Procurement Leaders Explain Advantages of C2FO

From supplier risk to sustainability to earnings improvement, global procurement leaders face a variety of challenges and opportunities in today’s marketplace.

We spoke with procurement heads at World Procurement Congress in London, who explained how their roles have evolved and how early payment through C2FO is a valuable tool in helping to meet their companies’ goals.

Building a true partnership

“Coming out of the past where procurement was a support function, what we’ve seen over the past years is that we’ve become a value-add to the business and that brings challenges in itself,” said Albie van Buel, chief procurement officer for Danish wind turbine company Vestas. “The dependence on our suppliers becomes larger and larger for many of the companies, so how do we work in true partnership and covering the risks at the same time?”

C2FO’s early payment marketplace helps reduce those risks by providing small- and mid-sized suppliers with the working capital they need to grow their businesses, while providing enterprises a no-risk return on the cash they utilise for early payment.

“The way we do that is by having a market-based approach, which allows those suppliers to log on, see their own invoices from that buyer, select which ones they need for their liquidity needs and offer a discount that is affordable for them,” said Andrew Burns, managing director at C2FO.

A sustainable model

This approach to early payment does more than benefit corporates from a cash management perspective. By providing suppliers with the capital they need to expand, C2FO helps build more sustainable supply chains and provides a positive societal impact as well. More capital means more growth, which means more jobs and income for workers.

“It’s a completely different model,” Kristian Saksida, chief procurement officer for Belgian chemical company Solvay, said about his company’s early payment programme with C2FO. “It’s very out-of-the-box thinking and I think it provides a good solution to people like myself in this area for working capital improvement.”