder if we get inquiries about their holdings detail

Alternatives Considered

Carta (formerly eShares) and Solium Shareworks

Other Software Used

Abacus, Sage Intacct, BambooHR, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, Avalara

Valuable dashboard & tools related to equity based compensation for employees and administrators

Pros

  • Calendar of vesting schedule
  • Visibility into value of various equity based compensation
  • Ability to setup default release elections at vesting dates

Cons

  • If banking information is incorrect for proceeds it can take weeks before notification of rejection and communication can be missed once sent
  • Different activity views can show different data when a transaction is 'in process'
  • Wish there was an option to test banking information entered for deposits, mine was rejected due to an unexpected issue with the name on my account

Return on Investment

  • The ability to provide employees with an detailed view of their equity compensation and the real time value of the assets
  • Protection features in place to prohibit trading in blackout period
  • Option for employees to cover taxes related to share purchase and sales is a benefit to employees

Other Software Used

Trello, NetSuite, Nexonia Expenses