The Empirical Analysis Of The Impact Of Channel Management Over Working Capital Management Performance

Working capital management occupies an important position in the financial management theory and practice of corporate financial management. In foreign companies,working capital management has already been beyond the scope of enterprises,standing in the supply chain perspective.Working capital management level of domestic enterprises lies a considerable gap compared with foreign companies,in which an important reason is the lack of advanced theory. Professor Wang Zhuquan et al (2007) proposed that,after dividing working capital into operating working capital and financial working capital,in accordance with the relationship with the channel,operating working capital should be divided into marketing channel working capital,production channel working capital and purchasing channel working capital.Then channels based working capital management performance evaluation system is established. According to this new concept of working capital management,channel management becomes the focus of working capital management. According to the new working capital theory, enterprises must establish a supply chain management system,which bonds suppliers,manufacturers and consumers,to control the flow of working capital from the overall view. Combination of working capital management and supply chain management,customer relationship management and channel management promoted by Professor Wang Zhuquan is a new direction of working capital management,but how to improve channel management and thus improve the working capital management performance become a new research topic.By combining the method of normative analysis and empirical analysis,this article analysis the factors how marketing channel,production channel and purchasing channel affect working capital management performance.Then enterprises can enhance the working capital management performance by influencing these factors.Based on comprehensive analysis of channel management factors affecting working capital management performance on marketing,production and purchasing channel,samples of 520 listed companies in manufacturing industries are selected, then use SPSS statistical software to do multiple linear regression analysis,with channel based working capital turnover and operating working capital turnover as the explained variables and working capital management performance influencing factors as the explanatory variables.Empirical analysis shows that five explanatory variables,including supplier aggregation,the supplier credit period management, goods in-process management,customer aggregation,customer credit period management and two control variables,financial staff proportion and assets scale presents a significant linear relationship with the operating working capital period,in which supplier aggregation,customer aggregation,and financial staff proportion, total assets scale shows a negative correlation with operating working capital period. These results have significant meaning in guiding the companies to improve working capital management performance.First,pay attention to the role of supply chain management and improve degree of enterprise supplier aggregation and customer aggregation,enhancing the cooperation with suppliers and customers;second, improve the processes actively to accelerate speed of product turnover rate,reducing the sizes of goods in process and the amount of funds occupied by good in process; Third,strengthen the management of credit period of suppliers and customers.In addition,through empirical analysis,we find that the proportion of financial staff has a significant negative correlation with marketing channel working capital cycle, production channel working capital cycle and operating working capital cycle.The increase of financial personnel in the proportion of all employees will help improve working capital management performance,which to some extent shows that the financial staffs are playing an increasingly important role in their daily business activities of enterprises.