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Unlocking £47m-£72m a month tied up in payment cycles across a global trading operation
Introduction
We implemented programme management and integration coordination support within a large, complex commodities trading technology function. We helped the organisation manage competing priorities across a diverse application estate and deliver a receivables discounting integration that unlocked faster access to revenue.
The challenge
The organisation manages approximately 50 bespoke and third-party systems supporting the full commodities trading lifecycle. This spans trade capture and shipping through to treasury, credit risk, compliance, and invoicing. With traders in Singapore and London and operations in South America, changes to any one application carry significant downstream risk. A recurring challenge was managing competing change priorities across business functions. Each considered their requirements urgent, against finite delivery resource.
This complexity mattered most when the business needed to change. Significant revenue was locked up in invoice payment cycles lasting up to six months. The organisation sought to address this through a receivables discounting capability, enabling banking partners to advance payment against outstanding invoices.
The solution
We provided programme management support across three team areas. The first was the integration team, responsible for interoperability across the application estate. The second was the master data team, maintaining the single source of truth for all counterparty and account information. The third was the platform evolution team, responsible for change and support across a suite of 15 applications.
Across these workstreams, we managed a structured prioritisation process, balancing competing demands from treasury, credit risk, legal, and compliance functions. For the receivables discounting initiative, we coordinated integration across the trading platform, master data system, credit risk calculations, bank communication interfaces, and the invoicing system.
The benefit delivered
The receivables discounting capability was delivered, enabling the organisation to unlock revenue tied up in extended payment cycles, with £47m-£72m in invoices discounted each month. The structured prioritisation approach ensured that high-impact changes were sequenced appropriately, with every change assessed for its knock-on effects across the estate. Programme management across the three teams provided the coordination layer needed to keep a large, complex function operating reliably while absorbing a continuous stream of business-driven change.