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Managing working capital

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Effective working capital management isn't just about freeing up cash; it's about strengthening your business from the inside out. With today's fluctuating interest rates, inflation pressures, and shifting global trade regulations, a working capital strategy must do more than just cut costs. It should fuel resilience, efficiency, and sustainable growth.

At Efficio, our approach goes beyond the numbers, ensuring your financial strategies align with operational realities. We help you increase shareholder value by unlocking hidden cash reserves, optimizing operations, and building lasting supplier relationships without disrupting your day-to-day business.

 

Benefits of working capital optimization

Liquidity and working capital improvements give you access to financing at a lower cost than alternatives, such as bank finance, without diluting equity or issuing shares. Our clients typically see 20-40% improvements in free cash flow alongside measurable gains in operational efficiency that are frequently achieved almost immediately, with little effort. 

As procurement and supply chain specialists, we bring finance and operations together with a holistic, operations-driven approach to working capital. Whereas traditional accounting firms often only identify working capital initiatives that amount to short-term cash fixes, leaving you with disrupted operations, damaged supplier relationships, or even impacted credit ratings. Our approach not only improves your ability to fund day-to-day operations without breaking processes but typically results in better working relationships throughout your business – and your entire supply chain. 

 

Why use Efficio to optimize your working capital

Efficio offers a hands-on and sustainable approach to working capital improvement that goes far beyond financial analysis.  

On payables, we excel at strategic supplier negotiations, applying a white-glove, data-driven approach that preserves relationships while improving terms. We identify and mitigate vendor risk through our supply chain expertise and improve payment processes to maximize cash, addressing missed discounts or early payments. Our team brings innovative solutions such as supply chain financing, buyer-initiated payments, and P-card strategies to unlock hidden value. We also offer benchmark insights from our proprietary spend database and can train sourcing and AP teams on negotiation and payables best practices. 

When it comes to inventory, our strong supply chain and operational improvement capabilities allow us to help you optimize your inventory by right-sizing stock levels, service and revenue. Our in-depth supply chain management expertise enables us to pull the right levers to improve operations while releasing cash from stock. 

When addressing receivables, our commercial experience enables us to identify strategic actions that enhance collections while protecting customer relationships and driving long-term value. 

 

Our three-phase approach to liquidity and working capital improvements

We use a three-phased approach to help you identify, deliver, and sustain working capital improvement opportunities:  

  1. Outside-in view - Identifying the areas of opportunities and what elements of working capital to prioritize. Typically, one week in duration, the primary outcome is a preliminary identification and quantification of opportunities. 

  2. Opportunity assessment (OA) - A deep dive to identify and confirm priority areas of focus. This phase focuses on gaps in performance in three key areas – accounts payable, inventories, and accounts receivable – and how to align them with best practices. Typically, three to four weeks in duration, the primary outcome is a business case documenting the size and nature of working capital optimization opportunities and a detailed plan to achieve them.  

  3. Implementation – We deploy an expert team that uses our proven methodology to deliver the measurable benefits identified in the OA. The six- to nine-month project outcome is tangible, with sustainable benefits and a transfer of skills and knowledge to enable ongoing improvements.

 

Innovative solutions

We take a broader view of working capital management, beyond just pushing out payment terms, that enhances liquidity while strengthening operations, such as: 

  • Supply chain financing – Partnering with suppliers for win-win financing solutions 
  • Procurement-driven cost optimization – Improving cash flow beyond finance-led initiatives 
  • Inventory right-sizing – Helping businesses transition from reactive stockpiling to strategic inventory management 
  • Alternative financing models – Exploring solutions like buyer-initiated payments, corporate cards, and P-cards 

Our in-house digital capabilities allow us to provide you with the digital tools to identify working capital improvement opportunities. They also enable you to easily track, monitor and report on the performance of identified improvement initiatives. Our digital tools include a comprehensive dashboard for "at a glance" metrics and progress updates, ensuring savings and improvements are delivered and ongoing opportunities can be identified.