Months' Payables Oustanding

Days' payables outstanding is frequently used to determine if a company pays its bills slowly, yet for for some companies, months' payables outstanding may be a better measure. CFO recently discussed 45 publicly traded companies that had an average days' payables outstanding of 212.3 days. The longest had a days' payable of 585.9 days, or almost 20 months!  Although the article touts a long payables period as beneficial because "the company is able to deploy cash to other uses," it is also forcing the company's suppliers to finance part of the company's operations.