The Deal Economy - Page 8 - Enable

Profitability for building materials suppliers is often very closely dependent on the amount of rebate they can negotiate and claim and many businesses across the building materials industry 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 building and construction business which can be the difference between a decent year and a great one. 100% of our customers have identified previously m...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 co...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 vo...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 industry as the demand for construction materials will ripple through to increased demand for industrial, plumbing, HVAC, electrical and other building supplies. But that’s n...Continue reading

In our online guide “IFRS 15 — 7 steps to prepare for January 2018” one of our suggestions is to review every deal in every contract and make it SMART. We think that whilst it’s a good idea as part of financial compliance, SMART deals are good for anyone who manages a contract with complex rebate deals, so we thought we would share it with you. A SMART deal is like a SMART objective in project management terms, namely: Specific Be VERY specific. If a deal refers to “across all product lines”, i...Continue reading

Missing out on claiming manufacturer’s rebates is like negotiating a higher price with your suppliers. It simply shouldn’t happen! That's why we created a rebate management system chosen by several building merchants, wholesale distributors and buying groups. There are many examples in the building materials industry where, instead of agreeing an up-front discount, discounts are given in the form of rebates based on actual volumes purchased. For the supplier, this fosters brand loyalty and mean...Continue reading

IFRS 15 ‘Revenue from Contracts with Customers’ comes into force on 1st January 2018. The new financial reporting standards (IFRS 15) have a particular impact for businesses who regularly have contracts that contain “elements of variable consideration”. IFRS 15:51 provides us with examples of “variable consideration” which include rebates, incentives, refunds, performance bonuses, credits, price concessions, penalties or other similar items — items that impact the real net-net price and ultima...Continue reading

Most businesses have a choice of 4 types of system to manage their trading agreements, but that doesn’t mean each one is the right fit for every business. We explore all options below. 1 — Your core ERP system Basic ERP systems do not cope with vendor rebates very well at all. Some ERP systems do have bolt-on vendor rebate modules. They tend to provide some flexibility but in a very complex environment the standard module is often not up to the job and incapable of modelling all the product / pr...Continue reading

Our rebate management system: DealTrack is aimed at those businesses for whom a significant portion of their margin results from vendor rebates, retrospective discounts, tiered discounts and the like. Businesses in the building materials, wholesale distribution and those who are part of buying groups frequently trade on these deal types. Since we first released DealTrack we have monitored the return on investment that has been enjoyed by users of this rebate management system and I wanted to sha...Continue reading

It's all too easy for revenues to simply leak away if rebates are not managed and accounted for correctly. Several companies have made the headlines in recent years and IFRS 15 looks set to put rebate accounting firmly in the spotlight. The necessity for businesses to have an effective rebate management system in place to deal with complex trading agreements has become more apparent. We’ve seen that complex trading agreements such as supplier rebates often involve incredibly complicated perform...Continue reading

The challenge for many companies who manage rebates not only with hundreds of suppliers but also multiple divisions of single suppliers is being able to see the complete picture when negotiating vendor rebates. So let’s describe a vendor rebate scenario: A leading building materials distributor deals with a large group company, which has a flooring division, a concrete products division, an aggregates division, etc. With each division there could be several rebate deals, different terms and reba...Continue reading

DCS Group (UK) is one of Europe's largest distributors of health and beauty products. Founded in 1994, the company has experienced phenomenal growth under the entrepreneurial leadership of Denys Shortt OBE. The company employs 320 and handles sales and distribution into selected markets for globally recognised brands such as Gillette, Colgate, P&G, Unilever and SC Johnson. DCS also owns and manufactures the international Enliven range of health and beauty products, and has a contract manufa...Continue reading

Missing out on claiming manufacturer’s rebates is like negotiating a higher price with your suppliers. It simply shouldn’t happen! There are many examples in the building industry where, instead of agreeing an up-front discount, discounts are given in the form of rebates based on actual volumes purchased. For the supplier, this fosters brand loyalty and means that margins are given away only in return for true purchase volume. For the buyer this gives the potential to drive up margins — but only...Continue reading

In the supply chain, builders' merchants sell building materials and goods in bulk to the construction industry and in smaller quantities to craftsman and contractors. But as distribution channels blur, builders’ merchants face increasing pressure from the bigger players such as home improvement stores who have greater brand awareness and marketing budget. Another big issue they face is improving cash flow. Everyone in the supply chain is purchasing materials in advance of actually being paid b...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