Rebate management blog - Page 11 - Enable

This business manages over 1m stocked items, the majority of which have some kind of associated rebate deal. Within the first 12 months of operation they recognised a 200% return on their investment in DealTrack software. They had previously built a rebates module as part of their bespoke financial system. However, whilst this had been built to specification, over time it lacked the flexibility to manage every type of deal. As a result, spreadsheets were used to control many elements and inform...Continue reading

From the initial conception of an idea, analysing and defining your requirements through to the development of your software, a lot of time and effort is spent ensuring the finest details are catered for. It can be a common misconception that once the software build is complete the hard work is over and users can be let loose with the ‘end product’. There are still a number of important steps that need to be undertaken and considerations to be made following build completion, to ensure that you get the most out of your software.

Technical requirements for hosting

By the end of a software build phase, you should have already put a lot of thought and planning into how your software will be hosted. There are many hosting options available; including in-house options and a variety of cloud hosting providers, each of which could hold their own benefits for your business based on the type of software you are building. Enable’s hosting preference is cloud-based hosting platform Azure, benefiting us through increased flexibility, quick and easy scalability, a high level of security, and reduced costs. Regardless of which option you choose, it is important that your environment of choice is adequately prepared ready for your software to be deployed to avoid any last-minute hiccups.

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Buying groups, as the name suggests, are formed to give buying power to smaller independent companies through purchase consolidation. Whilst buying groups don’t typically have control over the systems implemented by members, they do need information from members in order to negotiate the best possible deals on their behalf. It has long been recognised that buying groups can have difficulties in committing to purchase volumes with any degree of certainty. That impacts both the buying group’s ab...Continue reading

Rebate Management refers to the management of discount claims that are based on volumes of purchases over time. To some companies, that rebate is treated as a bonus. But to others, rebates form a significant proportion of their revenue and for these companies accurate management is absolutely essential. The management and processing of rebates is challenging, with significant financial risks if something goes wrong due to loss of data or human error. Many rebate arrangements lack support in fina...Continue reading

Our February DealTrack update is now available within your UAT (user acceptance testing) environment. This provides the perfect opportunity to test newly introduced features, solution improvements and performance enhancements.

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Today's IT landscape in most large corporates consists of disparate systems: Cloud apps On premise ERP systems Cloud-based ERP Local systems and spreadsheets Others As a result, the world has moved from ERP being at the hub to integration services being the key. In this new world, out-of-the-box ERP integration is being surpassed by ERP agnostic applications that provide enhanced functions and shared data with ANY other systems. That is exactly how DealTrack has been structured. We have const...Continue reading

Twenty-fifteen saw the highest level of merger and acquisition activity in the UK since 2007 according to research by Experian. In fact, over 6500 mergers and acquisitions were completed in the UK in 2015 with a total value of £433bn. This was the highest value of deals since 2000. Brexit, the US election and US legislation changes have been blamed for a slight downturn in M&A since then, but nonetheless according to Dealogic the average merger or acquisition in 2016 was $104.2 million, and...Continue reading

For many businesses, the question is not if a disaster or power outage could happen, but when it will occur? And how severe it will be? As a company whose primary products are internet-based applications, it is of vital importance to Enable that our ability to host our clients’ applications remains unaffected in every eventuality that could be reasonably foreseen. Disaster recovery (DR) is not something that any business can afford to get wrong. This is why Enable takes it very seriously and, after recent events, can boast of having first-hand experience.

Sometime around 03:00 on Monday, December 4th, a water heater in the roof space in our unit 11 building failed and began to leak. The water heater was located above the stairwell and leaked through the first floor, destroyed ceiling tiles, flooded one of the staff toilets, and made its way through to the ground floor. Unfortunately, significant water had entered our server room. The water had run through all three server cabinets and the servers within. All local servers, networks, and internet access shut down after power was lost. This meant no access to telephone, email or any local IT infrastructure including domains, web servers, file servers, source control and deployment services.

One of the main advantages of hosting in the cloud rather than locally, is that no live systems or data were affected, this meant minimal impact on our clients. Also, due to sensible management of time and resources, projects that we had underway were still delivered to clients on time.

Ewan Gibb is the IT Manager at Enable and has been with the company for over 15 years, helping it evolve into the well-organised and responsive IT department that it is today. Ewan was heavily involved with the DR process for this incident from the moment it was reported, ensuring that our systems were back online and operating normally as soon as possible. Here are Ewan’s recollections of how the day’s events unfolded.

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