The Financial Supply Chain

The Financial Supply Chain is increasingly recognised as an area offering significant potential for generating bottom-line improvements and creating competitive advantage. According to Killen Associates, “a typical billion-dollar company spends approximately $27 million annually for unnecessary working capital and inefficient processing functions because they lack visibility into the Financial Supply Chain and receivables.” In fact the total value locked up in inefficiencies associated with the global supply chain are estimated between $500 billion to well over one trillion US$.


The Financial Supply Chain refers to the end-to-end trade processes and information that drive a company's cash, accounts, and working capital. From a buyer's perspective, this involves the full procurement-to-payment process. For the seller, it is the order-to-cash cycle.

In both cases, the goal of the Financial Supply Chain is to optimise:

Accounts payable and receivableCash managementWorking capitalTransaction costsRiskAdministration But unlike the Physical Supply Chain, which has seen improvements ranging from containerisation to fulfilment management, there remain significant performance gaps in the Financial Supply Chain which contribute significantly to the trapped value identified above. These gaps are the result of the :

Time required to create, transfer and process paper documentationCost and errors associated with manual creation and reconciliation of documentationLack of transparency in inventory and cash positions when goods are in the supply chainDisputes arising from inaccurate or missing dataFragmented point solutions that do not address the complete end-to-end processes of the trade cycle Enabling the Financial Supply Chain
Financial Supply Chain benefits have proved elusive because of the complexity associated with international trade. T he end-to-end trade cycle involves a number of different types of parties needing to exchange information and a variety of contractual documents in a timely manner. Point solutions have provided limited value with limited ability to scale and broader e-Commerce initiatives have failed to provide the platform to manage the complexity of Global Trade, typically being proprietary by nature and/or simply consolidating data and being unable to replace the full content and legal context of paper documents.

To overcome these barriers, enabling technology must meet critical pre-requisites to be practical, and deliver enduring value to each member of the trading community:

Progressive acceleration, automation and optimisation of the Financial Supply Chain processes leading to paperless tradeScaleable to support all settlement types, all documents, all parties and cross industry applicabilityInteroperability with e-Commerce and Trade Community platforms and applicationsIncremental application components to deliver targeted value, speed of implementation and a direct return on investmentTrusted Third Party platform with neutrality through governanceFull coverage of the commercial, logistics, financial and regulatory documents required for international tradeLegal Infrastructure to ensure progression to completely paperless tradeA complete business platform incorporating information, document content, document context, legal framework and a robust foundation for the provision of trade finance Source : www.bolero.net

Mardi 12 Décembre 2006


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