There was a time back in the pre-GFC days when a business faced with a working capital crisis went to see the bank. After an eyeball-to-eyeball interview, and shrewd assessment, a friendly manager usually provided the necessary and asked you to kindly pay it back whenever convenient. Those days have long gone, for better and for worse.

As it happens, I chair a small growing business which in recent months has discovered the on button for sales. Work has started to flow big time. It’s great. Well actually it would be if we could fund the growth.

Many businesses in our position with too much work use the ‘No” word, shut the doors and only open them again when new capacity arrives. If developing long-term relationships is the goal, this on/off approach doesn’t start to cut it.

In our case, we could lean on the goodwill and credit of our suppliers but that’s not conducive to loving partnerships either and is a one-trick, non-repeatable device, likely to come back to bite in the form of higher pricing.

So, we went looking for another way of creating working capital and discovered invoice discounting. What’s the news: it’s been around for years. Well not in today’s form: there has been a quiet revolution.

A sleepy old industry, dominated by a few providers, has woken up after years of churning out the same old stuff, realised its customers have new and different needs and duly changed the offer, radically in some cases: more flexible, more cost-efficient, easier interfaces and everything at speed – days not months. And there are a few fintech disrupters in there too. The array of choice on offer has become dazzling.

For those new to this area, picking through the array is time consuming and resource hungry. With delight, I can tell you about the good folk at capitalise.com. It’s an online portal with an unusual feature, a human interface – they even answer the phone. The combination is powerful, dynamic and a pleasure to work with. They handhold through the application process, help select the lenders and then work with all parties to negotiate the right fit and deal. It’s been a dream ride so far; we feel in control; have met lenders whom we would not otherwise have discovered; negotiated on our terms and worked to and met a timetable.

For the business this has removed a growth bottleneck and now enables the team to focus on what it does best: tackle the next growth bottleneck and find another disruptive, innovative solution.

Come back the good old bad old days. I think not. Thank you capitalise.com.