Thursday 27th June, 2013

You might be forgiven for thinking that the main news today has been about the pros and cons of a certain Byron Burger, or whether "man of the people" George Osbourne would have been better off eating a quarter pounder with cheese from McDonalds........But anyway, other news today has been that we haven't been in a double-dip recession after all. And in fact, the triple dip fears which formed out of the long winter gloom appear to have quietly shuffled off. Yet, today's news is unlikely to have made much impact on organisations who've been struggling to balance the books over the last few years. With large corporates continuing to extend payment terms - sometimes to as much as 200 days, the pressure on SMEs remains. The fact that the economy hasn't been quite as bad as we thought is unlikely to be much comfort. And in fact, it probably just means we've been in one long, flat recession.

The rise in alternative sources of funding has been a direct response to to a business community starved of cash - and invoice financing (or factoring) has become a growth industry in the UK. Organisations unwilling, or unable to take part - but still unable to get the kind of funding they need from the bank are taking a glance down their supply chain and turning to their solution providers. A revolution in e-invoicing and the growth of a cloud based network of suppliers had led to an expansion of possibilities and opened the door to alternative methods of financing such as dynamic discounting and crowdfunding.

So regardless of double dipper, tripple dipper - or any other kind of dipper.... how organisations connect, raise funds and raise their visibility (and risk) across their networks has never been more important.