The Deal Economy - Page 8 - Enable

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

Builders merchants, building materials companies and building trade suppliers are working in a competitive industry in which profitability is heavily reliant on procurement to strike the right deals. We’ve recently been working with Richard Piekar, a global procurement expert, and wanted to share with you his experience of developing procurement excellence at CRH plc. CRH is a leading global building materials group employing over 89,000 people at around 3,900 locations worldwide. Richard’s jour...Continue reading

Multiple vendor rebates which are very often complex in nature can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of financial and procurement teams, profit margins and company performance. Dealtrack's rebate accounting experts held a webinar to discuss ways to 'Manage complex vendor rebates deals and drive margin'. In this webinar we hear from Richard Piekar — a seasoned global procurement professional who has spent many years working for enterprises in the Building Materials sector. Rebates...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

How was your last year end? We’re not referring to the actual outcome, but the PROCESS of getting your year-end figures together. If you’re in the fortunate position of being able to match each supplier invoice to an order at the right price, then perhaps your year-end is simply a question of dealing with a volume of transactions? But for those in the building supplies sector, those working in buying groups, and many wholesale distribution companies, revenue recognition is hampered by supplier...Continue reading

It's a complex task managing multiple vendor rebate deals across multiple vendors, multiple product lines, and in some cases multiple units of measure. 2 for 1, multi-pack discounts, retrospective discounts, limited lifetime promotions, not to mention awards points and prizes make rebate accounting a very complex job. By way of illustration, we have worked on one rebate example where there were 300 deals written into 1 vendor contract. Without the right tools and information rebate accountants...Continue reading

How can procurement become more aligned with, and demonstrate its impact on, the main measures of business success? This question was posed recently in an article published by the highly respected Future Purchasing Group. Their article “procurement business impact — charting your financial impact” explored the impact that procurement can make on a company’s sustainable shareholder value — the core measure of any company’s success. The article defined four key shareholder value drivers: 1. Accele...Continue reading

The report that Tesco is returning to profit is good news for the beleaguered retailer, who have been hit with fierce competition from discounters Aldi and Lidl and the fall out of the supplier income scandal, which according to a recent article in the Sunday Times is still being investigated by the serious fraud office. The supplier income scandal still hangs like a black cloud over Britain’s largest supermarket retailer, and for organisations that benefit from supplier or vendor rebates the...Continue reading

We’re seeing more and more evidence of companies who rely on their suppliers or vendors to tell them what rebates they should claim. This is surprising given that rebates can be the largest contributor to profit for buying groups and a significant percentage for companies in the building materials, retail and wholesale distribution sectors. This may raise a few Financial Directors’ eyebrows, but given the complexity of vendor rebate deals in some organisations and the lack of robust systems to t...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

The task set for procurement leaders in buying groups is to save costs. Whilst that is done at the contract stage, the process of making those cost savings often depends on having the right systems in place. With contract management systems boasting increased control, visibility and management of contracts that in turn increases profitability, it’s no surprise that finance and accounting teams in buying groups are being tasked with the job of finding the right contract management software for t...Continue reading

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 building industry know...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