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Kit
Menkin’s Leasing News www.leasingnews.org Wednesday January 09,
2002 Headlines---- Paperless Leasing---- `Literally Overnight' Wednesday---- Odds and Ends Microsoft has sold 17 million copies of Windows XP
Transportation Department to study encoding data on driver's
licenses It is easy to log on to Meet the Leasing News Maker—Instructions included Tomorrow, Thursday, 1pm, California time ( 4pm, EDT ) ### Denotes press release Paperless Leasing---- `Literally Overnight'
ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich.--( --Cypress Corporation today announced GreatAmerica Leasing Corporation turned its 10-year leasing company into a paperless office environment overnight. Using Cypress' fully automated content delivery system, Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based GreatAmerica single-handedly transferred paper-based reports and documents into instantly accessible electronic assets. As a result, research, retrieval and reporting tasks that took hours, now take seconds - saving GreatAmerica thousands of dollars in productivity and paper costs. As one of the nation's fastest growing small-ticket office equipment leasing companies, GreatAmerica needed a faster and more reliable method for distributing reports for its nation-wide network of telephone and office equipment dealers. Within hours of deploying Cypress(R), GreatAmerica transformed its traditional print, burst and distribute reporting method into a fully automated, paperless process that allows assembly and delivery to the desktop. "Nine times out of 10, we were searching for a particular fact or figure that was buried in a report, which just took too much time," said Jim Burns, director of information technology at GreatAmerica Leasing. "Since we pride ourselves on always providing live customer support, instead of automated attendants, it was vital our employees didn't need to leave their phones unattended to search for a file or document. By having the information at their fingertips, employees would be able to answer questions faster and assist more customers. We needed a solution that could be quickly deployed and didn't require extensive end-user training. Cypress was an immediate success. The savings we've seen in research and retrieval alone has cost justified the entire Cypress investment." "Transforming paper-based reports into electronic content doesn't have to be costly or time-intensive," said Mary Hinz, president of Cypress. "The power and simplicity of Cypress creates a `paperless office' overnight." About Cypress, The Knowledge Delivery Architecture Cypress is a Knowledge Delivery Architecture that eliminates the barriers previously imposed by disparate platforms, applications and file types and enables enterprises to quickly deliver business critical information to employees, partners and customers in real-time. Cypress does this by automatically capturing a document page-by-page, preprocessing the document so it is in a common format and archiving the document in a virtual document repository. While creating and maintaining page independence and document integrity, Cypress enables end-users to retrieve, assemble, distribute and view only the pages of interest, and provides document delivery to all enterprise and Web-based destinations. About Cypress Corporation For more than 18 years, Cypress Corporation has dedicated itself to the design, marketing, and support of robust, high quality content delivery applications. Cypress Corporation is headquartered in southeast Michigan with additional offices throughout the United States, France, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Operating on a global scale, Cypress Corporation provides some of the world's largest companies with the technology needed for mission-critical content delivery. Customers are from all industry sectors including hospitals, universities, insurance companies, banks and governments. For more information, please contact Cypress at 248-852-0066 or visit www.cypressdelivers.com. All other company or product names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners. CONTACT: Cypress Corporation David Hinz 248/852-0066 dhinz@cypressdelivers.com #### ################################ ##################### Wednesday---- Odds and Ends Irwin Business Finance is cutting off 25% of the current brokers they work with. Please don’t use my name, as I am one left, and don’t know how long? Do you know what is going on? (name with held) _____ I have a problem that some of your other readers may be experiencing. Health Insurance!!!! My company's current HMO Insurance provider is going out of business. There are few providers who will write for a SMALL GROUP! Is it possible to make Health Insurance a discussion topic so that we can see how some of your readers solved this problem? Sincerely, Joe Leslie President FCI Financial Services, Inc. ----- I am an avid reader of your column. I enjoy it daily and have learned much from it. My question- where can I get information about standard and customary pay structures for producers in the equipment finance industry? I have heard that a producer should earn anywhere between 30 to 50% of the fee earned, and that the average in the industry is 43% of the fee earned. Can you provide some information on this or at least direct me to it? Any past articles written on the subject? Thank you very much. Steven Barouh Security Leasing Kansas City, MO 816-587-3400 ext. 135 ( Salesman Pay Survey ) http://www.leasingnews.org/articles.doc/newsletter6.htm ELAonline.com has a survey, but it is over a year old, maybe even a year-and-a-half. It is $10 for non-members. Still is interesting to read.
http://www.elaonline.com/library --- Dear Name With held, In regards to JDR. I think you can give ALL of your thanks to COPELCO. They are the ones that solicited this business and requested that JDR do so also. After numerous phone calls to Copleco, in regards to the types of transactions they were purchasing they stated that JDR should proceed and sell whatever they approve. And at the time COPELCO sold c/d credits. NOT JDR. I am sure you were one of the MANY brokers that JDR had received these transactions from. You can also THANK yourself!
Jennifer Todd ____ Just wanted to write you a "thank you" note, privately, for the service you are performing to our industry. It is no doubt a gratifying, yet sometimes thankless, experience for you. I hope it satisfies your need to continue your earlier career and love of journalism without forfeiting your core activity of earning through American Leasing. I appreciate your passing the torch to your readers by allowing us to express our views. I always hope my contributions are consistent with the fundamental wisdom laid out by first, spiritual law, and second, industry convention. Your sharing of how you got in this business was interesting. From my own anecdotal experience, I find many of us; particularly long-timers enjoy sharing their own particular story about how they entered this crazy business. As a suggestion, it may be interesting material for future issues of your newsletter. Have a happy New Year. Jim Fleming nationalbusinesscredit@yahoo.com ----- Thanks for the resources. Look forward to a new year of successful leasing and valuable info from the website. Keep up the good work! MICHAEL S. MCNEIL Alliance Funding Group Inc. (562)694-2884 ext 547 (562)694-5315 fax E mail:mmcneil@alliancefunds.com ---- Kit, Please run the enclosed , the other ad you ran for the inside doc person was filled thru your ad Sales..Est Arizona Leasing Company...Looking to establish branch office with experienced salesperson. comm/draw/exp..John at 888 607 6800 John Torbenson john@odysseyequipfinance.com ----- ICON not IKON Ooops, I thought we had this ICON / IKON identity crisis cleared up when you were kind enough to ask me to clarify the complaint about the "other guys" recently. Thanks for publishing our recent press release in today's issue, yes ICON bought a $7.75 million portfolio, the text is right but the headline says IKON not ICON. Ouch. Can you clarify in a future edition... IKON Capital now IOS, ICON of San Francisco and New York is the buyer of large ticket and middle market portfolios, no relation. Also no known complaints about us (at least not to my face, hopefully a good sign). Regards, Paul Weiss PaulBWeiss@aol.com ICON with a C, San Francisco P.S. I didn't want to flood your incoming emails, but while I'm hear anyway would like to note that I also enjoyed your year ending life story piece. It's the things we've all seen and done over many years that makes it fun and interesting. I've "only" got 15 years in though, previously I was silly enough to pursue a banking and investment banking career. ( ( We corrected the on line version, and re-send to hopefully clear up any confusion our headline writer (Kit ) made. editor )) ICON Capital Acquires $7.75 Million Portfolio San Francisco, CA -- ICON Capital Corp., on behalf of ICON Income Fund 9 and ICON Income Fund 8B of which it is sole General Partner / Manager, announces the acquisition of a $7.75 million portfolio of equipment leases from a West Coast-based bank ( part of the agreement was the bank was not to be named. editor ).. The portfolio includes 31 lease schedules on lease to five lessees covering material handling equipment, manufacturing equipment and technology equipment with an original cost of $9.35 million. The transaction is the first for ICON 9, which is currently raising $100 million of equity and expects to acquire $250 million of equipment in the year ahead. ICON Capital Corp. is a full service leasing company specializing in residual based equipment transactions of a wide range of essential use equipment to creditworthy lessees. Based in New York with its acquisitions group based in San Francisco, ICON and its affiliates have raised several hundred million dollars from limited partners, acquired more than $1 billion of equipment for its managed funds, and manages this equipment for over 23,000 investors. For additional information, contact Lindsey McLorg, Vice President, Acquisitions, at (415) 733-5057, lmclorg@iconcapital.com and please visit ICON's website at www.iconcapital.com. ______ Microsoft has sold 17 million copies of Windows XP
By
Associated Press REDMOND, Wash. (AP) Microsoft
Corp. says it has sold more than 17 million copies of Windows XP since
the new operating system went on sale two months ago. Windows XP has a number
of new features to support multimedia, including programs for listening
to and recording music, playing videos and editing and organizing digital
photographs. The retail upgrade for home computers sells for about $99.
Sales of licenses of
Windows XP by computer manufacturers are more than 300 percent higher
than Windows 98 and 200 percent higher than Windows Millennium Edition
for comparable periods after those products' debuted, Microsoft said
in a news release. Windows 98 came out in mid-1998 and Windows ME was
released in September 2000. Microsoft did not give
a breakdown for retail upgrade, full-product, or license sales for Windows
XP. In trading Tuesday on
the Nasdaq Stock Market, Microsoft shares rose 82 cents, to close at
$69.38. Transportation Department to begin study to encode data on
driver's licenses
By
Ted Bridis, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) The government
is taking first steps with the states to develop driver's licenses that
can electronically store information such as fingerprints for the 184
million Americans who carry the cards. Privacy experts fear
the effort may lead to de facto national identification cards that would
allow authorities to track citizens electronically, circumventing the
intense debate over federal ID cards. Supporters said it was
predictable after Sept. 11, and after a briefly raucous debate over
U.S. identity cards, that officials would turn to improving existing
identification systems. With careful use, they say, these new licenses
could alert authorities if a suspected terrorist attempted to board
an airliner, withdraw cash or enter the country. The Transportation Department,
under instructions from Congress, is expected to develop rules for states
to encode data onto driver's licenses to prevent criminals from using
them as false identification. Under a new national standard, a license
from California could be verified and recorded using equipment even
in Texas or Florida. In a report accompanying
the funding legislation, Congress told the department it would ''strongly
encourage'' officials there to develop guides quickly with the states
for electronically storing information on licenses. ''This could benefit
the nation's efforts to improve security,'' lawmakers wrote, adding
it could also cut down on financial fraud and underage drinking. Transportation officials
told The Associated Press this week the department's new security administration
probably will take charge of the project, still in its early stages.
Already, 37 states store information on licenses electronically often
using bar codes or a magnetic stripe though few are known to include
fingerprints or imprints of retinal- or facial-scans. Georgia, for example,
includes a digital thumbprint on its licenses. ''What you're seeing
here is sort of a hardening of the driver's license that could lead
to development of a national ID system without creating a national ID
card,'' said Marc Rotenberg, head of the Washington-based Electronic
Privacy Information Center. ''If they start scanning
these things, they can track where I go,'' said Richard M. Smith, former
chief technology officer for the Privacy Foundation, an advocacy organization
in Denver. ''If we do this, come up with a national standard, there's
no difference between a driver's license and a national ID card.'' Nathan Root, standards
director for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators,
said, ''When you look at the expense of improving what we have already
versus implementing a new national ID document, the hassle and expense
just don't compare.'' He said, ''It would be a better idea just to work
with what we have.'' The association, based
in Arlington, Va., has already developed detailed guides for storing
information on licenses. Its current rules do not require states to
include biometric data, such as fingerprints or retinal scans, but that
could change. ''It was not practical, not before September 11,'' Root
said. ''It wasn't popular to include anything like that.'' The association represents
all the state motor vehicle agencies in the United States and Canada,
and counts as associate members the U.S. government and Mexico. Privacy experts said
a broadly adopted new standard for machines to check state ID cards
could allow authorities easily to track citizens nationwide, using a
state license everyone is already accustomed to carrying. ''The debate after September
11 showed that Americans are instinctively suspicious of a single federally
issued card, but they might be more sympathetic to identifications issued
by businesses or perhaps states,'' said Jeffrey A. Rosen, a leading
privacy expert and associate law professor at George Washington University.
Even supporters acknowledge
that the impact of a national tracking network could be significant,
especially if groups as diverse as retailers, sports stadiums, banks
and movie theaters begin demanding ID checks using licenses. ''They're giving these
systems too much credit in even assuming that somebody would be able
and interested to track everybody's whereabouts and doings,'' Root said.
But he also said critics' warnings ''aren't totally without merit. There
should be some controls placed, some kind of accountability.'' Root said he favors limits
on which organizations can check the authenticity of a license against
state records, since that check could create an electronic record of
the citizen's location and business. ''It doesn't mean the liquor store
has a need,'' he said. On the Net: http://www.aamva.org
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