Your Working Capital Story Didn’t End at Go-Live

Three years ago, your supply chain finance program was a priority. The business case was tight, the executive sponsor was engaged, and the first cohort of suppliers onboarded faster than anyone expected. You hit your cash flow target, or maybe you even exceeded it, and then the program moved into maintenance mode. The team that built it turned to other projects, the quarterly reviews got shorter, and at some point someone stopped scheduling them altogether.

That pattern is familiar across industries, and it raises a question worth revisiting: is the cash you freed up three years ago all the cash there is to free up? For most companies, the honest answer is no.

The Plateau Is Predictable

Most SCF programs start by enrolling the largest suppliers by spend, capturing a fraction of the total supplier base in the initial rollout. That’s a reasonable first phase, but it’s a foundation and not the finish line.

Since your program launched, payment terms across your supplier base have shifted. New vendors have come on, old ones have renegotiated, and commodity prices, interest rates, and competitive dynamics have all moved. The cash conversion cycle doesn’t hold still because your program does, and the AP teams managing these programs day to day can see the stagnation clearly. Supplier inquiries slow down, the program quietly drifts from active management to passive infrastructure, and the finance leaders who sponsored the original initiative may have moved on entirely. What remains is a program designed for the business you had three years ago, running inside the business you have today.

The Gap Between “We Did SCF” and Active Optimization

Companies that treat their SCF program as finished infrastructure tend to see flat or declining results, while companies that revisit supplier segmentation, refresh enrollment campaigns, and align program parameters to current business conditions tend to find that the second and third waves of optimization deliver as much value as the first.

What separates these companies isn’t effort so much as framing. The first generation of SCF programs was positioned as a financing tool, and the companies still extracting value have shifted the question from “how do we improve DPO and unlock cash from payables?” to “how do we sustainably leverage payables to fund strategic initiatives?”

Keurig Green Mountain’s experience illustrates what active management looks like under pressure. Facing $6.4 billion in acquisition debt after the JAB Holdings deal, Keurig’s finance team used their SCF program to generate $750 million in cash flow improvement in the first quarter, implemented in under 60 days. That velocity contributed to a Moody’s rating upgrade.

Three Reasons to Revisit Your Program Now

First, the IASB and FASB’s disclosure requirements have shone a scrutinising light on SCF programs, but these requirements can be ambiguous and have differing interpretations by companies, auditors, and ratings agencies. This makes it a natural prompt for a review of your program and your spend base, and treating the disclosure requirement as a catalyst for internal benchmarking is a stronger position than waiting for questions you haven’t prepared to answer.

Second, supplier participation tends to plateau after the initial enrollment push. The suppliers who said no two years ago may have different economics today, and the ones who said yes may be underutilizing the program. Fresh engagement strategies can restart adoption without requiring you to rebuild from scratch.

Third, annual planning cycles create a window to benchmark your program against current cash flow targets. The goals set in 2022 probably don’t reflect your 2026 balance sheet priorities, and a program that met its original objectives can still be underperforming relative to what’s available now.

The Discipline, Not the Milestone

Reducing working capital requirements is a discipline that compounds over time or erodes if left unattended, and the gap between “we have a program” and “we’re actively optimizing cash flow performance” is where most of the remaining value sits.

A Detailed Spend Analysis maps that gap by comparing your current program performance against your actual optimization potential given your current supplier base, payment terms, and funding environment. It provides a clear diagnostic of whether your program is performing at the level your business needs today, and most companies find that it isn’t.