Businesses have invested heavily during the past three decades to improve their management of physical supply chain processes. Today, solutions are emerging to automate and streamline the financial processes associated with physical supply chain events. The growing popularity of financial supply chain solutions is laying the foundation for a new generation of Collaborative Financial Management (CFM) solutions that will emerge toward the end of this decade and provide true financial collaboration between trading partners. Today, financial supply chain solutions are attempting to do this by streamlining processes; tomorrow, CFM solutions will accomplish it by transforming strategic collaboration with trading partners into a source of competitive advantage.

This report is written for corporate finance and IT managers who are interested in financial automation and financial supply chain trends. Following a brief explanation of the nature of collaboration, it will highlight the impact of collaboration on financial process management, explain how the concept of CFM evolved and why the financial supply chain is its precursor, describe the business rationale for CFM, and illustrate how two innovative companies are exploring CFM today.