Supply Chain Finance-Lab (SCF-Lab)

The COVID-19 crisis has interrupted firms and their value networks. The lockdown measures taken by governments around the globe have triggered a massive supply and demand shock. The ensuing crisis has created economic chaos that resulted in massive business disruptions for companies, their customers, their suppliers and their affiliated service providers (banks and logistics providers). Firms are turning to supply chain financing solutions to stabilize liquidity and their net working capital to maintain solvency and ensure continuity of supply through their supply chains. This paper discloses several different types of supply chain financing solutions and how these can impact firms and their value creation partners struggling through the uncertain business environment caused by a global pandemic.

Financing the End-to-End Supply Chain provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of the financial synergies across the supply chain. It demonstrates the importance of the strategic relationship between the physical supply of goods and services and the associated financial flows. The book provides a clear introduction, demonstrating the importance of the strategic relationship between supply chain and financial communities within an organization. This book links together treasury, banking, supply chain, systems, IT, and key stakeholders. Financing the End-to-End Supply Chain will help senior supply chain practitioners to build collaboration, improve relationships and enhance trust between supply chain partners. With its combination of theory and practice it tackles vital issues including physical, information and financial flows, and tailoring supply chain finance to individual organisations' circumstances. Recognizing that supply chain finance means different things in different countries, the authors also consider various initiatives to harmonize and develop cross-border financing as well as including an agenda for national and international policy makers. The new edition features interviews from SCF platform providers on how ecosystems are involved in supply chain finance, additional learning activities for students and new examples on working capital management.

Financing the End to End Supply Chain provides readers with a real insight into the increasingly important area of supply chain finance. It demonstrates the importance of the strategic relationship between the physical supply of goods and services and the associated financial flows. The book provides a clear introduction, demonstrating the importance of the strategic relationship between supply chain and financial communities within an organization. It contains vital information on how supply chain finance is operationalised and put into place. It is written in a user-friendly style, starting with the purchasing function, and linking together treasury, banking, supply chain, systems, IT, and key stakeholders. Financing the End to End Supply Chain will help senior supply chain and procurement practitioners to build collaboration, improve relationships and enhance trust between supply chain partners. With its combination of theory and practice it tackles vital issues including physical, information and financial flows, and tailoring supply chain finance to individual organisations' circumstances. Recognising that supply chain finance means different things in different countries, the authors also consider various initiatives to harmonize and develop cross-border financing from the World Bank and other institutions, as well as including an agenda for national and international policy makers. Chapter - 1: Supply chain management and financial performance Chapter - 2: The big issue: working capital management Chapter - 3: Supply chain management evolution Chapter - 4: The concept – a case for supply chain finance Chapter - 5: The ecosystem – organisations involved in supply chain finance Chapter - 6: The value proposition – options for supply chain finance Chapter - 7: Implementation – bringing SCF programmes to life Chapter - 8: The global setting – cross border issues for supply chain finance Chapter - 10: The next thing – new frontiers for supply chain finance

The recent hype about blockchain technology and its abilities has led to a reconsideration of existing structures in the field of finance. With a bigger focus on efficient transaction processing, interaction and automation, the underlying concept of a distributed ledger has also showed feasibility for a much broader field. For this reason, the objective of this article lies in a first evaluation of this technology for blockchain-driven supply chains by taking a closer look at potential use cases and existing applications, particularly supply chain operations and trade finance. By aligning all relevant data streams on a digital scale, it is possible not only to make trading processes significantly more functional, but also to improve regulatory control through elimination of redundant practices. A digital, autonomous, decentralized, and distributed network would be applicable to a countless number of services. The initial concept for trade finance provides here a foundation to close the gap between vague assumptions and practical contributions in supply chain management.