The current crisis has put cash and liquidity at the top of the risk “leader board”. Many are hoping that the situation will stabilise with the easing of “lockdown” and increasing consumer activity. But we also know we are in the early stages of a recession, so we need to prepare on the basis this situation persists!

There are a number of tactics to help mitigate the most pressing risks, including strengthening approvals over investments and expenditure, enhancing financial systems and controls, empowering your teams and most importantly implementing a centralized “cash war room” to focus on conservation and collection of cash.

Not all cash generation comes from the most obvious of places though!

We were lucky to be joined by Gary Steadman, Head of Business Services at ABP, who discussed his program to drive cash generation and cost reversals delivering a welcome “P&L & Cash Boost”.

The newly untapped, previously unidentified, stream of funding is being used to power investments into further business improvements and transformational initiatives. This is giving ABP a head start to tackle whatever the “new normal” looks like.

With these experiences with companies like ABP, I am no longer a skeptic when I hear “your suppliers may have more of your cash than you know” or “your balance sheet liabilities may be overstated”.

This is not about “duplicate payments”, which may account for 15% of the vendor cash opportunity, or “audit” and “recovery”, this is about boosting cash and the P&L through complementary strategies. We can enable your team to do this or deliver as a no risk service. Let us know if you want to know more.

Our ‘Something To Consider’ snippets are framed as small, digestible, ‘dashes of insight’ around the pillars of what we define as “World Class Finance” – Process Optimization, Financial Control and Compliance, and Risk Assurance, all underpinned by technology enablement and integration.