Such demands begin with how luxury buyers like to be wooed at all sorts of expensive drive-and-schmooze events that are continually on the dockets of brands such as Lexus, BMW, Audi, Cadillac and their dealers, and carries through to the more intense after-sale customer-relationship management programs that are usually applied by luxury brands.

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On the marketing front, Saks is doing a good job attracting new luxury consumers from around the world through its relationship building and service programs.

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Other postponed IT programs include customer relationship management (25 percent), sales-force automation (22 percent), business-to-business e-commerce (18 percent) and business-to-consumer e-commerce (15 percent).

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If this relationship with trade payable financing programs takes off and if manufacturers or the financing firms are incented by cash discounts for earlier payment then the manufacturing sector may gradually vacate the list of longest payment periods.

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If business really starts popping, consider one of the many customer-relationship-management (CRM) programs to keep it all under control.

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