The Deal Economy - Page 1 - Enable

We are delighted to announce that Enable will be presenting its rebate management software at the NAHB International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas from January 21-23. Being the largest annual light construction show in the world, IBS brings together more than 1,400 top manufacturers and suppliers from around the globe in 600,000 net square feet of exhibit space, showcasing the latest and most in-demand products and services. It will be a great opportunity to learn, meet great people and see the la...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 solution, or buy 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 solution that’s tailored exactly to our current processes? Or buy an out-of-the-box solution? The answer—as so often in business—is it depends. I’m writing this blog post to...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

Collaborative software platform will enable the electrical products distributor to more easily track, manage, accrue, and claim against rebate agreements with hundreds of suppliers San Francisco, CA — Nov 18, 2019: Enable International Inc., the leader in cloud-based B2B deal management software, today announced that Rexel Canada, an Ontario-based electrical products distributor, has chosen Enable’s DealTrack software to automate its accounting processes for supplier rebates in order to maximi...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

In a slow-growth market, many building industry distributors are seeking new paths to profit. A more strategic approach to supplier trading agreements can help. Glance at the modest growth projections for the U.S. building and construction industry, and you could be forgiven for thinking distributors might struggle to achieve stellar performance. But as always, the headline figures don’t tell the whole story. Many distributors are finding ways to grow despite the sluggish market, from developin...Continue reading

Will your rebate accounting come back to haunt you? Settle down around our campfire, and we’ll share some cautionary tales… It’s a chilly October evening. You’re sitting alone in your kitchen, reading your favorite industry blog. Then, with a startling suddenness, your phone begins to ring. You answer and a stranger’s voice says your name. Then, they tell you where they’re calling from. Your blood runs cold. It’s not a masked killer, hiding inside your cupboard. It’s much worse. It’s Martha cal...Continue reading