CapitalStream™, a pioneer in front office automation solutions for commercial finance operations, today announced its client AgStar Financial Services, ACA, has achieved record returns using CapitalStream’s front office automation technology, resulting in the prestigious Business Technology Solutions Award from the Equipment Leasing Association (ELA). AgStar is a leading provider of financial services to agricultural-related enterprises, and has more than $2.4 billion in assets and 19,000 clients. The ELA award recognizes AgStar as an industry leader demonstrating innovative use of technology to improve operations, enter new markets and build overall ROI.
"To effectively grow and retain customers and dealers – without increasing our overhead – we had to reduce the huge amount of paper and faxes that accompanied each deal and eliminate non-value added activities such as re-entering data into different systems," said Paul Erickson, vice president of Trade Credit and Leasing, AgStar Financial Services, ACA. "It was imperative to streamline equipment finance operations with a solution powerful enough to handle our complex workflows – dramatically changing our company culture, increasing productivity and providing controls to manage growth. ELA’s recognition of our success validates both our vision and CapitalStream’s incredible product offering."
The ELA Business Technology Solutions Award recognizes leasing organizations that have demonstrated innovative use of technology to differentiate themselves successfully. AgStar won the award for the implementation of its Workflow Automation Project, which is based on FinanceCenter, CapitalStream’s front office automation solution. FinanceCenter is designed to streamline operations and enable growth without increasing overhead, and it has transformed AgStar’s paper-based, manual operations into a collaborative, automated enterprise – driving the company’s record 38 percent increase in booked transactions in a single year, without adding any new human resources.
"AgStar needed an integrated platform with a single point of entry that could span its entire business and be accessible on the Web – placing much significance on the use of technology to achieve success. The company’s greatest challenge was to automate a flexible, complex and fully manual workflow process with more than 50 steps generating up to 15 documents and involving up to eight people on a single deal,” said Kevin Riegelsberger, president and CEO of CapitalStream. “Management had to have instant visibility of deal status, processing time had to be shortened, and all organizations needed to better collaborate between offices and with outside vendors. At CapitalStream, we are honored that AgStar chose us to help them accomplish their goals, and we are very proud of their success in achieving these goals."
Overall, the CapitalStream front office automation platform has significantly transformed AgStar’s working environment – allowing effective, real-time operations between locations and divisions, improving response time and customer service, providing the capacity to increase dealer business, and growing top-line revenue without increasing costs.
Established in 1995, CapitalStream develops financial front office automation solutions that enable banks
and finance companies to transform paper-based, stand-alone operations into integrated, streamlined finance supply chains.
CapitalStream solutions streamline application processing, deal structuring, credit analysis and document generation
to rapidly originate leases, loans, lines and cards. As an established industry leader, CapitalStream has helped many
small business lending, equipment finance and commercial lending operations to improve relationships with customers and partners,
streamline operations, reduce risk and achieve significant revenue growth. For more information, visit CapitalStream's
Web site at
www.capitalstream.com.
Sandra Sick
CapitalStream, Inc.
206-548-1703
sandras@capitalstream.com
