2021 Alexander Hamilton Awards: Working Capital Management: Partner Impact

Congratulations to Walmart and Intel!

2020 was a year like no other, as markets and industries around the world faced disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies of all sizes suffered shifts in customer demand, supply-chain availability, funding options, or all three, but the challenges were largest for small businesses. While many multinational organizations were able to survive the pandemic (if not thrive) through their broad diversification of market exposures, the small to midsize companies in their supply chains were often vulnerable to the local, pandemic-driven challenges that arose.

Some large companies saw this situation as an opportunity to further extend their competitive advantage. Others looked for ways to help the smaller organizations in their supply chains.

Our 2021 Alexander Hamilton Awards in the category Working Capital Management: Partner Impact are designed to recognize that more supportive approach. Treasury & Risk has never before offered Partner Impact awards, but this year’s judges felt that Walmart and Intel deserve recognition for increasing their efforts during the pandemic to support the small businesses they depend on.

“Covid-19 was impacting many of our suppliers,” says Brandy Newhof, senior director of global treasury for Walmart. “Some faced local government restrictions on work conditions. Others faced hardships such as employees taking sick time or caring for loved ones who contracted the virus. We determined that our smaller suppliers were most at risk in that environment. On top of that, access to capital was nearly nonexistent for a lot of these companies.”

Intel was seeing similar issues within its supply chain. “Covid presented an interesting challenge,” says Gero Zimmermann, treasury manager on Intel’s capital markets team. “Demand for Intel’s products was actually increasing, as remote work, study-from-home, and cloud computing were all growing dramatically. At the same time, our complex international supply chain was challenged with travel restrictions, work-from-home mandates, and other obstacles to business as usual. A lot of our small to medium-size suppliers are more vulnerable to business slowdowns than Intel is, and they were seeing cash flow challenges even as we were seeing demand grow.”

Both businesses responded to these concerns about working capital challenges among their smaller suppliers by changing their existing supply-chain finance programs in ways that make it easier for small to midsize businesses to benefit from their giant customer’s exceptionally strong balance sheet.

Congratulations to Intel and Walmart for their outstanding initiatives! And thank you to the judges of the competition: Jean-Francois Heitz, former deputy CFO and treasurer of Microsoft; Erik Smolders, former treasurer of Ingram Micro and a vice president in Deloitte’s Global Treasury Advisory Services practice; Craig Jeffery, managing partner of Strategic Treasurer; and Marie Hollein, former president and CEO of Financial Executives International.

Finally, thank you very much to C2FO, GTreasury, Kyriba, and ICD for sponsoring the 2021 Alexander Hamilton Awards program. Treasury & Risk will continue to present additional categories of 2021 Alexander Hamilton Awards in a series of articles and webcasts throughout the year.

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