Working Capital Management

Most companies can set free significant amounts of cash locked up in operations and sustainably increase their profitability and company value by managing working capital more actively.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a competence leader in the field of Working Capital Management (WCM)

The European Working Capital Management group pools experienced WCM practitioners across the world with various industrial and functional backgrounds such as procurement & purchasing, sales & marketing, finance, technical engineering and IT. Markus Koch, Head of Working Capital Management Continental Europe, leads the European Working Capital Management group and personally stands for a history of successful and sustainable working capital improvements.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has positioned itself as a competence leader in the field of WCM. PwC stands for optimisation through profound experience and has a strong track record in various industries for both national and multinational clients.

Increase your company's value through professional Working Capital Management

The fundamental principles of Working Capital Management are clear: reduce the capital employed and improve efficiency in the areas of receivables, inventories and payables. Practical implementation, however, is a challenging task on the one hand due to conflicts inherent to cross-functional and trans-sectoral issues, and on the other because of the high complexity of individual optimisation measures.

WCM initiatives release capital employed and increase liquidity that can be used for strategic investments or the reduction of debt. In addition, profitability is enhanced due to an efficiency improvement within the processes and a reduction in cost of capital. Considering all of these effects, improving working capital inevitably leads to a sustainable increase on Economic Profit / ROCE and therefore to a higher corporate value.

How PricewaterhouseCoopers can help

PricewaterhouseCoopers is ideally suited to help you identify, quantify and realise your working capital reduction potential. Our WCM professionals apply a three-phase project approach complemented by state-of-the-art software tools, Global Best Practices® and benchmarks.



Activities

  • External and internal benchmarking using best practice analysis
  • Identification of working capital optimisation potential
  • Project definition

Objective: Identification of potential, cost/benefit decision

Activities

  • Definition of normative processes and principles
  • Definition of necessary realisation measures
  • Identification of quick wins
  • Elaboration of an implementation plan

Objective: Establish concept to realise potential

Activities

  • Implementation and anchoring of normative processes and principles
  • Project management, ensuring and monitoring the progress
  • Initialisation of supporting and correcting measures and allocation of the necessary resources

Objective: Achieve release of capital employed and improve efficiency




Example on how PwC supports you (Selection)

Accounts receivable

  • Redesign dunning process
  • Solidify credit check
Accounts payable
  • Develop supplier negotiation concept
  • Support supply chain financing
Inventory
  • Review product range
  • Evaluate selective switch from make-to-stock to make-to-order
  • Optimise batch sizes
  • Review distribution network