Global Influence

REL in the press

REL in the press

CFO Magazine, "Easing the Squeeze: The 2011 Working Capital Scorecard," - For months after the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, the need for cash trumped all else. Today, cash is no longer a problem, as corporate coffers are filled to the brim. But don't be too quickto credit working capital improvement. The 2% decrease in days working capital (DWC) last year qualifies as downright modest, some say, although it is certainly an improvement, given that DWC increased 9.9% the prior year, the worst performance in half a decade.

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REL in the press

Reuters, "Giants hoard cash, small companies 'starve'-study," - The 1,000 largest U.S. corporations outside the finance sector have used low borrowing costs to build up an $853 billion cushion of cash, but they are hoarding the money rather than spending it, according to a new study by REL Consulting, a division of The Hackett Group, and CFO Magazine.

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REL in the press

Effective Working Capital II - Starting with payables, receivables and inventories, this Q&A will set out a handful of simple points around which an FD can start to build a strategic approach to one of the most common, least-openly discussed of capital challenges.

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REL in the press

Procurement Leaders (UK), "CPO/CFO insights V: From source-to-settle: Freeing cash from accounts payable," - This report, based on REL findings, looks in depth at the source-to-settle (S2S) cycle and in particular the management of the payment process. If this process is managed poorly it can tie up significant amounts of money.

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REL in the press

Business Finance, "The Inherent Folly of Cash Forecasting" - From REL Principal Gavin Swindell: Here's a contrarian view on the apparently hot topic of cash forecasting amongst the CFO's agenda. The Hackett Group recently published a survey of CFOs, and 70 percent rated cash flow forecasting as their top priority to be worked upon in 2011. Now, maybe I am being a little simplistic, but I find this strange.

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REL in the press

SupplyChainBrain, "Demand-Based Replenishment: Utilizing Pull-Based Techniques to Optimize Finished Goods Inventory," - In this detailed analyst insight, REL's Michael Rellihan explains how demand-based replenishment can help food and beverage companies significantly stabilize plant operations by establishing fixed production cycles using customer demand instead of a forecast-based ("push") scheduling method.

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