The Deal Economy - Page 5 - Enable

You may be reading this blog for one of a number of reasons, e.g.: Your ERP system doesn’t have a vendor rebate module Your ERP system has a vendor rebate module but before implementing you want to draw up a requirements specification to check on the match to your business needs Your current vendor rebate module needs some work to meet your business needs You have more than one ERP system operating within your company, but need one module that sits across them all to manage vendor rebates acros...Continue reading

Trading agreements involving rebates are prevalent in many industries such as building materials, lumber, HVAC, electrical distributors, buying groups of all types and other wholesale distribution businesses. Rebates are used by suppliers to these industries to influence purchase decisions and drive profitable growth for both the supplier and the wholesaler. Our buyers’ guide is aimed at those wanting to choose a system to address the issues posed by managing rebate agreements. First, let's tak...Continue reading

Considering whether contract management software could be the solution for efficient, compliant, management of supplier agreements in your buying group? You’re not alone. According to a recent survey by Oxford Economics, 49% of procurement executives said that their contract management is already automated and 68% of those surveyed predicted that in 2 years’ time contract management processes would be completely automated. By their very nature, buying groups are set up to boost negotiating pow...Continue reading

Learn why organisations are looking for specialist rebate management software to solve their issues, and how our implementation methodology leads to not only accurate rebate claims, but significant profitable business growth. Step 1 Taking control of rebates, gaining efficiency and claiming missing profit, not leaving 'money on the table by: Create suppliers & their hierarchy Modelling existing agreements Bringing in transactional data This results in: Rebates precisely calculated...Continue reading

DealTrack integrates with major ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics. For reporting and payments, DealTrack can interface with a range of leading BI tools including Business Objects, QlikView, Tableau as well as purchase-to-pay solutions such as Ariba, Fourth and Proactis. But in our view “out of the box” integrations are not sufficient for most scenarios. A rebate management system needs to be truly ERP agnostic. For that reason, DealTrack comes with open APIs that can be used...Continue reading

Many ERP systems already have a way of recording contract information and a vendor rebate module or elements of purchasing software that allow for rudimentary recording of rebates owed. But, after extensive research, we have found no ERP system provides ALL of the functionality that is typically required by companies who trade with complex rebate deals. 4% — the rebates companies typically find have gone unclaimed when they first implement DealTrack It’s interesting to examine the reasons our...Continue reading

We've had great feedback from our recent webinar, so I wanted to share the content with those who didn't make it on the day. This blog provides a summary of the topics we discussed: the 7 key drivers for implementing a rebate management system our 3 step approach to growth through rebate management 8 reasons why rebates are missed how DealTrack supports supplier collaboration DealTrack functionality the benefits that companies have realised through working with Enable's experts and using DealT...Continue reading

Profitability for suppliers to the building industry — including building materials, plumbing, HVAC and electrical distributors — is often very closely dependent on the amount of rebate they can negotiate and claim. No surprise then, that many businesses across this sector tell us that the sheer volume of categories and the complexity of rebate deals means that administering rebate claims is a mission critical element of their business. The rebate accounting function alone can make the differe...Continue reading

How do you achieve a single ERP system across all businesses in a newly merged organisation? Is a single ERP even necessary? In a newly merged organisation where Oracle, JDE, SAP, Infor and other ERP systems co-exist, consolidation of up-to-the-minute, accurate information for purchasing poses a huge challenge. In a Bain report, they said that one of the reasons mergers and aquisitions fail is poorly managed systems integrations. Where the potential commercial benefit runs into millions, many c...Continue reading

Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity often starts well before the actual merger with a period of due diligence where the value of the acquisition is assessed. For businesses in the building materials, food, pharmaceuticals and other sectors who buy and sell finished goods, the driver is often increased buying power, and the imperative for due diligence is to clearly understand the value that new buying power could achieve. Carrying out that due diligence work demands extracts of purchase v...Continue reading

We are witnessing a huge volume of Merger and Aquisition activity. A great deal is written about the operational, organisational and process challenges post merger or acquisition by Bain, McKinsey, PWC, KPMG, Ernst Young and other M&A consultancies who assist businesses with best practice for Integration Management Offices (IMOs). This blog introduces a paper we have written that is focused on just one of the issues that IMOs have to deal with: ERP integration post-merger. In the document,...Continue reading

Growth in many businesses is about smart purchasing and profitable selling and that is so true in the building materials sector. Of course, on the face of it, this should be relatively easy — were it not for the way that deals are struck with suppliers in this sector. Manufacturers of building materials supplies often use rebates as a mechanism for maintaining their stated price. It is very common to see a trading deal struck with a standard price and negotiated rebates and retrospective disco...Continue reading

The worldwide building materials sector is buoyant at the moment. According to StrategyR the global construction materials market is expected to grow to $US1.1 trillion by 2020. The biggest growth area is expected to be AsiaPac, closely followed by the US. This should be music to the ears of those in the building materials distribution industry as the demand for construction materials will ripple through to increased demand for industrial, plumbing, HVAC, electrical and other building supplies....Continue reading

Today it was announced that Tesco has agreed to a £129m fine to avoid prosecution by the FCA for overstating its profits in 2014. The root of the problem is believed to be premature recognition of rebate income from suppliers. For organisations that benefit from supplier or vendor rebates, the spectre of incorrectly reported rebate income and any resulting audit investigation should weigh heavily on the minds of finance teams and at board level. There have been calls from the Financial Reportin...Continue reading

The complexities involved in managing complex trade agreements and accounting for rebates and retrospective discount payments are often difficult to model in manual systems such as spreadsheets and basic accounting software. Organisations opting to calculate, forecast and accrue rebate income in this way leave themselves at risk of inaccuracies, missed opportunities and supplier disputes. Here are 6 ways to improve rebate accounting processes in order to: remove the risks associated with manual...Continue reading