Company insight Confidence in supply
Managing risk across the supply chain is no longer a happy bonus – but rather represents a fundamental need for every serious business. Yet addressing the issue needn’t require major investment. Finance Director Europe talks to Daniel Cashen and David Thorley at Fiscal Technologies to learn more.
T
he past decade has seen perhaps the most volatile period in global economics since the 1930s. From the seismic shocks of Brexit and Trump, through the twin disruptions of the global pandemic and a war on the European mainland, it’s unlikely that any business has found itself untouched by events.
A central thread of this narrative has been the disruption caused to global supply chains. From sourcing raw materials and accessing logistics and labour resources to unexpected price spikes, very few companies have remained above the fray. To that can be added the increasing risk of fraud. Building on KPMG research – which found that the number of fraud cases reaching UK courts doubled in the first half of 2021 – a recent report from the Purchase to Pay Network (PPN) showed that 36% of respondents felt that fraud or potential fraud had increased during 2021. That compares with just 7% who felt it had decreased.
A new approach
In short, businesses cannot hope to make smart strategic decisions without improved visibility of their supply chain risks – and the confidence to deploy a strategy designed to withstand shocks. To do this, they must adopt a data-driven approach that puts at its centre a number of key elements, including accessibility and speed of data, as well as the standardisation of processes.
and identify which suppliers are live, and which are dormant.”
Daniel Cashen, product director, Fiscal Technologies
David Thorley,
customer development director, Fiscal Technologies
verification were all areas of serious concern. There is also no denying that better understanding risk remains challenging. For its part, the PPN report highlights several factors that companies identify as getting in the way of efficient processes. 29% highlighted the time taken to respond to queries, while 27% said the high percentage of exceptions to processes got in the way of smoothly fixing anomalies. It is in that sphere that Fiscal
Technologies have carved out a niche as the premium provider of supply chain risk analysis – with a particular focus on accounts payable (AP). “We work specifically in the procurement space, so we get AP data from suppliers and we take in a number of data fields from suppliers to build a ‘spend transaction’
“Businesses will want to know if sanctioned entities might be in their supply chain as well as who’s done something about that.”
Daniel Cashen
Yet many organisations continue to struggle in this area. PPN, for instance, asked buying organisations about the checks they currently carry out. Quizzed about a wide range of issues they validate among suppliers, respondents highlighted that bank details changes, duplicate suppliers and VAT
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environment,” explains Daniel Cashen, product director at Fiscal. Essentially, that allows Fiscal to use algorithms to detect issues coming down the line. “In addition to that,” continues Cashen, “we look at the supplier data – all the supply records that come through –
Growing volumes Fundamentally, driving these technical changes is the proliferation of data that businesses now access. “That’s grown enormously over the past few years,” Cashen stresses. “But alongside that, the expectations around the use of that data to drive insight have also changed.” In short, businesses expect to see key data captured, aggregated and played back. Yet as Cashen says, that is not all. “They also want to see that done in a more effective manner: so you can’t get away with just showing some on an Excel spreadsheet anymore.” Instead, the executive argues, CFOs and procurement leaders want a graphical user interface that can reveal trend patterns of how spending is evolving. And as a business expands, that is shadowed by different layers of data – each appropriate to distinct stakeholders. In practice, of course, data without insight is inert – data that is not brought to life by analysis and iteration will forever remain a two-dimensional substance. Fiscal’s NXG platform evolved to address the evolving risk environment in which large companies operate. Recognised as a leader in the field of transactional risk, Fiscal long ago established itself as the pre-eminent AP management tool provider. Businesses relied on it to trawl through raw transactional data, processing millions of transactions to quickly spot anomalies and errors. Now, however, supply chains have become more complex, and with that comes the need to deepen the understanding of the different – and ever changing – risk exposures.
A broader view “We’re seeing a demand to dig deeper into the supply chain,” says Cashen. “Look at issues like ESG: it might still be a nebulous
Finance Director Europe /
www.ns-businesshub.com
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