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CORPORATE TRADE SOLUTIONS FOR PROCUREMENT Supply chain, sales, marketing and finance are all parts of your business that can be restricted by underperforming assets or slow-moving stock, and all are overseen by procurement. By Active International Head of Commercial Selina Martin. y refining your procurement process through innovations in corporate trade, you can restore value to your business, and create new pathways for growth. Put simply, corporate trade maximises value for your business by allowing you to use your stock or assets to increment media spend, marketing budgets, or other significant costs. Active’s successful financial solution offers endless benefits that can be applied comprehensively across your business – and in today’s increasingly challenging retail environment, no business owner can afford not to fully explore their options. In recent conversations with a global procurement expert, we discovered the benefits of considering the impact to businesses across multiple business units through the lens of procurement. Because individual business units have their own KPIs and focus areas, they don’t tend to pay much attention to how their challenges are affecting the organisation as a whole. Procurement, however, involves a holistic understanding of all aspects of the business and how they work together. When considering the total cost of ownership (TCO), procurement must analyse the product or service in question, and calculate how to create savings or efficiencies elsewhere to reduce the overall TCO. Then there is the ‘value’, which is not just the cost, but also the benefit, or value, the product or service drives for the business. A product sold in volume or at a low margin delivers consistency for the business, but not always growth – and in the challenging market we find ourselves in, the feedback we receive from every business is that there is a significant need for growth. If your business is slowing down under the weight of underperforming assets, surplus inventory (both goods and services), or if you’re spending excessive time and resources on dealing with these issues, Active can help. At Active International, we provide innovative financial solutions that help businesses mitigate unwanted factors such as slow-moving or obsolete stock, and drive value back where it’s needed. More often than not, the procurement section is best able to see the holistic benefits of reutilising underperforming assets and driving new investment, and Active has always found that its most successful partnerships are only made possible by transparency and trust. Having worked with clients across a variety of categories and industries, Active has been able to refine the process into two key phases. First, we implement a plan of action. Active will confidentially discuss the underperforming asset situation and work collaboratively to determine which bespoke solution would be of greatest benefit to the business. By involving multiple business units, cash return can be achieved within an efficient timeframe by assessing areas of spend or cost, and helping to find ways of working smarter, not harder. Second, Active will monitor and manage improvement. Whether you need a short- or long-term solution, Active can implement a process to monitor efficiencies, return, and value to the business, all the while looking for proactive adjustments and optimising the benefits to our clients. To find out more about how corporate trade could help your business achieve more, read our insights www. activeinternational.com.au/insights and get your business moving again. CORPORATE TRADE About Selina Martin Since joining Active in 2015, Selina has built a strong commercial team and helped shape Active’s corporate trade offering. Selina’s experience spans across a range of media, including TV, cinema, radio, magazines, digital and retail media. About Active International Active International is a global commercial innovation company and business solutions partner with 37 years of global operations. Active is leading the corporate trade industry across 14 countries, backed by a team of extraordinary talent, financial experts and media mavens in each market, and well-established relationships with clients, media vendors and media agencies. Active International has recently been named among the 2021 Australian Financial Review Best Places to Work in Media and Marketing. For more information, visit activeinternational.com.au. MAY, 2021 RETAIL WORLD 51