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Five tips and five questions to ensure supply chain finance success

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Supply Chain Finance (SCF) can, and should, be a force for good in ensuring much-needed liquidity reaches all suppliers, regardless of their size and meets the objectives of buyers.

However, many suppliers, particularly SMEs, struggle to access necessary working capital, and buyers lack the motivation to set up or expand these programmes.

Wayne Mills, founder and managing director at Atom Advisory, shares his top five tips for buyers and five questions for suppliers to ensure SCF fulfils its potential to accelerate growth and underpin robust supply chains.

Five tips for buyers thinking about Supply Chain Finance

The importance of building and maintaining resilient supply chains has been well-understood for decades, but COVID-19 brought into sharp focus the need to reassess and reimagine supply chains, including supplier relationships.

The importance of building a resilient supply chain has been known for decades, but the impact of COVID-19 highlighted the need to reassess modern supply chain structures.

These five tips are a good starting place when setting up or expanding a SCF programme.

1. Define the programme objectives

2. Ensure business-wide stakeholder engagement

3. Actively support supplier understanding and onboarding

4. Review the changing external landscape

5. Align physical and financial supply chains

 

Five questions for suppliers to ask themselves

Whilst certainly not true in all cases, there is often an imbalance between the size and financial strength of buyers and suppliers. Careful consideration and individual assessment of SCF can deliver significant benefits to suppliers, but these five questions can help ensure positive outcomes.

1. Which buyers run a SCF programme?

2. Is SCF the right solution for me?

3. Is my working capital optimised by using SCF?

4. What is the best use of my time?

5. Which solution offers the most flexibility?

 

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Future-proofing the supply chain

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Future-proofing the supply chain

Future-proofing the supply chain

Supply chains matter. The plumbing of global commerce has rarely been a topic of much discussion in newsrooms or boardrooms, but the past two years have pushed the subject to the top of the agenda. The COVID-19 crisis, postpandemic economic effects, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities of today’s global supply chains. They have also made heroes of the teams that keep products flowing in a complex, uncertain, and fast-changing environment. Supply chain leaders now find themselves in an unfamiliar position: they have the attention of top management and a mandate to make real change.

Forward-thinking chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to future-proof their supply chains. And they can do that by recognizing the three new priorities alongside the function’s traditional objectives of cost/capital, quality, and service and redesigning their supply chains accordingly.

The first of these new priorities, resilience, addresses the challenges that have made supply chain a widespread topic of conversation. The second, agility, will equip companies with the ability to meet rapidly evolving, and increasingly volatile, customer and consumer needs. The third, sustainability, recognizes the key role that supply chains will play in the transition to a clean and socially just economy.

Boosting supply chain resilience

Supply chains have always been vulnerable to disruption. Prepandemic research by the McKinsey Global Institute found that, on average, companies experience a disruption of one to two months in duration every 3.7 years. In the consumer goods sector, for example, the financial fallout of these disruptions over a decade is likely to equal 30 percent of one year’s EBITDA.

Historical data also show that these costs are not inevitable. In 2011, Toyota suffered six months of reduced production following the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. But the carmaker revamped its production strategy, regionalized supply chains, and addressed supplier vulnerabilities. When another major earthquake hit Japan in April 2016, Toyota was able to resume production after only two weeks.

During the pandemic’s early stages, sportswear maker Nike accelerated a supply chain technology program that used radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track products flowing through outsourced manufacturing operations. The company also used predictive-demand analytics to minimize the impact of store closures across China. By rerouting inventory from in-store to digital-sales channels and acting early to minimize excess inventory buildup across its network, the company was able to limit sales declines in the region to just 5 percent. Over the same period, major competitors suffered much more significant drops in sales.

Supply chain risk manifests at the intersection of vulnerability and exposure to unforeseen events (Exhibit 2). The first step in mitigating that risk is a clear understanding of the organization’s supply chain vulnerabilities. Which suppliers, processes, or facilities present potential single points of failure in the supply chain? Which critical inputs are at risk from shortages or price volatility?

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Cold-chain transport vital to COVID-19 vaccine distribution

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Cold-chain transport vital to COVID-19 vaccine distribution

Cold-chain transport vital to COVID-19 vaccine distribution

COVID-19 vaccines developed by China are being shipped to countries across the world.

Produced by one of China’s major vaccine makers, Sinovac Biotech, they must be kept below a specific temperature to remain active.

Before they’re shipped out of a production plant in Beijing, the vaccines are loaded into temperature-controlled containers and sent to the airport by cold-chain trucks.

On Wednesday, a cargo flight from Swissair picked up vaccines at the Beijing Capital International Airport to deliver them to Brazil before Christmas. With international commercial flights hampered by the pandemic, airfreight is now a major mode of vaccine transport.

Beijing Aviation Ground Service (BGS) is the local logistic company responsible for handling the vaccines from the production plant until they are loaded onto an airplane. It is the second company in China certified by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the Center of Excellence for Independent Validators in Pharmaceutical Logistics (CEIV Pharma).

“This isn’t a new task for us, but delivering vaccines in such a great quantity is something we haven’t seen before,” said Yan Xin, director of BGS’s International Cargo Division. “We’ve set up a special team to handle the process and to ensure the vaccines are well protected and shipped out in the most efficient way.”

Temperature sensors were put both inside and outside the container to record the temperature throughout transportation, and the team also checked to make sure the containers’ battery was fully charged before it was loaded onto the airplane.

Aviation medicine cold-chain logistics has always been the focus of global airlines. However, opportunities and challenges co-exist in the huge market.

The freight business has become a “sanctuary” for airlines in extremely difficult times, with many operating at unprecedented profits in 2020. When quarantines and blockades disrupt flights, freight costs soar, helping operators keep the remaining passenger routes open and avoid bigger deficits. IATA forecasts that airfreight revenues will triple this year to 36 percent, thanks to a 30-percent rise in average freight prices.

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Transportation Predictions That Will Shake-Up the Supply Chain Industry In 2018

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In the book, The Living Supply Chain, the authors argue that “Speeding up the supply chain is at the root of everything that is good: improved revenue, reduced working capital, higher profitability, and less obsolete inventory.

Conversely, slowing down the supply chain is at the root of everything that is bad: working capital write-offs, reduced profitability, and slowing revenues.”

To “speed” up the supply chain is to invest in change and change will come with the digital transformation of the supply chain, which is the major focus for executives in 2018.

Much change in the supply chain industry will be due to innovative technologies for digital transformations, along with the recent tax reforms (see below), and the still-current driver shortage/capacity crunch.

The digital transformation of the supply chain will change everything – for the better.

These are the innovative technologies that I predict companies must use to undergo this transformation within their supply chains:

  1. Cloud-based technology
  2. Advanced Analytics
  3. Tracking and Tracing
  4. Supply Chain Visibility
  5. Blockchain
  6. Artificial Intelligence
  7. Predictive Analytics
  8. The Internet of Things

“In 2018, shippers must embrace change in order to succeed. Waiting and seeing what will happen is no longer an option,” adds Clark.

“Transportation management systems are poised as the fundamental tool for supply chain transformation, helping businesses to position themselves above the competition with sustainable profits and better service levels.”

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King Trade Capital Provides Supply Chain Finance Solution to Startup

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King Trade Capital announced it has established a $1 million supply chain finance solution for a Texas based startup. KTC was contacted by a nationwide factor to help accelerate the startups sales growth in the apparel industry. The owners of the startup have extensive relationships with small to mid-size retailers and years of experience sourcing goods from overseas factories. Through their relationships in the apparel industry they were able to secure annual production programs to manufacture branded goods on behalf of several men’s and women’s brands.

Due to the fact the client was a newly established entity with no financial or operating history, they were unable to obtain funding through traditional financing sources. The client was in need of a financial partner capable of providing the capital and structure necessary to have fabric sourced and garments manufactured overseas.

Initially the client’s factories wanted cash deposits in order to purchase fabric that would then be cut and sewn into finished garments. Payment for the cut and sew operations would then be due upon shipment. The owners, knowledgeable of the risks associated with sending cash deposits overseas, were seeking a safer solution to finance their inventory purchases.

King Trade Capital evaluated the experience of the owner’s and their customer and factory relationships, ultimately gaining comfort in their ability to perform. After negotiating with the factories, King Trade Capital and the client were able to structure individualized solutions for each factory, utilizing letters of credit that allow them to purchase fabric, complete the cut and sew manufacturing process and get paid according to their terms with the Customers.

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Balancing Financial Settlement and Inventory Levels Remain Key Concerns For Supply Chain Managers

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Balancing Financial Settlement and Inventory Levels Remain Key Concerns For Supply Chain Managers

U.S. companies made only marginal improvements in their ability to collect from customers and pay suppliers in 2013, while showing no improvement in how well they managed inventory, according to the 16th annual working capital survey from REL a division of the Hackett Group, Inc.

“For inventory, the global marketplace has made issues like demand planning more important than ever before,” says Analisa DeHaro, Associate Principal for REL. “Companies need to factor in lead times that may not have been an issue when manufacturing was done closer to home. The best companies are becoming more savvy about this, and are more effectively balancing the various elements of inventory management.”

The amount tied up in excess working capital at nearly 1000 of the largest public companies in the U.S. is over a trillion dollars, according to the REL research.

The U.S. economy was slow but stable, with gross domestic product increasing by 3.2 percent in 2013. But at the same time, the REL research found that gross margins decreased by 0.3 percent, indicating that companies are spending more internally to generate revenue.

The researchers also found that companies are continuing to borrow, using low interest rates to improve their cash position, with cash on hand increasing by 12 percent, or $110 billion. At the same time, companies continued to ramp up capital expenditures, which have risen by 43 percent over the past three years.

The value of total net working capital rose by 3.2 percent in 2013, and days working capital improved by less than 1 percent. While days sales outstanding and days payable outstanding improved only slightly, days inventory on hand showed no change at all.

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