According to Ray Moore of HSBC, the efficient management of information across the financial supply chain (FSC) is a critical ......... in getting goods to market early and at the lowest cost.

As international supply chains become longer and more complex, the risks and costs ......... with fulfilment continue to increase.

The focus of many supply chain management initiatives to date has been the physical processes and logistics costs that are easier to track, but this focus is increasingly shifting towards FSCs and the less ......... costs hidden in payments, risk management and working capital management processes that are equally important.

Banks are under increasing pressure to demonstrate how core competences can be better applied to improving the efficiency of the FSC: this can be defined as the 'purchase-to-pay' process from the buyer ..........

In order to meet the challenge, banks are re-......... traditional trade services and developing new solutions to meet a constantly evolving trade environment and rising customer expectations about what banks can do for them.

Most large buyer organisations either source from low cost countries or have established managed services or production facilities that take advantage of lower labour and operating costs, and the pressure to source from these countries and source direct to eliminate expensive trading intermediaries continues to ..........

The initial ......... about vastly reduced unit costs has, however, been tempered in recent years, as corporates take a more sophisticated approach to the calculation of total fulfilment cost, which includes all logistics, working capital and finance related costs involved within its supply chain.

The ......... approach — often the characteristic of an aggressive buyer — is being replaced with the realisation that there are greater business benefits associated with working more collaboratively with suppliers to help them improve efficiencies and reduce their costs.

The focus for many organisations has been streamlining and automating the physical supply chain in order to reduce costs; for ......... practice organisations, the reduction of 1-2% of total costs of fulfilment is critical to keeping a competitive edge.

However, as physical supply chains are optimised, savings become harder to realise; this is when the focus shifts to FSC opportunities; the quantum ......... to streamlining the FSC, where organisations could save 2-3% plus potential savings by taking paper out of the system, is now being taken by many corporates.