Cash is King

A Dollar is a Dollar, A Dime is a Dime.

For many people in work, the end of the month signals pay day. For the most part it is a regular occurrence, one many folk come to rely on. For better or for worse, it’s an essential ingredient to keep the ball of life rolling. Imagine the uproar if you regularly had to chase your employer for your wages? Money makes the world go around. Cash is King.

When you run your own business – one of the things you have to get used to, is that pay day…kinda vanishes. You have to get used to getting paid after the company gets paid, and quite right too. So prompt payment matters.

A couple of years ago, I had to wait over four months for a substantial invoice to be settled. The delay seemed designed into the process, despite both parties having previously agreed payment terms of 30 days. Fortunately we manage our business with care but too many delays like this spells trouble. Money makes the world go around. Cash is King

At What Goes Around we don’t have a policy, or terms of settlement for invoices we receive. We simply pay them as soon as possible after arrival, usually within 24 hours of receipt. From my experience, this is not uncommon among employee owned and smaller businesses. Money makes the world go around. Cash is King.

Lots of businesses talk a lot about Corporate Social Responsibility, and I think paying your bills promptly is a key part of being a responsible business. If your company delays payment to your suppliers, I wonder how that fits with your company values?

How do you turn good into excellent?

Listening Your Way to a Great Result

Like most large companies, Vodafone runs a supplier performance programme. Twice a year, Vodafone evaluates its suppliers against these criteria: Corporate responsibility (CR), financial stability, technical capability, delivery and quality of service as well as the strength of the commercial relationship. OK, granted the last one’s a bit…subjective perhaps, but I think this is a good, broad set of criteria. I first became aware of the programme after reading a press release about the CR measure. I was delighted that Vodafone were looking into this area, because I am personally interested in sustainable business and the company I was representing; BT, is a good CR practitioner. When I dug a little deeper, I found that Vodafone scored BT at 71%, 7 out of 10. Not bad, but not great either.

Being a curious person, I called up the Head of Supply Chain and he agreed to meet and talk through their programme. The guys at Vodafone were great. Honest and straightforward, they really conveyed a sense of wanting to work together to improve. This wasn’t a huge surprise to me as I’d previously carried out some very interesting mutually beneficial improvement work with Vodafone, but it’s still great to get that encouraging approach.

We listened actively and worked hard to address Vodafone’s programme requirements. When I say we, this work was delivered in the main by me and a great guy in BT called Mick Bruder. Over a 12 month period we supported Vodafone’s programme and improved the CR score to 90%. Vodafone considers a score of 90% and above to be excellent. In turn, this improvement fed into the wider programme and pushed BT into the top 15 global suppliers to Vodafone for the first time. I’d settle for excellent.

When I was subsequently asked to write the Stakeholder Engagement section of BT’s Sustainability report, I asked Vodafone if they would consider being referenced as a case study. They agreed. This delighted me, made me feel proud of the work we were doing together and really helped to cement this great working relationship.

So the next time someone asks you about the business benefits of sustainability, why not show them this story?