Rebate management is a critical process for many manufacturers, distributors and retailers across the supply chain, allowing them to manage their rebates with ease. Often, they approach the rebate management in a manual way, but in the growing SaaS market there is now cloud-based rebate processing software that can alleviate rebate complexity and automate the process — making rebate management a breeze.

If you’re still in the research phase of your journey to finding the best rebate management software, here’s a brief overview of the best customer and supplier rebate management software options.

1. Enable

‍Enable helps manufacturers, distributors and retailers take control of their rebate programs and turn them into an engine for growth. Enable's easy-to-use, collaborate, scalable rebate management platform lets you take control of your rebates, showing the influence and impact strategic rebate programs have on the company's growth, returns and opportunities. 

Features:

Starting with finance and commercial teams, Enable helps you better manage rebate complexity with automated real-time data and insights, accurate forecasting and stronger cross-functional alignment. This lets you — and everyone in your business — know exactly where you are with rebates. Then you can extend Enable externally to suppliers and customers, setting them up with one collaborative place to author, agree upon, execute on, and track the progress of deals.

Key highlights:

• A flexible solution for managing both customer rebate incentive programs and supplier rebate claims, with complete transparency on the deal terms and a full audit trail of the approval process 
• Multi-dimensional deal mechanics ensure the system can handle the most complex rebate agreements 
• Single data source with workflow automation and reporting tuned for all disciplines in a company impacted by the need to manage, forecast and analyze rebate agreements

2. NetSuite

Enable and NetSuite have come together to build the ultimate rebate management solution. Enable is an out-of-the-box solution that natively integrates with your NetSuite applications. By connecting Enable to your NetSuite applications, you can take control of your rebate and incentive programs to boost financial performance, increase operational efficiency and mitigate business risk.

Features:

By combining forces, Enable and NetSuite have made it easier for businesses to see an incredible range of information, including the status of their trading relationships, units sold, rebate dollars earned and so much more.

Key highlights:

• Driving efficiency and removing administrative burden by systematically sharing your product information, sales transactions and complex rebate data between NetSuite and Enable 
• Seamless payment processing with automated credit memo creation for your approved rebate agreements
• Unlocking your revenue potential and understanding your true returns with up-to-date reports giving you immediate visibility into an incredible amount of information

3. Model N

Model N Rebate Management helps you better engage your channels to improve and optimize revenue with effective and measurable incentive programs. The rebate management software delivers automation and speed in managing rebate calculations and payments no matter what the volume.

Features:

Model N Rebate Management integrates enterprise-grade functionality and ease of-use features such as an intuitive user interface and dashboards that help business users quickly and easily create, manage and track a wide variety of rebate programs. It also offers some 200 rebate and incentive configurations, including volume, growth, tiered, step, and direct and indirect customer rebates. Model N also provides a portal for your channel partners to report the progress and see their attainment.

Key highlights:

• Align partners and customers with unified sales goals
• Reduce revenue leakage and improve margins
• Improve visibility, efficiency and control over rebate programs
• Lower program administration and resource costs

4. Profectus

Profectus comprehensive Rebate Deal Management platform (RDM) is delivered out-of-the-box, pre-loaded with best-practise functionality, ensuring compliance by integrating automation, collaboration, and negotiation. 

Features:

Profectus rebate management software guarantees you accurate rebate and deal calculation, journal creation and claiming, as well as creating insights and opportunities to generate increased revenue. They can help manage supplier rebates by utilizing their big data capability and comprehensive rules to automate all deal types, driving value for suppliers who are retailers and wholesalers. 

Key highlights:

• Integrates seamlessly with all major ERP software including SAP, Oracle and Microsoft
• Customize your ERP journals for seamless interface
• Comprehensive rule engine covering all rebate and deal types
• BI dashboard reporting to assist with terms optimization
  

What are Rebates?

Rebates ensure customers consume volume or value before earning their savings. They act as a powerful motivating tool to build trust and encourage more desirable behaviors between trading partners. Ultimately, when managed correctly, rebates help both parties in a trade agreement reach their desired outcomes. 

For example, manufacturers use different types of rebate programs to bolster loyalty from buying groups or distributors who purchase from them. The more volume a distributor or buying group purchases, the more they might earn in rebates, securing loyalty from that trading partner. Distributors use incentive programs in a similar capacity when selling to retailers.

Read this blog to discover the different types of rebate programs.

What is Rebate Management?

Complex rebate programs are virtually impossible to implement and manage using manual processes and spreadsheets — calculation efforts alone are time-consuming for dedicated staff. To overcome this, rebate teams need to be equipped with supplier and customer rebate management software that enable them to drill down to a granular level. 

The best rebate management software does this and more to streamline the entire workflow, from creation through to tracking performance and then finally paying out the rebate or collecting on your rebate. You can manage all these trading programs online, without ever having to open a spreadsheet. This means you can create more meaningful and complex rebate programs that drive the behaviors you want to see in your trading partners.

What are the Challenges of Rebate Management?

If you’re not relying on rebate processing software to manage and track your rebates, you will run into many challenges such as:

Complex deal types

While many core business systems have some functionality to help monitor rebates, most have neither the flexibility nor the extensive range of functionality that is needed to support the increasingly complex world of rebate management. For many, that lack of functionality has resulted in missed rebates, errors and poor accrual accounting. But worse than that, if your process or systems don’t support rebate management fully, then the whole purpose behind creating deals involving rebates – a means to influence business growth – is missed.

Disparate data

Those managing rebates often find their data is incomplete or erroneous as they're forced to look at data from different sources separately. As a result, it’s impossible for them to know whether they can rely on the accuracy of the numbers or know whether the data they’re looking at is current. Worst of all there is a chance the data is not always backed up – meaning it could be lost for good. That is counterproductive to informed decision-making and means stakeholders may miss critical opportunities because the data is widespread, disorganized and in a range of disparate formats.

Lack of collaboration internally and externally

Internally, there are various people involved in the rebate management process including finance, sales and procurement who need to keep in sync when negotiating and paying out / claiming the rebate. Working out of spreadsheets and long email chains is not efficient, and information often gets lost in translation and deals fail to materialize. Likewise, external trading partners operate in silos and communication is nearly non-existent. Through joint business planning, both sides of the relationship can fundamentally influence the success of their deals.

There are many more rebate management challenges that we have come across when speaking with our customers. Read more here.

How is Rebate Management Software Beneficial to Businesses?

 If rebates are an important element of your business growth strategy, or may become so in future, it pays to have the best rebate management software that can manage it as effectively – and as strategically – as possible. Here are just some of the benefits you can take advantage of:

• Save time and improve accuracy with a single source of truth for all your rebate agreements, automated rebate calculations and forecasting. 
• Drive more sales with greater visibility into your rebate deals and their impact, as well as day-to-day tracking of deal performance. 
• Design better rebate agreements by modelling expected performance based on historic data — and then invite trading partners to sign deals off, all within the software.
• Nurture close relationships with your trading partners and you’ll be able to work together to agree achievable deals, track performance against them and course-correct swiftly if the deal isn’t delivering as planned.

For more benefits of rebate processing software, head to our blog.

Who Uses Rebate Management Software?

Finance

One of the key players in using rebate processing software, the finance team ensures amounts to pay and receive are correct and cash is collected as quickly as possible. They also produce accurate forecasts and pull reports they need access to accurate data. While doing all this, they must always maintain compliance with regulations to avoid any fines.

Sales

Working in between finance and purchasing, sales teams negotiate rebate agreements to maximize margins. They need to be able to create bespoke deals to drive behavior and see how deals are performing to price accurately and sell highest margin products. All of this can be done using rebate management software.

Purchasing

Like sales, purchasing teams also negotiate to make sure they are purchasing and selling the highest margin products from the right suppliers. Rebate processing software gives them the ability to accurately model deals without reliance on supplier data. Plus, they can see how deals are performing and invoice accurately and report figures to finance.

Manufacturers

For manufacturers, rebates are an important tool to influence buying behaviors and increase loyalty with their customers. Although they are usually the ones paying out the rebate, they still need customer rebate management software to keep track of how their deals are progressing and calculate accurately.

Distributors

Distributors have long considered rebates integral to their profits. Rebate programs can even influence whether or not they chose to stock a product line or new item. Considering how important rebates are for distributors, it is critical that distributors track their progress using the best rebate management software. Failure to do so means missing out on rebates earned, which can dramatically impact the bottom line.

Experience The Best Rebate Management Software Today

There you have it, now you’re armed with all the information to make the best decision for your business. As you can see rebate management needs a well thought out strategy behind it to see the best opportunities and maximize margins.

If your current processes and systems don’t allow you to manage rebates effectively, explore alternative options. We may be biased but the best rebate management software comes from Enable, schedule a demo with our solution experts to experience it for yourself.