Working Capital Management 2014

To: AgencyCFOs,Controllers&FinanceLeadership
From: EllenJohnson&ChrisCarroll
Date: May27,2014
Subject: WorkingCapitalManagement
In2013Interpublicmadeprogressonseveralkeyworkingcapitalinitiativesanddemonstratedsignificantimprovement
inmanagingworkingcapital.Despitethetremendousprogresswemadetogether,thereremainssignificantopportunity
for improvement in 2014 and beyond. As communicated in various conferences and meetings, working capital
management will continue to be a high priority for IPG. Everybody in finance needs to continue to work together to
driveresults.
Weallunderstandhowimportantthenegotiationofbillingandpaymenttermsisasthefirststepinoptimizingworking
capitalmanagement.Itsetstheguidelinesbywhichwecanbillandcollectcashfromourclientsandpayourvendors.
Thenextstepiscompliancewiththecontractualterms.Additionally,weshouldnotnegotiatetermsoutsideofmarket
andIPGstandards.AnyexceptionsrequirepreapprovalfromIPGTreasury.
Wewouldliketoupdateyouontheprogressoftwokeyworkingcapitalinitiatives:
Billing and Payment Terms During 2014, we launched a series of questions in the Controllers Revenue CSA
Tool to collect information on billing and payment terms (fees/revenue, production and media) in our client
contracts. Currently, many of the contracts in the CSA tool have populated billing and payment terms and we
nowhaveacentralresourcetogatherdataandstartanalyzing.Eachofouragencyfinanceteamswillbeableto
benchmark terms by client, country, region and/or industry sector. We believe this information will be very
usefulinfutureclientandvendornegotiations.Additionally,webelievethisdatawillgreatlyassistourabilityto
monitorcompliancewithbillingandcashcollectionterms.

Working Capital by Client Report (only available for Vantage agencies) This report gives us the ability to
identify net workingcapitalpositionbyclientona monthlybasis. Wewillbeable toidentifyforthefirsttime
anyclientswearecurrentlyfundingoroutofpocketwithandproactivelymanagethisposition.Inconnection
withthereviewofthebillingandpaymenttermsdescribedabove,wecanthencomparethenetworkingcapital
position by client to the agreed upon terms in the respective contract. For agencies on Vantage that have
media, only those using Mbox as a media system will be able to use this report. Efforts are underway to
integrateallothermediasystemsforagenciescurrentlyonandmigratingtoVantagein2014andfutureyears.
Your teams should have full access to this information and we encourage you to start analyzing the data. We plan to
havebenchmarkingdataavailableandwillbeworkingwithyourteamstoidentifyopportunitiesinthenearfuture.
ForquestionsabouttheCSAtoolpleasecontactKellieAndersonkellie.anderson@interpublic.com.Forquestionsabout
payments terms or working capital by client, please contact Daniel Rubin daniel.rubin@interpublic.com or Denise Yu
denise.yu@interpublic.com.
Thankyouforyourongoingattentiontoworkingcapital.Welookforwardtoanotheryearofimprovementin2014.