Operating Performance and Aggressive Trade Credit Management Policies

Question: Discuss about the Operating Performance and Aggressive Trade Credit Policies. Answer: The financial sector continues to display the strongest appetite for Trade Credit, primarily for its potential capabilities for information management. Emerging models could, with some refinement, eventually apply to supply chain. Several supply chain functions are prime candidates for Trade Credit, which could prove to be a viable solution for use cases around trade finance, traceability and recalls, product authenticity and smart contracts. Presently, you cannot "buy" packaged Trade Credit solutions for supply chain uses cases. There continues to be a lot of hype, with few even partially deployed and very limited prototypes. Only organizations that are especially risk-tolerant and that are early adopters of technologies should consider SCM Trade Credit initiatives over the next two to five years. Less risk-tolerant organizations should peripherally participate in trade consortiums or educational forums to learn more about specific Trade Credit use cases, with the goal to learn as the technology evolves. There are some identifiable early targets for Trade Credit in supply chain. However, similar to the evolution of the internet where unforeseen solutions emerged as the technology evolved, new and unexpected supply chain use cases could emerge as the technology matures. Supply chain use cases may include: Tradefinance Bills of lading/letters of credit, trade payments, etc. Multienterprise/party product traceability e.g., track and trace, asset provenance (including authenticity and tracking. Smart contracts Where contracts, or contractual terms, between parties are stored on a Trade Credit or, in more advanced use cases, "contractual code" sits on the Trade Credit that autonomously executes under certain conditions. Smart contracts may assist in enabling some of these use cases via more efficient/new forms of contracts and contract management. However, in addition to the technology being a barrier to adoption, so too will be the challenge of getting multiple parties to adopt new ways of doing business. Tradefinance is likely to be the short-term winner for several reasons: it is a well understood process (e.g., replace letters of credit) and banks are investing heavily in Trade Credit technology and are already heavily involved with pilots. The scale of trade finance in terms of total numbers of daily transactions (not dollars) is such that it might mitigate some of the scalability issues and concerns in other areas. For example, in global trade, as many as 20 to 25 parties can touch an order from initial source to final destination, including banks, insurance, government, suppliers, customers, carries, forwarders and 3PLs. Each has a role, and there are both shared and individual rules that govern their responsibilities at various steps in the process. Today there is no effective shared and immutable way to systemically codify and manage these types of complex multiparty agreements, but Trade Credit has the potential to do so. However, the challenges of multilateral smart contract enablement have not been 100% sorted out, both technically and from a business sense. Adding workflow and rules to Trade Credit will be necessary to connect multiple trading partners. Each plays its role when complying with the governing rules and each amending the chain as transactions progress. For example, goods picked up at a factory in China and taken to a port will not be loaded on a ship until certain conditions, like having an in-force letter of credit, are met. Today, global logistics process steps are not systemically connected across parties. Consequently, the bank is unaware that the goods are ready for loading. So, they are late in generating the letter of credit and they don't react until someone manually calls the bank. References: Carb?Valverde, S., Rodrguez?Fernndez, F., Udell, G. F. (2016). Trade credit, the financial crisis, and SME access to finance.Journal of Money, Credit and Banking,48(1), 113-143 Breza, E., Liberman, A. (2017). Financial contracting and organizational form: Evidence from the regulation of trade credit.The Journal of Finance,72(1), 291-324 Box, T., Davis, R. L., Hill, M. D., Lawrey, C. M. (2016). Operating Performance and Aggressive Trade Credit Policies