When Hewlett Packard split into two companies in 2015, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, emerged as the entity serving enterprise clients, focused on servers, storage, and networking. With approximately $27 billion in annual revenue, HPE specializes in providing solutions that enable customers to capture, analyze, and act upon data.

As a manufacturer with a global supply chain, HPE was heavily impacted by Covid-19. "At the same time we needed to support our suppliers amid the turbulent times of the pandemic, we wanted to improve returns on our short-term investments," says Mike Seal, HPE's treasury director, capital markets. Many suppliers were struggling to survive and were dealing with long payment terms from HPE. At the same time, the treasury group was looking for ways to earn higher returns on excess cash. That's when they got serious about an automated early payment program.