"More than ever before, U.S. companies are seeing the value of improving their total working capital performance," says Hackett-REL President Stephen Payne. "But even with the strides companies have made in the past few years, there's still a tremendous amount of money being left on the Table here, especially with 43 industry sectors showing improvement while 35 worsened in 2005."
Several trends played a role in helping U.S. companies generate the results they did last year, Payne says. "The greatest improvement this year was in Days Sale Outstanding, in part because accounts receivable is the area of working capital where CFO's have the most influence."
Stephen Payne is the president of Hackett-REL, which found that the top 1,000 companies achieved Days Working Capital of 50.4 days. His survey found that Days Inventory Outstanding declined 2.9% and Days Payables Outstanding increased by 0.6% in 2005, compared with 2004.
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