Insights

COVID-19 has grounded thousands of planes, but the aviation industry can still take important steps to keep business alive.

The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic will be far-reaching. However, by working together, we can learn from this crisis and build a better future.

Organisations must respond quickly to changing conditions during this health crisis, particularly with regard to cash management and business strategy. Our guide can help.

A strong finance function can drive innovation and proactively influence real-time strategic decision making, while its commercial insight helps broaden interactive stakeholder engagement and communication.

Startups tend to be comprised of young, dynamic people who are passionate about their work and emotionally invested in the company’s success. However, as the business grows more complex and market conditions change, startups sometimes struggle to implement proper processes. It is here that many fledgling companies begin to go off-course. Failure to organise the business correctly and make necessary adjustments can lead to slowdowns in workflow, stalling the organisation just when it is most in need of momentum. Lapses in regulatory compliance are another common side effect of inexperience, resulting in fines and loss of investor confidence. Having passionate workers is excellent, but startups must also implement clear strategies and efficient processes in order to ensure both regulatory compliance and long-term success.

For many manufacturers, cash flow is the limiting factor that determines how many new business opportunities they are able to pursue, and how ambitious their strategy can be as they plan for the future. The demands of Industry 4.0 require data-driven management both inside and outside the factory, requiring continuous capital investment to keep pace with a fast-moving business environment. Pricing pressures add to the challenge, reducing margins even as customer demands increase ever more quickly. Even the most forward-thinking manufacturers will have trouble staying ahead of the curve if they cannot access enough internal cash flow to keep the wheels of innovation turning.

Across all industries, effective management of the entire end-to-end value chain can drive significant improvements both in terms of cash flow as well as profits. For retailers, however, the optimal strategy can be even more tightly focused, as cash and profits go hand in hand. The faster stock can be turned, the more profit and cash can be generated. Even so, the aim should not just be about turning stock quickly, but rather about turning the right stock quickly – and knowing how to align the speed of your supply chain to ever changing customer demands.

Keeping pace with a fast-moving economy means continually re-investing profits to fund future growth. Although many companies struggle to access the liquidity needed to enable timely investment, a proactive approach to working capital management can free up significant untapped cash within any business, providing a platform for longer term, sustainable growth.

A recent Grant Thornton survey of over 300 senior executives found that 89% believe the CFO of the future will require much stronger data analytics skills – and fully 75% plan to upgrade their personal data analytics skills in the coming year.

Effective cash management is a critical success factor for any business. To fund growth, invest in new infrastructure or mitigate short term downturns, having strong visibility and control of day-to-day cash is a must.

Whether it’s robotics, artificial intelligence or the cloud, advances in technology present a golden opportunity for the finance function. But what’s the best way to maximise potential gains: an enterprise-wide solution, or a more targeted approach?

The vision for Thailand 4.0 is certainly ambitious, and is extremely well adapted to the digital economic stage that the world is now entering. But is that vision also well adapted to Thailand itself? Can this moderately advanced Southeast Asian nation handle the weight of its own development plan?

Optimising working capital requirements is key to assessing the efficiency of profits, and something CFOs are expected to manage at all times. Do you know how well working capital is managed in your business and where improvements could be made?