The Bavelos Group
Early Pay Programs and Supply Chain Finance Experts

Tom Glassanos is a payment industry veteran who has helped thousands of organizations to improve cash flow and profitability by optimizing payables-related working capital. He founded Xign Corporation, and as a CEO, built it to be one of the world’s leading business settlement networks, which was later acquired by JPMorgan Chase. His deep knowledge and experience in the field kindled his latest venture, The Bavelos Group, a trusted leader in best-practice consulting for early pay programs and supply chain finance. The company helps buyer organizations to analyze, plan, and implement working capital programs to optimize cash, income, and rate of return. The Bavelos Group are experts in using these programs to bring value to suppliers, big and small, across all types of industries worldwide.

Due to the financial impact of the Covid pandemic, Glassanos reckons this is a perfect time for companies to optimize working capital and deploy strategies that manage the financial stress challenging most supply chains around the world. He notes, “There are perfectly viable supplier companies that have seen a material short-term downturn in their business. They need cash to sustain operations through the crisis. At the same time, buyer companies want to optimize payables working capital and ensure reliable on-going supply chain operations.” In a nutshell, the suppliers and buyers are looking for ways to optimize the cash that’s available to keep supply chains viable and do it in a way that strengthens mutual relationships and helps all parties to quickly return to normalcy as the pandemic eases. To sustain this interdependent existence of buyers and sellers, The Bavelos Group pitches in with its advisory services that help its clients understand how to apply early pay and supply chain finance strategies to optimize joint working capital and financially strengthen the supply chain.

Having mentioned the offerings of The Bavelos Group, Glassanos delves deeper to explain the importance of their services during these critical times. In the case of organizations with a strong balance sheet and small suppliers who are hard hit during the crisis, early pay programs enable buyers to provide cash and aid the supplier in avoiding layoffs or going out of business. If there are big suppliers in need of cash, supply chain finance comes into the picture, providing a mechanism under which bank cash can be made available at a very low cost. Thus, these tools prove extremely important for anyone managing a supply chain since they help control costs, maintain the flow of capital, and ensure that the supply chain’s value is preserved during the crisis. The Bavelos Group makes it possible for an organization to benefit from these tools through a set of analytics that assess working capital benefits in advance, forecast results, design the optimal strategy and easily deploy the programs to the benefit of all parties.

The Bavelos team invented key innovations like dynamic discounting and helped pioneer the rollout of supply chain finance with top banks

The Bavelos Group helps its clients get started by conducting a one-day planning workshop that engages key constituents from the supply chain, sourcing, finance, treasury, and payables. This process scopes the size of the opportunity, educates participants in best practices, aligns goals, and identifies the optimal strategy, usually a combination of Supply Chain Finance and an Early Pay Program. With a carefully designed strategy in hand, The Bavelos Group can assist in a timely implementation to strengthen the clients’ balance sheet and drive income to the bottom line.

The value of The Bavelos Group’s planning and advisory services is highlighted in a success story. Glassanos narrates the instance when a large national distributor approached The Bavelos Group to optimize payables working capital. The company sponsored a workshop with leadership from procurement, finance, and treasury and aligned on a three-year optimization strategy. In this strategy, The Bavelos Group was engaged to manage an early pay program and help extend payment terms with the rollout of supply chain finance. These strategies helped the organization achieve over $2 million of annual savings from early pay discounts and $50 million of new working capital per billion of targeted spend. And by expanding supplier access to lower-cost capital, these initiatives helped the company strengthen its supplier relationships and create a more financially resilient and competitive supply chain.

Glassanos believes innovation and experience are the prime factors that put the company ahead in the marketplace. He remarks, “The Bavelos team invented key innovations like dynamic discounting and helped pioneer the rollout of supply chain finance with top banks.” By applying these practices in a service-only company, Bavelos helps its clients achieve world-class results, without the burden of software or IT requirements. This makes working capital optimization an easy lift with fast, agile, and cost-effective solutions for its clients. With these unique value propositions, The Bavelos Group looks forward to continued innovations in working capital optimization to help drive financial efficiency in supply chains worldwide.