Supply Chain Resilience

At Teneo we combine expert financial restructuring skills with deep sector knowledge to deliver critical insights into the financial health of your counterparties.

Supply chain resilience has been a hot topic for most corporate boards over the last 18 months. The pandemic has brought into stark focus the vulnerability of businesses which rely on third parties to enable smooth functioning of their operations, whether that be through a supply chain, route to market or even a strategic partnership.

For some, it has also highlighted the need for greater visibility over what businesses are supplying critical goods or services and where these businesses are located. These key counterparties can often be overlooked and deeply rooted in the supply chain as tier 3 or tier 4 suppliers.

At Teneo we draw on our experience of having worked with a range of businesses in financial distress, across a variety of sectors, to spot early signs of underperformance and quickly take action to protect your value chain. We deploy situational skills focused on:

Optimising supplier payment profiles to strengthen your working capital cycle.
Understanding a critical counterparty’s financial position and the implications for your business.
Supporting stakeholder negotiations where a supplier is at risk, to implement mitigating actions that minimize business disruption and brand damage.

Business Transformation

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Our Services

Our approach is split across four distinct areas; Assess, Monitor, Intervene and Optimise. Our aim is to increase your understanding of the financial health of the underlying businesses to which you are exposed and supporting you with the skills and resources necessary to mitigate disruption and loss.

Assess
Do you understand where the business is reliant on third party suppliers to deliver critical goods and services? What does the business really value and want to protect?
Initial supplier resilience assessment
Not every supplier is going to become distressed, nor is every distressed counterparty going to have a material impact on your business.
It is therefore critical that you can create a clear priority map that (i) focuses on understanding the impact of those suppliers counterparties that are likely to create the biggest disruption and loss and (ii) ensures sufficient diligence is carried out to understand the risks facing these counterparties.
Contingency planning to build supply chain resilience
For critical suppliers, we support putting clear continuity plans in place and will work with legal teams to ensure that appropriate contractual protections are in place.
Monitor
Do you really understand the current financial health of your counterparties?
Financial health reviews
Harnessing quality and timely data to actively monitor your counterparty risk will be critical in staying ‘one step ahead’ of potential weaknesses in the resilience of the tenancy base and company portfolio.
We can engage directly with your counterparty network to conduct financial health checks to support decisions, shape strategies and perform interim health assessments.
Intervene
Do you have the necessary skills and resources to respond if your supply chain is threatened with the risk of failure?
Crisis response
Where a critical third-party supplier counterparty is considered to be at risk of failure, we can mobilise experienced, professional restructuring specialists within 24 hours, leveraging our sector experts to quickly assess viability and options, identify a preferred action plan and lead effective engagement with stakeholders to minimize disruption.
Optimise
Is your supply chain functioning in an optimal manner?
Do you have visibility to negotiate with suppliers and sustainably improve your working capital position?
Can you strengthen your company’s resilience through improving working capital cycles and releasing tied up cash?
Performance improvement
We can analyse your process across your Procure-to-Pay cycle, including identifying any inefficiencies in how this is executed in practice. This will include assessing invoice level data across payment history, terms, invoicing dates, etc. to highlight opportunities to improve your working capital cycle.
Once we have concluded a short, fact based, diagnostic phase to identify improvement opportunities we would look to enter an implementation phase to support you in enacting the improvement opportunities. We would address the areas for improvement in supplier terms and seek to optimise the relationship in a transparent manner.

Case Studies

Robin Hood Energy

Mandate
Robin Hood Energy was a subsidiary of the Nottingham City Council and a gas and electric provider with 220,000 customers that had been loss making for a number of years. We were appointed to support the Directors and undertake the best restructuring for creditors.

Approach
Our cross-service line team provided M&A, tax, restructuring and employment advice to deliver a sale of the customer book which generated more value than a Supplier of Last Resort (SoLR) procedure and will result in a better return to creditors.

Results
Following transition of the customer book, the business was placed into Administration.

Project March

Mandate
A major global consumer goods company became aware that a key UK trading partner was in severe financial distress and at risk of insolvency. Immediate insolvency would have resulted in serious operational disruption and financial losses.

Approach
Mobilized a team to ensure the client was negotiation with other stakeholders and then supporting its interests throughout restructuring talks with the trading partners. This included discussion of new financing to stabilize the trading partner, monitoring the short-term cash performance of the business and contingency planning for a failure of the business.

Results
Our work supporting the attempted restructuring resulted in an extended period of stability, allowing enough time for the client to put an alternative delivery model in place.