Rebate management blog - Page 26 - Enable

Safety in numbers is the well-known hypothesis that, by being part of a large group, an individual can reduce their risks and is, therefore, more likely to succeed. In the same way, buying groups typically form to provide smaller independent companies greater buying power by consolidating their purchases. While this structure can be hugely beneficial, we’ve found that it usually adds complexity to the process of managing retrospective rebates.

Due to the number of members changing and volatility of small business, there can be a great variance in the purchase volume from time to time. This means that the buying group as a whole can often struggle to commit to consistent large purchasing volumes which reduces buying group negotiating power and will lead to suppliers offering lower discounts.

Rebates often enter the conversation as a mutually beneficial method, offering tiered discounts based on actual purchases. Whilst rebates are the best solution for this problem in the eyes of the buying group, supplier and buying group members, they create new challenges for all involved. This can lead to large amounts of time and energy — that could be better utilised elsewhere — being unnecessarily wasted.

Let’s dive in to the 5 rebate challenges that are faced by both buying groups and their members:

5 min read

Application programming interfaces — more commonly known as APIs — are essential building blocks for modern, high quality applications. With just a few simple clicks, you can do everything from order a takeaway, book a holiday, track a delivery, or even copy and paste a link from an email into a Microsoft Word document, and APIs work behind the scenes to make all these activities possible.

That is why Enable is pleased to announce a new DealTrack API that will provide a simple interface through clients can interact with all the data behind their deals, rebates, and much, much more.

For over a decade, our rebate management software has helped merchants, buying groups, wholesale distributors and retailers to drive mutually profitable growth with suppliers, whilst improving cash flow and reducing risk. That’s why we call it the supplier success platform.

4 min read

In case you didn’t notice — Enable has introduced new branded illustrations for the DealTrack product, reflecting every challenging aspect of the rebate management process!

Our company has grown and evolved over the years and we’ve come a long way from our humble beginnings in a stable block in 2000. For over a decade, our rebate management software has helped merchants, buying groups, wholesale distributors and retailers to drive mutually profitable growth with suppliers, whilst improving cash flow and reducing risk. We want our brand to continue to reflect our passion for innovation, and with illustrations emerging as a vital part of brand recognition and user experience, we felt it was time for a change.

We worked in close collaboration with Richard Bookey, Managing Director of Birmingham-based marketing services agency Go Bookey Ltd. Richard has over fourteen years of experience at global based advertising agencies, working with some of the biggest brands, in a variety of sectors. Through Go Bookey’s Art Buying contacts, Richard found 3D illustrator — AJ Jefferies, Director of MDI Digital and represented by Début Art. AJ has produced hundreds of high-end CG artworks and animations for commercial clients across the globe. His addition to the project gave us the much-needed experience required to establish how to bring the Enable brand to life.

We spoke with Richard and AJ to find out more about the creative process and what inspired them.

8 min read

In January this year, Enable sent three developers to attend NDC London. Since its start-up in Oslo 2008, the Norwegian Developers Conference (NDC) has become one of the largest conferences for .NET & Agile development with events held in London, Oslo, and most recently Sydney. With Enable primarily developing solutions using .NET, and with the conference boasting several .NET MVP speakers, the conference is a great fit for us.

Technical conferences such as this one can be extremely valuable for training and insight. They also give our developers the opportunity to get out of the office and meet with other developers, as well as the experts working on the technology we use day-to-day. While not all the talks in the agenda will yield gold, there will always be those few that positively impact the work we are developing today and some that will steer what we do tomorrow.

8 min read

February's update provides you with the opportunity to add more in-depth analysis tools to your DealTrack solution. A significant amount of effort has been put into further developing our new Watchlist app, alongside a wealth of background and performance improvements.

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Businesses managing complex trading agreements face several hurdles that are difficult to overcome entirely when using manual processes and spreadsheets. Lack of transparency, inaccuracy and limited control of rebate accounting processes is common and the ramifications of these can have a damaging effect on profit, compliance, cash flow and business growth. For example, an accounting mistake that supermarket retailer Tesco made meant a \u00a3129m fine to avoid prosecution by the FCA for oversta...Continue reading

With ever-more complex special pricing agreements being created in an already vast and competitive market, the ability to efficiently maintain pricing flexibility between manufacturers and distributors has become essential.

Both supplier and customer rebate have been prominent for many years. Their aim is incentivizing purchases and sales and protecting profit margins. A focus on rebate management has helped merchants, buying groups, wholesale distributors and retailers to drive mutually profitable growth with suppliers whilst improving cash flow and reducing risk.

US-based research has shown that alongside rebate agreements, manufacturers and distributors are increasingly collaborating around ‘special pricing agreements’, commonly abbreviated to SPAs, and often referred to as ‘contract support’ in the UK building materials sector.

By necessity, special pricing agreements are collaborative arrangements whereby manufacturers and distributors assist each other for mutual benefit. Initially these types of agreements entered the market to leverage scale, but they have since evolved into a more widespread tool used to grow sales and market share by allowing trading partners to work together in offering a more competitive price than their rivals.

11 min read

Revenue leakage is the unnoticed or unintended loss of revenue from your company due to inefficiencies in your processes and revenue-producing initiatives failing. As businesses grow many struggle to ensure their business processes can keep pace, we have found even the best run companies are leaving money on the table especially when it comes to their rebates. Statistics show that current software systems allow for revenue leakage of about 2 to 5% of a business’ revenue which can equate to...Continue reading