Peter Davidsson, Whirlpool's European Treasury Director, gave an important presentation at Eurofinance's October 2011 International Conference in Rome on implementing a supply-chain financing programme. His conclusions, based on Whirlpool's experience in implementing supply chain financing programme in US, Canada, Mexico Italy, Poland, Slovakia, France and Germany, were that to run a successful supply chain financing programme companies need to ensure that:

• the supply financing programme is a General Management project because it requires strong leadership throughout the organization and can take more time then anticipated.
• there is careful coordination between all parties involved in order to ensure positive WC effect.
• accountants are involved early in the process to review contract to ensure proper accounting treatment
• efficient processes are worked out before on-boarding suppliers, which includes a file transfer and automatic matching process
• there is a clear strategy on which suppliers to include and at what price
• only platform supplier(s) and/or banks are used that can actively support the implementation process with local understanding, language skills, established name, etc.

 

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Excellent advice.