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Exhibit 11.1 (Continued) Finance Best Practices
Best Practice Cost Install Time
Treasury Management
11–20 Optimize cash management decisions
through the Internet
11–21 Optimize the organization of treasury
operations
11–22 Process foreign exchange transactions
over the Internet
in a relatively short time. The reason for the longer expected implementation
duration is that one may find that a specific Web site does not precisely match
one’s expectations, which may result in some shopping among related sites to
find a better match. Alternatively, some missing functionality may have to be
shifted in-house, which also requires more time to implement.
11–1 OBTAIN FINANCING THROUGH INTERNET LENDER SITES
Obtaining financing can be a slow and laborious process for the chief financial
officer. In particular, he or she must fill out the same lending applications for each
lender contacted—the information provided is almost the same for each lender,
but each one has a different form that must be completed in order to process an
application. Also, if a company’s needs are quite specialized, it may require an
extensive search through dozens of lenders to find one willing to extend funds. In
addition, the accounting staff must retain a voluminous file of lending documents
for each loan outstanding, which can be a considerable amount if there are a mul-
titude of leases and loans.
These problems can be avoided by shifting a company’s lending activities to
an Internet-based lending site, such as www.capital.com or www.puremarkets.com.
These sites have established electronic links to several hundred lenders, to which
the company can send its lending application. By having access to so many
lenders, the CFO has an excellent chance of making contact with a qualified
lender in short order. Also, because the Web site requires one to complete only a
single standardized borrower application, the request for proposals effort is vastly
reduced—many CFOs feel that this is the primary reason to use an Internet-based
lending site. Further, some sites address more complex financing needs, such as the
funding required for rollups, turnarounds, management buyouts, and recapitaliza-
tions. In addition, some sites even offer to store all the text in one’s completed
lending documents, thereby taking the document maintenance chore completely
away from the accounting staff. However, one must be cognizant of the chance