With interest rates elevated, tariff uncertainty, and inflationary pressures still in play, freeing up working capital has become a top priority for finance leaders.
But many companies are sending payments out the door days or even weeks earlier than necessary. Without visibility into how their terms compare to the rest of the market, they may not realize how much more they’re paying than their competitors—or how much they could save.
This leading North American specialty retailer needed to stop guessing and start negotiating with data. They chose PRGX for our proprietary cross-industry benchmarking capabilities, decades of retail expertise, and a proven approach that arms procurement teams with actionable negotiation playbooks, fast.
10M+
Working Capital Improvement
4-6 wks
From Data to Actionable Playbooks
30 days
From Playbook Delivery to New Deal
Challenge: The Data to Act Was Missing
The CFO of this specialty retailer made working capital optimization the organization’s top financial priority. The mandate was clear. The problem was execution.
For months, the retailer’s finance and procurement teams struggled to make progress. They knew there were opportunities to improve payment terms with suppliers,but their payment data wasn’t consolidated or packaged in a way that could support those conversations — and they had no market benchmarking data to back up the ask.
Without a clear picture of how they were actually paying their suppliers, and no way to see how those terms compared to the rest of the market, there was no credible, data-backed case to bring to the supplier negotiation table.
They needed a partner who could turn their payment data into something their team could actually use in a room with a supplier.
Solution: Negotiation Playbooks Powered by Benchmarks No One Else Has
PRGX was already partnering with this retailer on AP Recovery Services, a significant advantage. The transaction-level payment data was already flowing. PRGX didn’t need to start from scratch. What was needed was a different lens on the data the retailer already had, one focused on unlocking working capital going forward, not just recovering errors from the past, but building best practices for the future.
PRGX went to work analyzing the retailer’s actual payment behavior across their supplier base, then layered in the kind of market context the retailer simply couldn’t access on their own.
PRGX compared the retailer’s terms against peer vendors in the same spend categories. Suppliers selling similar products at similar volumes were getting significantly longer payment terms. Same category. Similar spend. Very different terms. That’s a conversation starter.
Then came the piece no individual company can replicate. PRGX can draw on anonymized benchmarking insights that come from processing payment data for hundreds of large global companies, many of whom share the same suppliers. If the market is paying a supplier at Net 60 to Net 75 and you’re at Net 42, that’s not a guess. It’s a gap. And it’s quantifiable.
PRGX also pulled publicly available data to see how quickly suppliers get paid across their full customer base. If a supplier is already accepting 75-day terms from other customers, asking to be treated the same isn’t aggressive. It’s reasonable.
All of this was distilled into Custom Supplier Playbooks, one-page, data-packed negotiation briefs built for each high-opportunity vendor. Each playbook gave the procurement team what they needed to walk into a meeting with confidence: where terms stand today, how they compare to peers and the broader market, and a specific recommended ask with the working capital impact quantified.
As Patrick Miller, VP of Global Solutions at PRGX, puts it: “If you just go to a supplier and say ‘I want better payment terms,’ they’re going to say no. But when you can show them what the market looks like, what their peers are offering, what their other customers are paying, it’s a completely different conversation.”
PRGX Spend & Payment™ Insight
To keep the momentum going, PRGX also deployed Spend & Payment Insight, a spend analytics platform that gives the retailer real-time visibility into payment performance across their entire supplier base. The team can see whether newly negotiated terms are actually being followed and catch drift before it quietly gives back what they just won. It also surfaces new opportunities as suppliers change and spend shifts over time.
The playbooks win better terms. The platform makes sure you keep them.
Results: Working Capital Management in Action
PRGX’s Working Capital Acceleration program delivered rapid, measurable results without adding operational burden.
Within 30 days of receiving the first supplier playbook, the procurement team sat down with the vendor, walked through the data, and secured a new contract with significantly improved payment terms. That single renegotiation delivered a 7x return on investment on the entire PRGX engagement.
The team didn’t stop there. Armed with additional playbooks across their highest-opportunity suppliers, they continued negotiating and winning, driving over $10M in total working capital improvement.
Hear Patrick describe how this retailer turned a single supplier playbook into a 7x return.
How Much Can You Recover?
Take a look at our services and solutions, backed by serious analytics.
The retailer now has ongoing visibility through Spend & Payment Insight, turning a targeted engagement into a continuous working capital management capability.
Ready to Improve Your Days Payable Outstanding?
PRGX can help your organization gain full visibility into payment performance and arm your teams with data-backed negotiation strategies, without disrupting operations. It starts with your data. PRGX needs just three columns: vendor, annual spend, and payment terms. Most clients have it ready in under 20 minutes. Schedule a chat with an expert to get started today!
