As the UK economy gets back on its feet, most companies will experience rapid growth this year to get back to the revenue levels they were at in 2019. Many will exceed previous levels as pent-up customer demand, whether B2C or B2B, rises. Growth is of course, positive but it will take careful cash management for increased the revenues to transfer into increased profits.   Rigorous cash management is critical for survival and how you manage your supply chain will have a huge impact on your results at the end of 2021. Companies typically spend up to 70% of the value of revenues with external third-party suppliers. Yet, so many companies and their CFOs fail to realise this value and underestimate the potential by at least 50%.

Insider Pro recently conducted some original research into the pre-pandemic manufacturing sector. We accessed Companies House data for the last 5 years pre-pandemic, for 1500 small and medium sized manufacturing businesses in the UK. The findings show the stark reality about cash and working capital trends, relevant to almost all sectors and organisations, small and large. The insight and learnings can be applied to any business and demonstrate the importance of mapping your supply chain and understanding your key dependencies. This diagram shows some of the findings – to see the full report, you can download the UK Manufacturing Barometer report now: