Company also launches major release of web site for financing companies, manufacturers, and finance brokers

- To enable financial supply chain participants to conduct more complex financing deals online, CapitalStream announced today CapitalStream.com Bid Management. Bid Management expands the power of the company’s private market model by allowing finance brokers and other seekers of commercial financing amounts from $2-$25 million to connect with selected funding sources through a Request for Proposal (RFP) matching system. In addition, the company launched a new version of its CapitalStream.com site, which includes enhancements to its pricing, quoting and document management capabilities. The company also announced the availability of its FinanceItNow link for e-commerce sites, seamlessly integrated with the CapitalStream.com transaction network and services.

CapitalStream.com is a hosted financing network for the commercial finance industry that merges the efficiencies made possible by the Internet with the trusting relationships required in sensitive money-based transactions. Through a sophisticated profiling capability, CapitalStream.com Bid Management ensures that the all-important relationship factor remains intact, even in a bid environment. With this profiling feature, each company involved in the transaction is matched with the other participants’ areas of expertise, credit profiles and deal size preferences, just to name a few of the relationship-related variables that are important in the commercial financing industry. CapitalStream.com Bid Management is designed to improve both efficiency and trust into the world of complex financing deals.

The profiling works like this: Those seeking financing create their profiles and RFPs, click on a “find investor match” button, and Bid Management sends the RFP to matched funding sources (such as banks and commercial credit companies). Those funding sources that elect to bid do so, and Bid Management weights and ranks the bids per the seekers’ requirements, enabling them to analyze, negotiate with and select a winning bidder. Awarded bids can flow directly into the credit and document management functions within CapitalStream.com for complete integration of the financing automation process.

With Bid Management, funding sources get more of the type of deals they are looking for, funding seekers get more choices and more customized bids and all members of the financial supply chain receive the productivity benefits of doing it online. Finance brokers also benefit with CapitalStream.com, they can get up-to-date program information, enter and track all their transactions, and provide their clients with profiled bidders, all with a single log-on.

“Bid Management helps both the demand and supply sides of the industry automate what is today a cumbersome process,” said Stephen Campbell, president and CEO of CapitalStream. “In addition, it more closely maps to how business finance is conducted in the real world, which is in the interest of all participants.”

Raj Srinath, director, corporate finance, National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak), one of the beta sites for Bid Management said, “When we were looking for equipment financing sources, we wanted to find someone who understood our business. Using Bid Management, we created an RFP, were matched with 10 funding sources, and received bids from four, all online. Not only did it make the process faster, it also ensured that we would receive proposals from people with the expertise we were looking for. ”

To further serve its subscribers, CapitalStream has announced a number of new features of its CapitalStream.com hosted financing network. CapitalStream.com is a transaction network and set of services designed to streamline the entire commercial financing process, helping members of the financial supply chain better serve their customers. Of particular interest to current subscribers is the newly created document management system. This allows users to customize and create templates for documents associated with a quote or a lease deal, directly within CapitalStream.com. In addition, credit application forms are now entirely customizable.

The company also added more flexibility to rate variability. A single quote can now include several different rates for several different pieces of equipment. In addition, users can log and archive quotes, both for reuse at a later date, and to use as data for future marketing efforts.

For B2B e-commerce sites looking to enable their customers to lease equipment found at their sites, CapitalStream now offers FinanceItNow, the capability to allow customers to seamlessly link to the financing network.

CapitalStream.com Bid Management will be in full production in October 2000 for subscribers and funding sources. The new document management capabilities are available now to subscribers for an additional fee. Enhancements to pricing, quoting, rates and credit applications are included with the core CapitalStream.com subscription and are available October 27th. FinanceItNow is also available October 27th to B2B sites.

Seattle-based CapitalStream offers end-to-end e-commerce solutions—including transaction network, origination management, bid management, risk management and fulfillment — for the global commercial finance market. The company’s e-commerce network, CapitalStream.com, provides an infrastructure for financing companies, manufacturers and B2B e-commerce firms to capture, grow and service customers. CapitalStream has been an established industry leader for more than five years, and has helped several hundred leading financial organizations increase their competitiveness, customer service and profitability.

Jennifer Fox
Capital Stream, Inc.
206-548-1651
jenniferf@capitalstream.com

Scott Battishill
DDB Seattle
206-464-0197
scott.battishill@sea.ddb.com