A new research study, "The 2008 State of the Market in Supply Chain Finance," benchmarks the trends in supply chain finance (SCF) over the past 15 months and shows that there has been a slight increase in practical activity in SCF compared to 2006. The report, announced by Aberdeen notes that despite the general awareness among corporate professionals that SCF holds a promise of savings and improved financial supply chain efficiencies, there is still a lack of best practice examples and guidelines for the corporate community to follow to improve SCF practices.

For the first time this year, both buyers and suppliers responding to the survey reported that the lack of knowledge of supply chain finance best practices was the key challenge to optimizing their SCF practices.

"This finding shows that companies have not yet fully realized the potential of supply chain finance techniques in helping manage the end-to-end supply chain," said Viktoriya Sadlovska, a research analyst at Aberdeen who authored the report. "Aberdeen's research studies in 2006 and 2007 have shown that Best-in-Class supply chain finance users have been able to use both financing and technological capabilities to help them achieve competitive advantage. However, a number of challenges are still preventing many companies from successfully using these practices, including the lack of purchase-to-pay process automation, poor collaboration between supply chain partners, high cost of financing for certain companies/industries and the still-evolving market of available solutions".

Best-in-Class firms in this study (in comparison to Laggards) are:

1. 1.8-times as likely to have online visibility into shipment status and in-transit inventory, and are 1.5-times as likely to have online visibility into financial supply chain events

2. More than twice as likely to use an Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) system, and are 1.7-times as likely to use an automated platform to manage accounts receivable or accounts payable transactions

3. 1.6-times as likely to have cross-functional goals and metrics in place for finance, purchasing, and supply chain.
To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com