 Working capital remains a priority for Dutch corporations, but there’s much more to it than extending DPO, as we found out at a Rabobank-hosted lunch in Utrecht.
 This is a transcript of the webinar held on 30th October 2018. To access the webinar, with slides, click here
 The average paper check costs $1.22 to process, says NACHA. According to a report by MineralTree, they cost U.S. businesses between $26 billion and $54 billion a year (thanks to Ursula Librizzi at Payjunction for unearthing those facts).
 Undistracted by the hottest 19th April in British history, our largest ever group of treasury and procurement specialists met at London’s Dorchester Hotel to tackle the serious issue of successfully implementing a supplier finance programme.
 Stockholm’s Berns Hotel was the venue for the first ever Working Capital Forum to be held in Scandinavia, which brought together corporate treasurers and procurement directors from 14 companies ranging from global technology firms to pulp and paper producers.
 The first ever Working Capital Forum to be held in New York City saw a wide variety of organisations coming together to discuss working capital issues, from multinational corporations to a not-for-profit social housing group.
 As working capital increasingly becomes a top-level agenda item, businesses are struggling with the requirements of the Duty to Report legislation and finding that their data quality presents difficult challenges to their working capital strategy and their compliance.
 Conversations about working capital management often go down the route of discussing payment terms extensions and how that can help improve the payables position on the balance sheet. But a different twist to that dialogue featured prominently in a recent meeting of the Working Capital Forum, kindly supported by Basware.
 For the treasurers and procurement directors who gathered at The Ritz for the latest meeting of the Working Capital Forum on 15th June, there was little doubt that a supplier finance strategy was an idea whose time has come.
 Treasury is in the driving seat. But it has to take the rest of the organisation with it.
Who owns working capital? That was the question debated by participants at the latest Working Capital Forum, held on this occasion as one of the streams at Basware Connect in London’s Docklands.  The latest Working Capital Forum saw treasury and procurement leaders from ten multinationals and two universities tackle the sometimes thorny issue of liquidity in the supply chain, and who is really responsible for protecting it?
 Matthew Stammers, European marketing director at Taulia (right), argues that corporate CFOs need to move away from ensuring that their companies are properly funded to ensuring that their supply chains are properly funded.
 The conversation at the April meeting of the WCF focused on how early payment discounts can be used alongside working capital objectives to improve the bottom line.
The latest meeting of The Working Capital Forum discussed the role of purchasing cards in achieving treasury and procurement goals
 The first meeting of The Working Capital Forum, held in London, discussed how to optimise working capital without harming suppliers.
 As companies seek to improve their working capital, suppliers may be seen as an easy target. Better tools and strategies can bring the interests of finance, procurement and suppliers into closer alignment, writes Andrew Sawers.
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