Rebate management blog - Page 27 - Enable

We help buying groups, wholesale distributors, and retailers protect margin, accelerate cash flow and reduce risk in their trading agreements. Using Enable, the market-leading rebate management software, clients typically manage between £100m and £30bn of rebatable purchases annually.

The complexities involved in retrospective payments on trade agreements and the sheer volume of these contracts, are often difficult to model in manual systems such as spreadsheets and basic accounting software. Organizations opting to calculate, forecast and accrue rebate income in this way leave themselves at risk of inaccuracies, missed opportunities and supplier disputes.

Rebate management software meets these problems head on, by removing the risks associated with manual processes and delivering a streamlined process that handles complex trade agreements in the following ways.

4 min read

On Friday 13th February 2015, Stratford-upon-Avon District will come together at the Holiday Inn, Stratford, to celebrate the best achievements in business and the community on one truly glittering night - the fourth annual Pride of Stratford Awards. In the presence of the ’who’s who’ of Stratford upon Avon, Touch FM will be awarding their prestigious swan awards to the best businesses, individuals and organizations in the area.

Enable is proud to have been selected as a finalist in the Team of the Year category. Andrew Butt, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Enable commented: "We have had a good year of growth in 2014 and it is great to be recognised in awards like Pride of Stratford. The business climate remains challenging and this is an excellent team building opportunity to celebrate success."

Enable has previously been ranked in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100. Enable’s mission is to build the best cloud-delivered business software using Microsoft technologies. The company achieved record sales in 2014 and has ambitious expansion plans for 2015.

Enable is delighted to announce that it has won the award for “best support services supplier” from Today’s Group, presented earlier this month at the 2014 supplier awards at Edgbaston Stadium.

Enable has been working closely with Today’s over the past 3 years to design, develop, implement and support some of the critical software systems that are used by Today’s, both at their central offices and by many of their members.

Andrew Butt, Managing Director comments “Buying groups and wholesale distribution are quickly becoming the biggest sectors in which Enable operates, and we are delighted to have such a fantastic relationship with Today’s Group. The group is very forward thinking and has invested significantly in the development of software systems to create real competitive advantage for itself and its wholesaler members.”

2 min read

Recently there have been a number of articles published on the possible dangers of Microsoft Excel, with NewStatesman citing that “Microsoft’s calculator is partially to blame for JPMorgan losing $9bn, and a lot more besides”.

Many of us at Enable love Excel and use spreadsheets daily. Spreadsheets are often inexpensive to create, highly flexible, mostly easy to use and very easy to share. But what makes Excel so great is also its Achilles’ heel.

Many business processes start small. For example: recording financial progress, tracking budgets, or managing pricing on complex deal. And each spreadsheet often has a small team sharing, inputting and extracting data from it. In this environment Excel can offer a simple solution.

Difficulties often occur when the scale of the business process increases dramatically and far more people become contributors to the spreadsheets.

2 min read

Enable is pleased to announce that we have been successful in achieving the internationally recognised ISO 9001 quality and ISO 27001 information security accreditations.

The accreditations recognise the quality and information security management systems in place at Enable. Although many of the systems were in place prior to being recommended for accreditation, a number of them have been adapted and improved to ensure compliance with the standards.

The on-time delivery of correct to specification products and services is vital to our continued success. Our systems are regularly reviewed and improved to ensure Enable’s ongoing commitment to customer, quality and regulatory requirements is met in full.

The accreditations also demonstrate Enable’s promise to maintain confidentiality, integrity and availability of information security; to manage business continuity, and to minimize business damage by preventing and reducing the impact of security breaches.

Sue Cook of First Quality Solutions has supported us throughout the process of achieving both standards, and provided our people with the appropriate training to ensure we remain compliant.

Managing Director, Andrew Butt said “We build custom software to meet the specific needs of our customers businesses which enterprise systems and off-the-shelf software can’t. Therefore high standards of quality and information security are important for us and our clients. We are delighted to have achieved these standards and would like to thank Sue and First Quality Solutions for their hard work.”

Consultant, Sue Cook said “We enjoyed working with Enable and have been very impressed by their standard of commitment to achieving the standards. No non-conformances were raised during the audit, which is a real achievement. In fact, the auditor commented that this was the first time in 85 audits.”

Enable was started in 2000 by Denys Shortt OBE and Andrew Butt and now has sales in excess of £2m per annum and employs 30 people.

The pair recently invested over £1m in new offices in Stratford-upon-Avon with Google-esque office design.

Whilst mobile app usage continues to soar, studies suggest consumers spend nearly half their time using games and a third in social networking apps. It seems mobile is currently offering the most engaging experience on a personal level but how has this tremendous change to the way we think about computing impacted companies like Enable?

Two senior members of Enable’s development team, Matt Brooks and Matt Sharpe, explain how mobile computing platforms have facilitated growth and innovation for Enable and our clients.

Matt Brooks

Five years ago, we were building web application logic that ran almost exclusively on the server. In this model, the web browser was used as a ’thin client’ purely for presentation purposes, i.e. the user interface. Today, we build web applications that run a significant portion of the application logic within the web browser.

It is the emergence of mobile computing platforms that have helped drive the capabilities of web browsers and accelerate the adoption of web standards for both mobile and the desktop. A mobile device is bundled with a modern web browser and is updated (or replaced) regularly. This was not true in the days where desktop was the only platform. Users would be stuck on the same version of a desktop web browser that would rarely or perhaps never be updated. The popular mobile devices are highly capable in terms of computing power. This is good for Enable and its clients because it means we can deliver cutting edge user experiences targeting the latest capabilities of a modern web browser or mobile device.

4 min read

Over the past decade, technology has revolutionised the way in which we manage our lives both at home and at work. We have come to expect easy, instant access to information and a constant connection to the world around us, creating a highly competitive marketplace for speedier, increasingly slick devices. But is the consumer as fickle as this ever-changing face of the future suggests? Perhaps not, based upon the opinions of our technology-savvy staff at Enable.

For Andrew Butt, co-founder and MD of Enable, the iPad has been “the biggest game-changer in computing convenience since the Blackberry.” Whilst not the first device to offer ’on the go access’, the iPad was first to nail its objective, changing the world’s approach to computing: “It’s not just about the ease of use with the iPad, it’s about the minimal time involved in running the device. With a PC there is an overhead in simply keeping the machine running, whereas with the iPad you can spend 99% of the time using it rather than constantly fiddling with it. Here at Enable, we’re great believers in optimized solutions and the iPad is a highly optimized solution for fast access to information”.

Andrew’s second favorite gadget proves his loyalty to an optimized solution, even after a fast fall from grace: the Blackberry. A device once widely referred to as a ’Crackberry’ in the United States due its excessive use by owners, Blackberry is currently in serious decline. Fighting back, interim CEO John S. Chen announced in 2013 “We are committed to reclaiming our success.”

Andrew’s right behind the crusade: “Pre-Blackberry there was no reliable way to manage email on the go. Like the iPad, the Blackberry was the game-changer of its time.” Andrew explains why he is sticking with the brand — “Blackberry is the only mobile device on the market with a keyboard. I can type much more quickly using this method than on a touchscreen. And, using a combination of Blackberry and iPad leaves me less open to email issues occurring at the same time, as the protocols and methods that each device uses are different so if email isn’t working temporarily on one device then there’s a good chance it will be working on the other.”

5 min read

Enable, a software company based in Stratford-upon-Avon, have double the reason to celebrate as we have been recommended for certification to the ISO 9001 Quality Management Standard and the Information Security Standard ISO 27001.

Sue Cook of First Quality Solutions has supported us through the process of achieving both standards and we are delighted with this success.

Managing Director, Andrew Butt says “We build custom software to meet the specific needs of our customers businesses which enterprise systems and off-the-shelf software can’t. Therefore high standards of quality and information security are important for us and our clients. We are delighted to have achieved these standards and would like to thank Sue and First Quality Solutions for their hard work.”

Consultant, Sue Cook said “We enjoyed working with Enable and have been very impressed by their standard of commitment to achieving the Standards. No non-conformances were raised during the audit which is a real achievement. In fact, the auditor commented that this was the first time in 85 audits.”

1 min read