Working Capital Management and the Operational Finance Discipline Behind Business Unit Performance
Revenue growth and margin expansion receive the bulk of attention in most discussions of business unit financial performance. Working capital — the cash embedded in accounts receivable, accounts payable, and inventory — is less visible and, for that reason, frequently undermanaged. It should not be. For a business operating at scale across global markets, the difference between disciplined and undisciplined working capital management can represent hundreds of millions of dollars in cash flow. It shapes borrowing costs, investment capacity, and financial flexibility in ways that margin alone cannot. For executives with CFO-level accountability over large, complex business units, working capital governance is not a treasury function — it is a core strategic discipline. Anubhav Mittal's tenure as CFO of ADM's Nutrition Business Unit, a global operation generating approximately $8 billion in revenue and employing more than 14,000 people, placed that discipline at the center of his operating mandate.
The Cash Conversion Cycle as a Management Instrument
The cash conversion cycle — the time elapsed between a company's cash outflow for raw materials and its cash inflow from customer payments — is the fundamental metric of working capital efficiency. A shorter cycle means that cash moves through the business faster, reducing the amount of capital that must be tied up in operations at any given time. A longer cycle means that the business is financing a larger inventory and receivables balance, either through its own capital or through borrowing.
For a business operating across global specialty ingredients and nutrition markets, where raw material sourcing, processing, and delivery timelines are long and customer payment terms vary by geography and contract structure, the cash conversion cycle is not a single number — it is a composite of dozens of underlying processes, each of which contributes to or detracts from overall working capital efficiency. Managing it requires granular visibility into each component: days sales outstanding on the receivables side, days payable outstanding on the payables side, and days inventory outstanding across the supply chain.
At ADM Nutrition, where Mittal held CFO accountability across an approximately $8 billion business, the operational finance function responsible for monitoring these metrics spans a global organization with multiple product categories, manufacturing locations, and customer bases. Building and maintaining that visibility — ensuring that the reporting infrastructure delivers decision-relevant working capital data to the right managers at the right frequency — is a foundational requirement of CFO-level operational governance.
Inventory Management at the Intersection of Finance and Operations
Inventory is typically the largest and most complex component of working capital in manufacturing and processing businesses. The raw material pipeline, work-in-process, and finished goods inventory each carry different cost structures, different demand uncertainty profiles, and different risk characteristics. Managing inventory efficiently without creating service level failures — running too lean in any category and disrupting customer delivery commitments — requires close coordination between the finance function and supply chain operations.
The finance function's role in inventory governance is not to dictate operational decisions but to provide the analytical framework within which those decisions are made. What is the carrying cost of the current inventory position? What does a one-week reduction in average inventory days release in cash? What is the cost of a stockout in terms of lost revenue and customer relationship damage? Answering these questions with precision — and building them into the incentive and reporting structures that operational managers respond to — is where CFO-level operational finance creates working capital discipline without sacrificing operational performance.
Mittal's background managing controlling, operations finance, and commercial finance functions within ADM Nutrition reflects exactly this cross-functional accountability. Operational finance at this scale requires the CFO to work across organizational boundaries — engaging supply chain, commercial, and manufacturing leadership with analytically grounded working capital targets that are operationally credible, not just financially aspirational.
Receivables, Payables, and the Commercial Finance Dimension
Working capital management extends beyond inventory into the commercial relationships that govern how quickly customers pay and how long the company takes to pay its own suppliers. Customer payment terms are a commercial variable with a direct working capital cost: extending payment terms to win business has a financing cost that must be weighed against the commercial benefit. Tightening terms to improve cash flow carries a customer relationship risk that commercial finance must quantify.
On the payables side, the structure of supplier agreements — payment terms, early payment discount programs, dynamic discounting arrangements — determines how much of the supply chain's financing cost the company absorbs versus passes upstream. A company with strong purchasing scale and sophisticated treasury operations can negotiate payable structures that improve its own cash position without materially harming supplier relationships.
The commercial finance function within a large business unit CFO's purview sits at exactly this intersection. It is responsible for ensuring that the terms embedded in commercial agreements are evaluated with full awareness of their working capital implications — that a deal structured to look attractive on gross margin terms does not erode cash flow through extended payment terms or inventory build commitments that offset the margin benefit.
From Operational Cash Flow to Enterprise Value
Working capital efficiency compounds into enterprise value through its effect on free cash flow. A business that generates the same EBITDA as a competitor but converts a higher fraction of that EBITDA into free cash flow — because its working capital is better managed — is worth more on any reasonable valuation methodology. The cash conversion efficiency of a business is therefore not just an operational metric; it is a valuation driver that is directly relevant to M&A screening, portfolio assessment, and capital allocation governance.
In Mittal's current role as VP and Global Head of Business Development and M&A at ADM, the operational finance discipline developed through his CFO experience directly informs how acquisition targets are evaluated. A target company's working capital efficiency — its cash conversion cycle relative to industry peers, its receivables quality, its inventory turn — is a signal about the quality of its operational management and, in a post-acquisition context, a potential source of value that can be unlocked through improved working capital governance. That connection between operational finance precision and M&A analysis is one of the less-discussed but genuinely important dimensions of what CFO experience adds to a corporate development mandate.
About Anubhav Mittal
Anubhav Mittal is a senior finance, corporate development, and value-creation executive with more than two decades of experience leading strategy, M&A, capital allocation, restructuring, and business transformation across global public companies. He currently serves as VP and Global Head of Business Development and M&A at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). Previously, he held CFO-level and senior finance leadership roles within ADM and at Kellogg Company, and began his career at Booz & Company. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School with a concentration in Finance and Strategy, and a Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, graduating in the top 5% of his class. He holds the CFA and CMA designations and is based in Chicago, Illinois.