Introducing a financial perspective in Supply Chain Management: A literature review on Supply Chain Finance

In the last 10 years new financing opportunities - known as "Supply Chain Finance"or"SCF" - arose, exploiting the strength of the supply chain links to optimise the working capital and create value for the organisations involved. SCF solutions are usually supported by ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies), and can be based on early payments, trade process visibility, supply chain collaboration and enhanced information sharing with financial institutions. In order to gather value from SCF solutions, competences on both Finance and Supply Chain Management are essential. However, many contributions available in the literature take just a 'partial' perspective. A holistic framework connectingthe 'finance oriented' and the 'supply chain oriented' perspectives is therefore needed. A basic requirement to develop such a framework is an in-depth analysis of scientific literature published on the subject. This paper aims at illustrating the main evidences emerged from such literature analysis.