Business doesn’t get done in a vacuum. No matter what industry you work in, at some point, you have to work with someone else. You have to collaborate.

For some businesses, this isn’t too difficult. For many businesses that operate within the supply chain, however, collaboration presents numerous complications. Securely sharing data is difficult, keeping all key stakeholders informed and up to date is challenging, and tracking your progress towards goals might seem impossible—never mind tracking your trading partner’s progress, too.

But for businesses that utilize rebates, all these things are a necessity: sharing data, informing stakeholders with real-time data and tracking both your performance and your trading partners’ against goals.

How do you manage any of this without being completely overwhelmed? The answer is Collaborator.

Collaborator Simplifies Trading Partnerships

Collaborator is a feature of Enable’s larger rebate management platform that allows you and your trading partners to work together more efficiently. Enable customers can grant Collaborator access to their trading partners regardless of whether or not those trading partners are also Enable customers. We believe transparency and collaboration is a must for businesses throughout the supply chain.

Once a trading partner accepts an invite to join Collaborator, both parties can view and interact with the trading programs they share. Partner Dashboard is an extension to Collaborator that allows you to share insights obtained from Progress Tracker with your Collaborators whether you are using Enable for customer rebates, supplier rebates or managing your buying group.  

Collaborator also makes signing off on plans easy. Use Collaborator to negotiate and agree upon deal terms via comments within the portal, ultimately streamlining your approval process and reducing friction during negotiation. With an extensive activity log and visibility of all users who have viewed your plan, you can rest assured that commercially sensitive information isn’t being shared with the wrong party.

The Benefits of Using Collaborator

1. Streamlined Agreement Visibility and Signoff

One of the most important parts of your trading relationships are the agreements (or deals) you make with your trading partners. Many businesses struggle to keep their complex agreements in order, resulting in cluttered inboxes at best and missing documentation at worst.  

Collaborator makes it easy to keep track of all your trading agreements, no matter how complex they are, by storing them within one system that both you and your trading partner(s) can always access.

Once your trading agreements are uploaded to Collaborator, you and your trading partners can easily view the agreements. The commenting system within Collaborator allows you and your trading partners to negotiate on terms when the agreement is up, meaning you’ll always have up-to-date deal terms. Plus, using Collaborator to sign off on your deals digitally reduces friction in agreement negotiations, helping you maintain more positive relationships with your trading partners.

Read More About Collaborator: https://enable.com/articles/what-is-collaborator

2. Reduce Manual Overhead

Never worry about keeping track of agreements via email ever again. With Collaborator, you can easily see which trading agreements have been signed and which haven’t. When you’re ready to send an agreement to your trading partner, you can do so with the click of a button. Collaborator will send an email to your trading partner, inviting them to sign off on the deal immediately.

Since you’re using a streamlined system, tracking signatures is much easier than following up repeatedly via email. And if you do need to follow up, you can simply nudge your customers through the system instead of digging through your emails.  

3. Gain Complete Visibility into the Signoff Process

Using Collaborator ensures you know who has the trading agreement at every step of the signoff process, whether internal or external. Not sure if you’re waiting on your customer or not? No worries! Simply login to Collaborator and you’ll be able to see the status of any trading agreement at a glance.

This makes nudging trading partner even easier. No more waiting for weeks for signoff. Now, you can get your deals squared away and take action much more quickly.

4. Auditability

Hopefully, you’re never in a situation where you need to pull up your trading agreements as part of an audit (or, if you are, it’s routine and expected). But if you do end up in an audit situation and need to know who viewed or edited your trading agreement and when, Collaborator provides a clear trail of precisely that information. You can easily see who has viewed your trading agreements and when—and what actions they took, if any. This means changes to the trading agreement are always easy to see, providing you with a clear audit trail.

5. Transparency that Reduces Relationship Friction

Sometimes, trading partners disagree on how much in rebates a supplier should pay out to a customer. For distributors, these are high stakes! Up to 100% of distributor profits come from rebates. Unsurprisingly, these kinds of disagreements can permanently damage trading relationships. Using Collaborator gives trading partners a single source of truth for all their terms and agreements. This means that no one should be surprised when rebates are paid out, ultimately reducing discrepancies in payment expectations.

A single source of truth is key to maintaining healthy relationships between trading partners and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Build Healthier Trading Relationships with Partner Dashboard

Collaborator is just the start. Once you’re using Collaborator to work with your trading partners, you can also use Enable’s Partner Dashboard for even more insights. Through Partner Dashboard, you can track progress toward goals with Progress Tracker. This means both you and your trading partner know how close a customer is to achieving their rebate targets. Customers will never miss a volume threshold again with access to Enable’s Partner Dashboard and Progress Tracker.  

Start Collaborating with Your Trading Partners Today

It’s time to take your trading partnerships to the next level. With Collaborator, you'll have a single source of truth for all your trading agreements, a streamlined deal signoff process and the ability to track deal progress against goals. You’ll reduce friction during negotiations and strengthen the critical trading relationships that matter to you.

If you’re ready to get started with Collaborator, speak with your implementation team today. Don’t have an implementation team or not sure who to contact? No worries! Reach out for a Collaborator demo to see this relationship-enhancing feature in action.