Making, Moving, and Managing Money – Steps You Can Take to Decrease the Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC)

A company’s profitability is often determined by how well vital departments are managed internally, and the amount of time it takes to turn cash into more cash is often a tell-tale sign of how efficient the accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) departments are at managing cash flow.

As I’ve shared in previous posts, Paperless ERP has a multitude of benefits for organizations, including integrated data, streamlined processing and increased visibility and efficiency. In a recent article in Forbes, one measurement that is used to determine the efficiency of a company’s cash management is the Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC), which measures the amount of time in which a business can turn over cash on hand.

For those that aren’t familiar with this measurement, the CCC follows cash through an organization, beginning as inventory, transitioning to accounts payable, moving through sales and accounts receivable, and then back into additional cash for the company. Further, the CCC measures how long a business will be deprived of cash if it increases its investment in resources in order to expand customer sales.

Investors use the CCC, in conjunction with other measurements like Days in Inventory, to determine the overall health of a company, and how efficiently the company manages inventory, accounts receivable and the accounts payable process. A low or gradually decreasing CCC rate should be the goal for companies aiming to stay ahead of competitors and ensure efficiency in management.

So what steps can organizations take to decrease the CCC? Solutions like MetaViewer provide a way for businesses in every industry to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their AP/AR departments, decreasing the amount of time necessary to process incoming and outgoing invoices.

If you think about how a traditional paper-based accounting process functions, inevitably, a pile of invoices will be left in a stack on someone’s desk with no way of knowing how much capital is tied up in the process. With a Paperless ERP solution, an organization can better capture, manage and access data through the lifecycle of an invoice, saving the company time and money by eliminating the need for paper processing and mailing, as well as simplifying the overall business process.

Overall, a well-organized and effective AP/AR process plays a vital role in a company’s ability to turn cash into more cash, especially when seamlessly integrated into an organization’s ERP solution. To explore how you can reduce your CCC and get a leg up on the competition, explore Paperless ERP and how it can benefit your organization’s bottom line.

~ Nick Sprau, VP of Marketing, Metafile Information Systems, Inc.