A group of multinational corporations has worked with the Supply Chain Finance Community to issue an open Request For Information (RFI) to bring supply chain finance solutions to their smallest suppliers, SME’s. These are the ‘long tail’ of their supplier base.
SCF solutions, such as reverse factoring, supplier financing and dynamic discounting, allow a supplier to gain faster access to cash due from invoices. However, the cost and complexity of on-boarding smaller suppliers means that many have been unable to take advantage of the SCF programmes offered by their larger customers.
In the ‘open RFI’ project, more than 30 providers of supply chain finance (SCF) services, including banks and technology platforms, will participate with the goal to directly compare the services available to corporations who seek to put in place an supply chain finance programme for their smallest suppliers.
In conversations with the ‘open RFI’ project representatives, it became clear that the ability to send e-invoices plays a vital, if not crucial role, as an enabler to achieve SCF results.
Each of the participating SCF vendors will respond to an identical RFI, and the best five solutions will be invited to present to an audience of senior corporate treasury and procurement professionals at the SCF Community Forum in Amsterdam on 18th November 2015. A white paper summarizing the results of the project will be released at the same time, as will an online resource enabling corporations to identify appropriate SCF suppliers for their needs.
“This groundbreaking project allows direct comparison of all the leading SCF vendors for the first time,” said Michiel Steeman, executive director of the SCF Community. “It is especially important because the ‘long tail’ of smaller suppliers has traditionally found it difficult to access the benefits of SCF.”
The list of SCF vendors taking part is extensive: ABN Amro, Anachron, BasWare, BNP Paribas, C2FO, Citi, CRX Markets, Demica, Deutsche Bank, Flinqer, GT Nexus, HSBC, ING, InvaPay, JP Morgan, Kyriba, OpusCapita, Orbian, Oxygen Finance, Premium Technology, Prime Revenue, ProQuidity, Rabobank, Remitia, Riskco, Santander, Side Trade, Social Trade Organization, Taulia, TradeCloud, TradeShift, Trefi Finance, Tungsten and Urica.
