The Deal Economy - Page 1 - Enable

A topic that we regularly visit during the implementation of DealTrack is whether our rebate management system offers the functionality to process billing (invoices) and receipts for rebate. So, does it? The truth is quite simple. No, DealTrack doesn’t. Although you may see it as a “cop out” or a gap in functionality, but there are several very good reasons that have caused us to purposely omit invoicing from our SaaS product. If you read further, we will explain why you don’t actually need to i...Continue reading

Customer loyalty is a measurement of how likely your customers are to do repeat business with you. In this case we are talking about manufacturers collaborating with distributors, who are effectively the link between the manufacturer and retailer. Without distributors, manufacturers would struggle with getting their products to customers, and without manufacturers, distributors would have nothing to sell. Repeat buyers are your most valuable customers, they make up just 8% of visitors, but can...Continue reading

When setting prices for your products or services, you always need to keep in mind the volume of sales you will get, the profits you will make, and even the way your brand is perceived. Rebates and discounts are distinct forms of cost reductions which directly or indirectly promote the overall sales of a business. Both pricing terms may sound similar, however, there is a considerable difference between discount and rebates which we explore in more detail below. What is a discount? Discounts are...Continue reading

Rebate Management Systems are transforming trading relationships in the construction industry. Here’s what they are, how they work, and why you should care... The logic behind rebate agreements is very simple. A buyer agrees to purchase a certain volume, or value of a seller’s goods. Once the purchase has been made, the seller refunds a proportion of the price they’ve paid. This should be a true win-win situation. The seller is able to encourage customer loyalty, as well as incentivize the sale...Continue reading

It’s not to late to make some resolutions for the New Year—especially when it comes to how you manage B2B rebates… Your New Year’s Eve party might seem like a distant—and slightly fuzzy—memory, but it’s actually still early January. And that means you still have time to make some powerful New Year’s resolutions. In our work with rebate professionals at manufacturers, distributors and buying groups, we constantly meet people looking to break with the past, and substantially improve their working...Continue reading

Distributors and suppliers are both working towards the same goal, so what’s stopping them from working together? At a basic level, all trading agreements involve two (or more) parties, looking for mutual growth. Suppliers want to grow by increasing loyalty and incentivising purchases. Distributors and buying groups want to grow by reducing their costs. And, by working together, both can achieve their goal. Most companies keenly understand this symbiotic relationship. According to a survey by T...Continue reading

Rebate deals are a big part of every trading relationship—if you haven’t got a good handle on them, you could be missing out on massive opportunities. Rebate deals hold a lot of power in trading relationships. Suppliers can use them to influence the behavior of their trading partners, and distributors can use them to inform their purchasing decisions. Plus, they’re a valuable source of revenue for both parties involved and can make a big impact on the bottom line. But the importance of rebates...Continue reading

You might be tempted to automate data imports into your new rebate management system. But experience dictates there’s huge business value in starting with a manual approach. Transparent, auditable, automated rebate management. It’s the ultimate goal for many distributors looking to maximize rebate revenue and free up finance professionals’ time. And it’s why more and more distributors are choosing to implement specialist rebate management software like our own DealTrack. In doing so, there’s som...Continue reading

You need a better way to manage rebate agreements—but should you build a software solution, or buy software one out of the box? Philip How, Business Analyst at Enable, reviews the options. I’m constantly talking to organizations about their rebate management needs. And there’s one question that comes up time and time again. Should we build a software solution that’s tailored exactly to our current processes? Or buy an out-of-the-box software solution? The answer—as so often in business—is it dep...Continue reading

Most distributors fail to claim all rebate due, leaving millions of dollars on the table each year. Here are five ways to get more from your supplier agreements. We’ve compiled five ways your wholesale distribution business can increase revenue and margin—and they’re all to do with how you manage your supplier rebate agreements. If your business is like the 57% of U.S. distributors that consistently leave rebate revenue on the table, you’ll be ‘giving thanks’ for this seasonal advice for years...Continue reading

The rise of Amazon Business has distributors rattled. To compete, distributors should focus on the things Amazon can’t provide—using the Deal Economy as fuel. Amazon Business has posed a growing threat to wholesale distributors since its launch in 2012. Gross merchandise volume at the ‘Everything Store’s’ B2B division has increased 10x in two years, from $1bn in 2016 to $10bn in 2018. Bank of America estimates it will further triple by 2023, to $33.7bn. With the rise of Amazon Business, distrib...Continue reading

Many distributors are moving to the cloud to reduce IT costs. A cloud-based rebate management system can also give a significant boost to revenue and margin. Businesses of all kinds continue to move to the cloud, with cloud spend (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS) now representing 25% of IT spend, surpassing on-premises software spend (22%), according to an October 2019 report from Flexera. Among them are an increasing number of wholesale distributors. Around 50% of distributors have moved to cloud-based so...Continue reading

Rebates: the way that product-based businesses incentivize their customers to buy more of their goods, are complicated. While much information is available about supplier rebates and the ways in which suppliers can claim as much of their rebates as they are entitled to, less has been written about customer rebates: the other side of the story. Benefits for both distributors and resellers At Enable we believe that when both parties value collaboration and open working, they understand that full...Continue reading

A volume discount is a change to the cost of a product based on the quantity of that product traded with your trading partner. Typically, volume discounts are paid retrospectively so sit under the wider banner of rebate, although sometimes these volume discounts can be up front.

This potential retrospectivity often depends on whether different discounts apply to incremental tiers of volumes traded with a specific trading partner throughout the course of the year, meaning that you are unsure of the value of the discount until the year end.

Volume discounts are often used by suppliers to incentivize greater purchase volumes and are available due to the advantages brought about by economies of scale. This has the side effect of increasing the suppliers market share and presence in the marketplace because increasing quantities of their products are being traded.

8 min read

Growth in many businesses can essentially be boiled down to smart purchasing and profitable selling. The building materials sector is a prime example of this.

Of course, superficially, purchasing smart and selling profitably should be relatively easy. However, the way deals are agreed between suppliers and merchants in the building materials sector make this more exponentially more difficult!

The status quo

What we’ve seen in the building materials industry

Manufacturers of building materials supplies regularly use rebates as a mechanism of maintaining their stated price, but incentivizing trading partners to purchase in higher volumes in order to get a retrospective discount.

9 min read