Eleven per cent of the working capital released.

The situation

A nut wholesaler was growing, but the cash was not keeping up. More and more of it was tied up in the supply chain: in stock held against long and uncertain lead times, in supplier terms that asked for payment well before the goods could be sold, and in the gap between paying for product and being paid by customers. The business was profitable on paper and short of cash in the bank, and every new order made the squeeze tighter.

What I did

I followed the cash rather than the profit. Line by line, I looked at where money was sitting and why: which stock was moving and which was not, what each supplier's terms really cost once lead times and minimum orders were counted, and how long customers actually took to pay against what they had agreed. Each source of trapped cash was given a value, so the team could see which mattered and which did not.

From that, I set out the changes in the order they should happen, starting with the ones that released the most cash for the least disruption to supply. Every change had a named owner and a date, so it was clear who was doing what and when it would be checked.

What changed

Working capital came down by 11%. That cash went back into the business, where it could fund growth instead of sitting on shelves or in customers' bank accounts.