Sioux Steel Boosts Days Payable Outstanding by over 30% with Quartix

In early 2019, Sioux Steel Company was about to enter its peak season. Peter Shaw, Sioux Steel’s CFO had to make sure that the company has the working capital it needs to ramp up production. To balance Sioux Steel’s ever growing payment terms with customers, payment terms with vendors had to be rationalized. With Quartix, Sioux Steel was able to double its payment terms with high-spend vendors to boost Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) by over 30% at no cost to it with and without a negative impact on vendor relations.

The Client: A Manufacturer Of Agriculture Equipment From The Midwest

Sioux Steel Company is a 4th-generation family-owned manufacturer of grain bins, buildings, livestock equipment, paddle sweeps and garden beds located in Sioux Falls, SD. Sioux Steel has been manufacturing high-quality,durable products that farmers have relied upon for a century.

 

The Challenge: Rationalizing DPO To Lower Cash Conversion Cycle

As a family-owned business, Sioux Steel has been working with many of its vendors for decades, developing long-term, close relationships. Vendor payment terms have not changed in years, while customers continued to push Sioux Steel to provide longer payment terms, increasing Sioux Steel’s Days Sales Outstanding and leading to growing working capital requirements.

To reduce working capital and lower its cash conversion cycle, Sioux Steel had to rationalize its payment terms with vendors while making sure that these decades-long relationships aren’t negatively impacted.

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We needed to rationalize payment terms with our vendors to hit our DPO goal. Quartix helped us reach a win-win situation - we got the payment terms we wanted and our vendors can collect their approved payments whenever they want. The implementation was quick and easy

Peter Shaw

CFO, Sioux Steel

The Solution: Extending Vendor Payment Terms, Allowing Vendors to Collect Quickly

Quartix allowed Sioux Steel to strategically double payment terms with its high-spend vendors, creating a win/win situation by unlocking early, affordable payment offers funded by Quartix.

Quartix made it possible for vendors to collect their approved Sioux Steel payments whenever they wanted, often within days of them issuing an invoice. Whenever a vendor elects to accelerate a payment, it is paid early by Quartix, who then collects the money from Sioux Steel based on the formal maturity date of the invoice. Vendors only pay a small, transparent fee if and when they chose to accelerate a payment. No fixed fees. No hidden fees. No fine print.

This made it easier for Sioux Steel to negotiate the longer payment terms it needed. Since vendors were able to collect their cash whenever they wanted (even faster than they were used to), it was easier for them to agree to extend payment terms as Sioux Steel had requested. Sioux Steel doubled its payment terms with high-spend vendors in a matter of weeks with little to no friction and at no additional cost to the company. Launch took 2-3 weeks without any ERP integration (this was completed a year later).

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Quartix is a seamless add-on to our payment process. We have a legacy ERP system and yet it only took us a couple of days to go live. Quartix relied on our existing setup so we didn’t need to perform costly or complex changes on our end

Jason Haug

Director of Supply Chain

The Impact: DPO increased by over 30%, ample cash was freed up

Quartix delivered a quantifiable, permanent value that made both Sioux Steel and its vendors more flexible to payments. Sioux Steel boosted its DPO by over 30%, leading to an overall working capital reduction of about 15%, at no cost to it.

Vendors are now able to decide when they wanted to collect their approved Sioux Steel payments. This gave them newfound flexibility to manage their own cash flow while fully controlling their spend by only accelerating payments when their cash got temporarily tight.

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