Improving the application of financial measures in supply chain management

Abstract

Many companies (especially SMEs) still feel poorly prepared and notice a deficiency of financial know-how when facing situations such as limitations in working capital. To reduce the amount of capital employed, close linkage of financial measures to the daily operations within the companies is required. Yet, supply chain performance measures are often not directly linked to overall financial targets (e.g. cost of capital vs. service level). This paper proposes taking financial parameters into consideration when making supply chain management decisions. It outlines supply chain finance (SCF) solutions available to bigger corporates, analyses current financial metrics for supply chain management and proposes concepts for a greater linkage between finance and supply chain performance measures. Finally, this paper will also reveal gaps where current concepts and metrics have limitations and future research is needed. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.