Odessa is a software consulting company located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a sole focus in lease accounting and lease-related software. The company was developed, starting in 1996 and incorporated in 1998, by a privately funded group of accounting / business professionals who also had expertise in computer technology. They carefully and deliberately chose to invest their resources in the leasing industry not only because of their individual competencies, but also because the market promised great potential. The inception of the company was based on the following premise: The leasing industry, despite its size and profitability, was technologically backward and unorganized. The lease accounting and management software catering to it was generally over-priced and very limited in its scope. None approached the Internet, if at all, as an opportunity to add significant value to the leasing model. Most were entrenched in legacy origins that severely limited their ability to take advantage of new technologies. With just the US leasing market alone estimated at $233 billion annually, the company's Principals saw a unique and financially viable opportunity to provide IT solutions to better manage this money.
Odessa found that the permeation of cutting-edge technology in leasing was sporadic, at best. It had spot-lighted sections of the leasing process, affecting each uniquely, independently and in isolation from the whole lease-operation. This forced companies to manually tie together the disparate sections of the lease process. Inevitably, intervening to help one part of the business communicate with another created inefficiencies, including highly redundant data entry between systems. While financial data from lease accounting systems helped the sales-force negotiate with repeat customers, the sales-force was not privy to the relevant information easily. In many cases, the lessee was even offered an online lease application and approval, but a potential funding source was not intimated of the new request until much later, driving down the potential gains from the lease. The disjointed nature of available technology necessitated physical intervention almost every time one link of the lease chain needed to be connected with another.
Moreover, leasing companies looking for software had two basic choices: (1) hire consultants and use an internal IT department to build the system; or (2) buy a system that others also use and make their business practices fit the system. The first option was obviously extremely – or prohibitively -- expensive. Under the second option, lessors were forced to squeeze their operations to fit into limiting, “one-size-fits-all” products.
Odessa chose to build LeaseWave, its flagship suite of integrated lease accounting, workflow and management products, in an attempt to address these very limitations. First, LeaseWave is a web-based application built on the web and for the web, specifically designed to bring the entire leasing enterprise on one single, connected platform. Through LeaseWave, lessors can connect seamlessly with their internal staff in an anytime-anywhere environment. And, equally important, LeaseWave can help lessors interface with their external business partners, whether they are lessees, vendors, funding sources, insurance companies, etc. by using a series of custom-built websites sold with the application. Lessees can, for instance, log onto their exclusive web-portal to, among other things, download invoices, run specific reports, check account balances, etc. This model allows lessors to maximize – as opposed to simply maintain – rich wealth of information that lives in their lease accounting and management systems. Furthermore, by leveraging off its internet design and its cutting edge development architecture, LeaseWave has been built to be customizable; unlike other products, it can wrap itself around the unique needs of any business model. The system comes with a core-engine that is common across all installations. The data capture requirements and the user interface can, however, be easily custom-built for each implementation. In a simplistic way, this is similar to web-sites, such as CNN’s, where pages of information get regularly updated without affecting the underlying “core” that runs the site. This is a truly different design than the “cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all” approach that limits archaic, competing systems; in LeaseWave’s case, it is the product – and not the underlying business process – that molds itself to fit the lessor’s requirements.