The Organizations app is making it easier than ever before to navigate the Enable platform and access information about trading partners and deals. Combine that with the secure, centralized information and file-sharing provided by the Messages app and you now have an end-to-end solution to streamline every aspect of your B2B deals. A redesign of the trading partner listing page aims to enhance your experience and the way you manage your rebate agreements.
The latest batch of updates is already available to test in your UAT channel. Deployment to your Live channel will take place on Saturday, July 31st.
Although the Organizations app currently supports most of a user’s activity in Enable, it has been doing so quietly in the background. Recent updates bring us closer to the day when you'll use the app directly for most of your Enable activity and, by doing so, enjoy an even greater boost in efficiency and productivity than you already do.
We have improved the data available on an organization’s profile page. You will now see a dashboard highlighting relevant information about the selected organization including data trends and high-level transactional, workflow and earnings figures. Channels representing an organization’s other roles in your business network are now also easily accessible from their profile page, and a new automatic process will run in the background to match unvalidated organizations with validated ones by comparing domain names.
We round out the list of enhancements to the Organization app with a nod to user experience. Profile pictures of users appearing in the trading programs section of the organization overview will now match the pictures used in the Messages section. Buttons on the organization details page now link to other Enable apps making for seamless transitions, and a report issue button creates a pre-filled ticket for reporting things like errors in automatically populated data.
We continue to develop Messages to facilitate clear, accessible and trackable B2B interactions within Enable. Messages is a natural solution empowering multiple teams within your business. For example:
In preparation for widespread use of the Messages application for business communication and file sharing, some fine-tuning was done to optimize its speed and usability. The user permissions checks that run in the background to ensure information security have been optimized to create a more responsive web experience and faster loading speeds. Similarly, the logic used to sync channels and to load choices of organizations and individuals to receive messages has been streamlined so that the messaging process will remain fast and smooth even if your trading network becomes very large.
We have begun to develop a new Trading Partners view that consolidates functionality from across the system into one screen and presents a unified view to all users. The page now displays the name, reference, and category of your trading partner and presents buttons for active and proposal programs clearly and directly in a way that reflects their importance. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager to find out more. We would love to get your feedback!
The Trading Partner listing redirects you to the List view which provides a unified access point for all parties connected to a trading program so that you can spend less time looking for information and more time making useful decisions. Work on this view has continued from previous build slots and we have added integration with our Messages application. We have also made general improvements to support its use with the new trading partner listing. This list is searchable by any of its column fields, and granularity can be adjusted by selecting a particular organization or applying one of many filters such as channel, workflow status or start and end dates.
A new Included Items report is now also more easily accessible. For a given trading program, this CSV report is a direct way to see which dimension items are set up to contribute to any collection of its program lines. To use this feature when editing a particular program, simply click the ellipses after selecting the desired program lines, choose View Included Items, and follow the pop-up menus to control the granularity. Whether it is a list of relevant products, branch locations, turnover types, or even a mix of all three, the Included Items report uses your channel’s tailored configuration to help you understand what items are contributing to your program lines.
Our Finance app has also seen some improvements. By popular demand, it is now possible to both reverse previously allocated payments and to delete programs that once had payments allocated to them. Also, authorized balances snapshots can now include payment line due dates. This addition will allow you to identify specific payment lines to which your authorized balances correspond. If you would like this enhancement when it is released to Live, please contact your Customer Success Manager.
Finally, we have a sneak peek at some of the features we have begun working on. First, we have begun developing attribute targets. This functionality will reduce the effort required when configuring programs that track targets against user-defined entities, where an entity could be members if you are a buying group or regions if you manage your rebate across specific areas. With this new functionality, you can evaluate these entities independently against a set of target bands, and if you set up a program with group and individual targets, we can measure rates for both the individual (for example, a member or a region) and for the group and award the higher of the two rates. Both growth and targeted mechanisms will support this functionality, and it will be possible to set individual baselines for the targeted entities when using growth mechanisms. Support for attribute targets is still being developed, but more details will be announced in our next product update.
We’re also excited to begin implementing a single view of program lines for our new Progress Tracker. Progress Tracker will give greater insight into the performance of your targeted program lines in a single, consolidated graphical view. The app will expand on the capabilities of the Watchlist app for client members and will help you better capitalize on your rebate opportunities. See below for an early look at what we're working on:
Automatic workflow and Collaborator have been invaluable in deploying your trade agreements. That’s why we’re introducing automatic workflow to Deals. Automatic workflow allows your special pricing agreements and ad hoc deals to be seen, approved and legally signed by all the stakeholders in an agreement. A single workflow view now gives administrators a summary of deal information including the initiator, the partner, the deal lead, who the workflow is currently assigned to and the workflow status.
We've also laid the groundwork to roll out external sign off later this season. When editing the deal type, a new tick box will appear asking if approval is required. Checking it will make the approval mandatory for this deal and further options will appear asking whether this requires external sign off or internal sign off. If you choose external sign off, an external stakeholder will be sent a Collaborator email. They will use Collaborator to sign off the deal and view the agreement for its full lifetime.
All these improvements to workflow would mean nothing if we didn’t have full support for your B2B deals, so we’ve been working very closely with you to find out your exact requirements. For this reason, we’re happy to be deploying the margin maintenance support mechanism. When a template is created with margin maintenance selected, the user will be required to select a price list. The margin maintenance support will then be calculated using this list as the discounted price list. The system also now supports direct discounts off price lists including direct discounts on the product price lists of child special pricing agreement contacts. This is called the percentage discount off a price list mechanism.
Special pricing also has the ability to calculate unit by unit sales price based on the total number of units and the net sales price, and if the actual sell-out price is above the supported price, a new setting called if sold above supported price will affect the support mechanism calculation accordingly.
As the network of organizations and programs represented in Enable rapidly grows, we work tirelessly to make the product faster, more flexible, and increasingly user-friendly. Our next set of features will be available in UAT on Thursday, 5th of Aug. Deployment of this next set of features will be in your Live environment from Saturday, 11th of Sept.
Included in the next update:
If you have any questions regarding our current or upcoming updates, please contact our Customer Success team at projects@enable.com, or book an appointment with a member of our team. As always, you can log a ticket with any feedback or questions you have about the latest set of releases. We look forward to hearing from you!
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