While computers and high-speed electronic communication have fundamentally changed financial markets and exchanges, prior to the introduction of LienLogTM, the tax lien certificate investing industry had not seen the same benefits.

Most tax lien investors use home-grown management solutions based on standard office productivity suite software: word processing, spreadsheets, and calendars. These solutions can be effective at organizing information but there is no automation. All tasks are handled manually, which is time consuming, tedious, and error-prone. While not appreciated, one of the major challenges these home-grown solutions present is that they are highly personalized.

There are no standard formats, which makes sharing information (for example for the purposes of due diligence, assignment, and financing transactions) extremely difficult. Most commercial tax lien management solutions are built on top of personal database programs. These are more efficient at organizing information and enable some kinds of automation, for example the scheduling of calendar reminders for making tax payments. While it is technically possible to share information among users of the same program, it is not necessarily an easy thing to do because all of the data are stored on a local computer and some information is stored outside of the database program and in the computer’s file system. LienLogTM was built from the ground up to be a modern web-based application that delivers the capabilities of computing and high-speed electronic communications to tax lien certificate investors.

All of the data are securely stored in “the cloud” in data centers that are accessible from anywhere in the world via an Internet connection and standard web browser. Because all data for all LienLogTM users are stored in exactly the same format-and all users connect to the data over the Internet-sharing information about tax lien certificates is not only possible, it’s easy using LienLog’s built-in sharing tools. The combination of common data formats, on-line accessibility, and ease of sharing promises to revolutionize the tax lien certificate investing industry for the benefit of everyone. That’s what we mean by harnessing the power of cloud computing.