Working capital management
The fundamental principles of working capital are clear: reduce inventory and receivables whilst increasing payables balances. But many companies find it hard to optimise working capital. Our specialists provide you with dedicated expert resources to help drive cross-functional working capital improvements, keeping you free to deal with the everyday challenges of running a business.
Working Capital Management (WCM) initiatives release working capital and increase liquidity that can be used for strategic investments or the reduction of debt. In addition, profitability is enhanced due to an efficiency improvement within the processes and a reduction in cost of capital. Considering all of these effects, improving working capital inevitably leads to a sustainable increase on Economic Profit / ROCE and therefore to a higher corporate value.
Working capital challenges
- Additional funding requirements due to increased working capital driven by business growth
- Lack of visibility on cash and working capital performance across the organisation, and entire working capital cycle
- Lack of cash awareness across departments and geographies, with no working capital targets and incentives
- Inaccurate working capital forecast
How we can support you
- Complete a working capital benchmarking exercise to compare performance against peers and identify potential improvement opportunities
- Perform a diagnostic review to identify ‘quick wins’ and longer-term working capital improvement opportunities
- Development of detailed action plans for implementation to generate cash and make sustainable improvements
- Assist the implementation of sustainable working capital reduction by robust, efficient and collaborative processes, through focus on the key levers:
- Process optimisation throughout the entire end-to-end working capital cycles
- Developing an enhanced working capital dashboard and accurate cash flow forecast
- Creating and embedding a ‘cash culture’ within the organisation, where the trade-offs between cash, cost and service are evaluated and optimised
Private equity study
The Private equity working capital study provides insight into the difference in working capital performance between PE portfolio companies and it's listed peers. Furthermore, it provides deeper insight into the various levers of improvement and the extent to which best performing PE companies have focused on these. This provides valuable input for all PE portfolio companies and other companies looking for further working capital improvement opportunities.
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