At its core, digitization has four simple aims.

• Produce accurate timely and verifiable data in a consistent manner
• Disseminate data as effortlessly, making it available in real-time
• Support decision-making  to glean insights from data to add and extract value at the point of transaction
• Analyse historical and real-time data to uncover competitive insight that advantage back into your decision-making process

Smart attuned organizations understand that their existence and advantage is a result of better decisions being made both large and small, front line and executive-level that occur on a monthly, daily, and hourly basis. The fluidity, accuracy, and depth of data are critical to make decisions and generate sustainable, competitive advantages that decision-making moment lies squarely in the purview of the individual and the team.

The unintended consequence of digitizing both physical and financial supply chain processes is that the newly digitized section of the track exacerbates and shines a searching spotlight on the manual non-digitized processes. You can argue the benefits of digitizing your supply chain process and demonstrable improvement in decision making benefits, however, you must also acknowledge the non-digitised section of the track stands out in stark relief as a weak link. It is the place where all the benefits of accrued digitalization come to a grinding halt as you drop down gears into a manual process to make your decision.

Nowhere is there a better example of the need for digital decision-generating tools than in today’s treasury and procurement departments.

Across multiple divisions within global corporate structures, digitization of process and decision making is forging ahead. For leading organizations, it is no longer acceptable for treasury or procurement to make decisions such as on payment terms with suppliers based on Excel spreadsheets and manual calculations. It’s dead-on-arrival with data containing minimal insights to exploit and the process is painstakingly repeated from manual scratch every time new “insights” are demanded.

It is redundant, it is not helpful, and cannot possibly build up a compendium of accessible historical data to interpolate trends and behaviours. It does not enhance reputation and relevance and is the weak link in the entire process.

Ada powered by Calculum is used by leading organizations to analyse and optimize their payment terms and working capital metrics. It leverages multiple digital-data sources allowing treasury and procurement to anticipate, refine and make available real-time insights into their suppliers and customer base as well as the most appropriate position to take on term negotiations at any moment in time.

As the entire supply chain digitizes and accelerates decision making, combined with the rapidity of more immediate commercial transactions, a matching rapidity and insight view on the financial supply chain and term optimization is becoming mandatory. Excel delivered term optimization strategies will simply not suffice.