The Deal Economy - Page 6 - Enable

Firstly, if you’re reading this blog you will most likely to be familiar with what an ERP system (enterprise resource planning) is, but as a reminder it is a type of software that manages and integrates a company’s financials, supply chain, operations, reporting, manufacturing, and human resource activities into one system. Examples of ERP systems include NetSuite, Oracle, SAP, SAGE plus many more. Many ERP systems already have a way of recording contract information and a vendor rebate module...Continue reading

Contracts are core to any business activities, regardless of size, industry, and region. They set out the prices, service levels, terms and supplier relationship and ensure that your company is regularly supplied with their direct and indirect supplies. A study by the Institute for Supply Management uncovered that between 60-80% of all business-to-business transactions are governed by some form of written agreement, with a typical Fortune 1000 company maintaining 20,000 to 40,000 active contract...Continue reading

Due to the intricacies of most supplier trade agreements, rebate accounting is a notoriously complex operation. Many organisations still manage their rebates with spreadsheets or rely on their suppliers to make the calculations, despite this leaving them at high risk of errors and omissions that could lack audit compliance and lead to significant revenue loss. To improve upon your current rebate management system, it’s necessary to take full control of the rebate process and the difficulties tha...Continue reading

In our experience, many businesses that receive rebate revenue from suppliers, don't have the means to be able to check that it is correct. They are completely reliant on suppliers to accurately calculate and make the payments. Because they tend to record rebate agreements outside of their financial system, these businesses are unable to match the cash received against amounts owed from their rebate deals, and for that reason they don’t set up a debtor in the same way that customers are treated....Continue reading

This building materials supplier was struggling to reconcile rebate information in their unwieldy spreadsheet-based system. They also had an issue around extracting detailed and summary data across all branches and categories prior to the negotiation. They felt that they needed to gain control over rebate income and at the same time find a solution that would help them to improve their supplier negotiations. With insufficient accurate, consolidated information at their fingertips, the procuremen...Continue reading

This business had used a bespoke system to manage rebate earnings for some time, but rebates were calculated at a very high level and were based on data provided by suppliers rather than their own data. They reviewed the situation and estimated that by making calculations at a more granular level of detail, they could significantly increase the level of rebate claims within the existing deal structures. They moved to Microsoft Dynamics AX for their core financial system, but it was clear from th...Continue reading

This building supplies company has over 50 branches and is growing. They recognised that having smooth business processes would be an essential foundation for their growth plans, and whilst most parts of the business had been systemised, the area of rebate management remained an anomaly. They were using spreadsheets because their core ERP system (Kerridge) did not support their requirements. They approached Enable to discuss the suitability of DealTrack to their needs and were keen to discover...Continue reading

With over a thousand branches and hundreds of thousands of stock items, this business had a huge issue with managing rebates. Everything was being managed on spreadsheets, and they experienced many of the usual issues such as version control and human error. They commissioned a firm of consultants to review their options and invited several software companies to tender for a solution. Their aim was to find a solution that automated as much of the rebate reconciliation process as possible and the...Continue reading

This business manages over 1m stocked items, the majority of which have some kind of associated rebate deal. Within the first 12 months of operation they recognised a 200% return on their investment in DealTrack software. They had previously built a rebates module as part of their bespoke financial system. However, whilst this had been built to specification, over time it lacked the flexibility to manage every type of deal. As a result, spreadsheets were used to control many elements and inform...Continue reading

Buying groups, as the name suggests, are formed to give buying power to smaller independent companies through purchase consolidation. Whilst buying groups don’t typically have control over the systems implemented by members, they do need information from members in order to negotiate the best possible deals on their behalf. It has long been recognised that buying groups can have difficulties in committing to purchase volumes with any degree of certainty. That impacts both the buying group’s abi...Continue reading

Rebate Management refers to the management of discount claims that are based on volumes of purchases over time. To some companies, that rebate is treated as a bonus. But to others, rebates form a significant proportion of their revenue and for these companies accurate management is absolutely essential. Rebates were “invented” as a way of driving sales growth without simply reducing the contract price. By agreeing retrospective financial incentives based on actual sales, both the supplier and t...Continue reading

Today's IT landscape in most large corporates consists of disparate systems: Cloud apps On premise ERP systems Cloud-based ERP Local systems and spreadsheets Others As a result, the world has moved from ERP being at the hub to integration services being the key. In this new world, out-of-the-box ERP integration is being surpassed by ERP agnostic applications that provide enhanced functions and shared data with ANY other systems. That is exactly how DealTrack has been structured. We have const...Continue reading

Twenty-fifteen saw the highest level of merger and acquisition activity in the UK since 2007 according to research by Experian. In fact, over 6500 mergers and acquisitions were completed in the UK in 2015 with a total value of £433bn. This was the highest value of deals since 2000. Brexit, the US election and US legislation changes have been blamed for a slight downturn in M&A since then, but nonetheless according to Dealogic the average merger or acquisition in 2016 was $104.2 million, and...Continue reading

For spring / early summer we have a series of three webinars planned to share more detail about our 3 step approach to profitable growth through: Mastering rebate accounting and maximising profit from rebate deals; Being prepared for and executing on smarter supplier negotiations; Collaborating with suppliers for mutually profitable growth. Throughout the series we will be providing examples for builders' merchants, plumbing, electrical and HVAC suppliers, buying groups, other wholesale...Continue reading

In order to prepare for major negotiations with suppliers, businesses often have to extract historical data from multiple systems: buying groups need information from their members' systems, newly merged businesses need information from different parts of the group. We have seen cases where managing large volumes of transactions with (largely) manual processes, such as spreadsheets, can have a detrimental impact on profitability, cash flow, supplier relationships and ultimately the performance o...Continue reading