The Deal Economy - Page 7 - Enable

Cash flow is a big issue for most businesses in the building industry — from builders to building material suppliers — everyone in the supply chain is purchasing materials in advance of actually being paid by their customers. So anything that improves cash flow is usually welcomed. But margin is important too, and the two can be used as a trade-off — cash payments for a lower price or credit terms for a slightly higher price, in its simplest form. Of course, anyone in the industry knows that it...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. With all that activity comes the need to consolidate business between multiple companies and, after staffing levels, one of the most important areas for review is usually procurement. To drive out economies of scale p...Continue reading

Founded in 2005, XLVets is one of the UK's leading veterinary groups sharing experience, knowledge and skills whilst providing economies of scale for member practices. On behalf of its members, the group establishes deals for pharmaceutical supplies and accessories with manufacturers and wholesalers. It also works alongside academic bodies and commercial research and manufacturing companies to place its members at the forefront of veterinary science. Group statistics: 49 members Over 150 pre...Continue reading

If profit is the most important word in the business world then trust must run it a very close second. In the new collaborative economy the trust between businesses and their trading partners is key to their ability to move forward as one with transparency. A damning report from the Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA), has today seen Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket chain, pay the price for poor supplier rebate management, after delaying supplier payments and failing to raise accurate invoices....Continue reading

Rebate revenue management is critical to companies that rely on rebates to improve margins. For some it’s a bonus, for other companies it’s a significant proportion of their profit. But reaping the benefits from complex trade agreements that involve retrospective payments (such as rebates, retrospective discounts, purchase income and other forms of back margin) and maximising their potential during initial negotiations and the lifetime of the contract is far from simple. The large number and com...Continue reading

Landmark Wholesale Buying Group is a major buying group that provides a centralised trading and marketing operation on behalf of its members — leading independent wholesalers. The group represents members throughout the UK and has a turnover of £1.8 billion. One of their key roles is to organise the complex process of managing member overrider payments. The group has a turnover of £1.8 billion Enable were engaged to develop and implement a replacement for a previous overrider system for wh...Continue reading

Wolseley is the world's number one distributor of heating and plumbing products to the professional market and a leading supplier of building materials. Across two continents Wolseley are the trusted partner of contractors, construction companies, industry and governments; supplying them with the materials they need for building, remodelling and repair work. They rely on Wolseley for their boilers and their flues, their pipes and their air-conditioning units, their timber and their bricks — and...Continue reading

Recently there have been a number of articles published on the possible dangers of Microsoft Excel, with NewStatesman citing that “Microsoft’s calculator is partially to blame for JPMorgan losing $9bn, and a lot more besides”.

Many of us at Enable love Excel and use spreadsheets daily. Spreadsheets are often inexpensive to create, highly flexible, mostly easy to use and very easy to share. But what makes Excel so great is also its Achilles’ heel.

Many business processes start small. For example: recording financial progress, tracking budgets, or managing pricing on complex deal. And each spreadsheet often has a small team sharing, inputting and extracting data from it. In this environment Excel can offer a simple solution.

Difficulties often occur when the scale of the business process increases dramatically and far more people become contributors to the spreadsheets.

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In modern business context, the phrase 'we're in this together' is no soundbite but a new way of trading, where the benefits are visible on a day-to-day basis and on the bottom lines of businesses. In this new collaborative economy, B2B cloud software has played a key role in creating a leaner and more cohesive way of doing business to the benefit of all parties involved. B2B cloud software is more than just an enabler or a part of the machinery, it is an engine that is driving businesses forwar...Continue reading

DealTrack is delighted to share the success story of one of its key partner clients by highlighting a remarkable period of recognition for distributor DCS Europe. The company has been named in the Sunday Times Top Track 250 league table of Britain's leading mid-market private companies with the biggest sales. DCS ranked at number 220 with sales of £148.4 million. The business was also given prominent place in the Design Council's special report Leading Business by Design, which sought to explore...Continue reading

Ramping up of grocers code is an inevitable step in the development of co-efficient trading. New supermarket watchdog Christine Tacon certainly set her stall out when she announced her desire to fine retailers a percentage of their turnover for mistreating suppliers. It was the latest pugnacious move from the rhetoric heavy Tacon who earlier revealed her determination to ‘make sure there is no bullying’ from the supermarket big-hitters. But while it would be easy for the major supermarkets to s...Continue reading

The fiasco of the West Coast mainline rail bidding process has brought the potential pitfalls of spreadsheet reliance to national attention.

Quite apart from embarrassing the Department for Transport and the Government as a whole, the DfT announced last week that the cost to the taxpayer of the bidding scandal has now risen to £55m and counting.

Issues within the bidding process were revealed after Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains issued a formal complaint after missing out on the contract to continue running the line to First Group.

A subsequent investigation into the bidding process by a team of accountants from PWC revealed that the spreadsheet from which all calculations were derived was fundamentally flawed.

The discovery was made after officials explored a complex economic model — known as the GDP resilience model — which was designed by the Department of Transport to rigorously assess the risk attached to bids and the amount of money that should be put up as deposit.

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There's a pretty good chance you are reading this having just come out of a sales meeting, or while you're waiting for a sales meeting or after a tough day trying to initiate what was discussed in a sales meeting. Driving revenue is the primary concern of any business but when conditions have been as difficult as they have over the last few years it can feel like a war of attrition with your competitors. There's no silver bullet for these issues but ensuring that you are making the most of your...Continue reading

Directors of Enable have recently returned from a Study Tour to Silicon Valley. Organised and run by Mike and Linda Portlock of E-Vision Consulting Ltd, the focus of the Tour was “Transformative Technologies for Business IT”, exploring how emerging technologies can be deployed to help organisations build a better future.

The 2012 visit was the 16th annual IT Directors Study Tour organised by E-Vision Consulting, and was full of fascinating insight. We live in an age where empowering technologies are increasingly available first to individuals rather than to enterprises and institutions. Employees and customers are getting the good stuff first and this is increasing pressure on IT leaders.

Those involved in IT are used to rapid change but harsh economic conditions combined with new consumer focused technologies, such as mobile, social media and cloud, have created a new environment with fresh challenges for both IT and the business. It is inevitable that groundswell technologies will continue to shift information power to customers and employees. IT leaders must shift their mindsets for a world where technology projects can come from anywhere and IT is a key advisor, not necessarily the manager, on those projects. This power shift cannot be stopped, but IT leaders can take advantage of it.

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