The dream of every business is to grow and become prosperous. For some, this includes enabling employees and the local economy to benefit from this prosperity. For a very few, this vision goes beyond growth but to enable the individual to dream of becoming more, to grow and to give back. This is the basic wheel of commerce and what drives capitalism.

For capitalism to work, buyers and suppliers down the supply chain, trade with each other. The cash flows from the consumer, through the retailers, and onto the supplier. They in turn buy goods or services from within a more focused supply chain, the result is the cash goes back into the pockets of the consumers to feed the process. Unfortunately, as soon as one link in the chain delays or stops the flow of this cash, recession kicks in. This is normally because the consumer stops buying but this is caused by the investment and growth drying up through higher prices or payment delays.

Unfortunately, for far too long in the UK, the big buyers have been riding rough shot over their supply chains. They have been stifling the economic growth of the country by locking up the supplier’s cash. What’s worst the big buyers have a view that the supplier should pay for the privilege of simply doing business with them. Other companies have jumped on this opportunity for quick cash and convinced those same buyers to force the supply to pay not just for doing business but also to get paid.

Furthermore, with Brexit just over the horizon, its criminal that large buyers still see the small supplier as tool to improve cashflow. The attitude is still one of contempt regardless of the prompt payment code. Suppliers are afraid to use the courts to force important customers to pay and at the same time those customers deliberately withhold payment to hit internal KPI’s. This breaks the chain as the cash is locked within an uncaring process.

Yet, everything needed to enable this change is all around us. All it takes are the customers to unlock their cash by paying on time. Today, this can be done without impacting KPIs and by making savings from the bottom line. However, the real win/win is to pay early, this allows the buyer to make visible cost savings, whilst the supplier can finance their business without risk, when they need it. This simple change would inject cash to flow directly into local economies. This would enable the small business to grow, to invest and ultimately reduce the cost for the customers.

The only light comes from the public sector. Here, driven by political motives and targeted by the prompt payment code, buyers are paying suppliers within 30 or even 10 days. However, this comes at a cost as the public sector are stretched after years of austerity, to meet these targets is a balance between being an ethical customer or delivering front line services to voters. Therefore, only the public sector has the ethical reason to use the cash locked within the supply chain to stimulate growth. Furthermore, they can make back office savings through early payment rebates that could feed into frontline services.  Only the UK government and the wider public sector have the political drive are reach to unlock their cash. To stimulate growth, to change how UK plc does business. Yet, will or can they, either way they must drive change, they must show the way.

If you believe the UK economy needs to grow, together we can unlock the cash within supply chain. Together, we can enable the small to grow and the large to expand. Together, we can help the individual believe they can make a difference and together we will see the results, in our pockets and across the whole of UK plc. All we need to do is ask one simple question, why don’t we pay early, when we could make visible savings and deliver growth?