Dear Business Owner/Chair

New Year is the opportunity to look afresh at the challenges and resolve to find effective ways of achieving our goals.

If you only make one business resolution this year, make it: pay suppliers quicker.

You have no business without your suppliers of products or talent. It costs time and money to find new ones. Each supplier has soaring bills to pay and is competing on wages for good people. They need you to pay quickly so they can manage their cashflow. Credit is tightening and many small firms have used up all their financing options. If you don’t pay invoices quickly your whole chain crumbles.

Christmas Past: You paid your invoices late and forced suppliers to accept extended payment terms up from 60 to 120 days. They refused to work with you again or couldn’t manage the cashflow, had severe mental health problems and shut down business. Your products/services suffered. Your customers left you and took their business to your competition. Investors took extended payment terms as a sign of financial trouble and fled to ethical firms that pay fair. Your reputation suffered. Topflight graduates turned down your job offers. The Board started asking difficult questions about the firm’s payment performance.

It can cost a lot of money to improve payment processes but a compelling case to the CFO and the Board paid dividends.

Christmas future: The improvement’s remarkable. Suppliers trust you, stay loyal and feel valued. They pull out the stops for you rather than poor paying competitors. The processes are streamlined, efficient and empowering. Everyone behaves better and there’s a culture where people are listened to and respected. Suppliers are treated as well as employees are. The Board loves the payment performance figures which are included in the firm’s ESG measures. Your reputation has improved. Investors are showing interest. The new recruits are very talented people. Ideas are flowing and there’s optimism and confidence at the end of 2023. Everyone’s ready for the challenges and opportunities of the recovery in 2024.

Your resolution paid off. Pay suppliers quicker. #EveryoneBenefits