Page 219 - Accounting Best Practices
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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
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