When I very first became aware of rebates, my goal was to build software to help one company manage their rebates more effectively. At the time, I had no idea that would lead to Enable, and tap into the global network of companies in the goods-for-resale supply chain that all needed a better solution for rebate management.

But it did.  

The interest in better rebate management has catapulted Enable from a bootstrapped startup in a single location in the UK to a 600-person company with employees and customers spread across six continents. We were able to build and scale so quickly because of our close partnerships with our customers, enabling us to release product features that solve their most pressing needs. As a result, our customers have improved their rebate management and their financial outcomes.

Because of this commitment and mutual success, we drew interest from numerous top-tier investors, allowing us to raise four funding rounds since 2020, all leading up to this moment.

Today, I’m thrilled to announce we’ve closed a $120M Series D raise at a $1.12B valuation.

This funding round isn’t about Enable. Maybe that’s a strange thing to say in a blog post talking about our funding, but it’s true. This funding round underscores how important rebate management is to companies throughout the supply chain—and how good rebate management has been overlooked for so long.  

Rebate Management

At Enable, we don’t believe rebates should be overlooked. We believe rebates are powerful incentives that motivate trading partners to drive desired behaviors for mutual success. And we believe that rebates can be strategically deployed to restore the health of the supply chain through partner collaboration, where each partner serves as an extension of the other.

For a long time, businesses have called rebates by many different names. Annual rebate programs, ship and debit, market development funds, promotions, spiffs, special pricing agreements. These different names have confused and complicated the topic of rebate management. But all these things? They're just rebates in different forms.  

In fact, a rebate is any B2B transaction where funds flow back through the supply chain.

It’s that simple.

And so is rebate management. While rebate programs may be complex, good rebate management doesn’t have to be. Automated rebate management is a partner-centric approach to the traditionally manual and siloed rebate process. When companies manage their rebates successfully, they remove errors, enhance internal and external alignment and replace disorganized practices with well-coordinated approaches that yield opportunities. Ultimately, rebate management promotes economic growth through clearly defined goals and financial rewards when those goals are accomplished, replacing uncertainty and ambiguity with a focus on measurable results. This collaborative approach cements trading partnerships on a shared, trusted source of data, leading to outcomes that are beneficial for all parties.

We arrived at these definitions for rebates and rebate management by listening to our customers and other rebate strategists tell us about their experiences with rebates and what they need. In fact, everything we do is predicated on feedback from rebate strategists. One of our goals is to elevate their voices and bring rebates strategists together in community so they can network with and learn from each other.

By elevating rebates and the people who use them to drive their businesses forward today, we can build a stronger, better supply chain tomorrow.

The Value of Rebates

And as it turns out, others are starting to champion rebate management, too. In their recent Market Guide, Gartner came out with a strong position: businesses should use rebates instead of discounts. According to Gartner, rebates simplify negotiation, improve margins and incentivize additional purchases more effectively than discounts.

But rebates do so much more than that.

At a time when price point can make or break a deal, rebates allow businesses to maintain pricing stability. While discounts lower the price before the purchase, rebates reduce the price after the purchase is made. In other words, action is required before the rebate is issued. This allows businesses to maintain their pricing standards, incentivize trading partners for behaviors, and adjust rapidly to win more business.

Plus, rebates are powerful motivators that incentivize specific behaviors over time. Rebates allow companies to encourage customer loyalty, increase purchase volume, change up product mixes, improve margins and so much more.

We Care About the Details: A  Culture of Continuous Improvement

We would not be the company we are today without our customers. And we would not have so many customers if we weren’t creating a lot of value for them. When we started this journey, many software companies and investors told us that there was no market for rebate software, but the more we dug into the challenges faced by businesses throughout the supply chain, the more we realized nothing could be further from the truth. Our findings only intensified the desire to help our customers and businesses throughout the supply chain establish trusted trading relationships that allow them to function as seamless extensions of each other.

Our dedication to this mission hasn’t wavered.  

In the coming months, you can expect to see even more product additions and enhancements to Enable’s rebate management platform.

Our goal is to make a rebate management platform that is fully:

• Comprehensive: Effectively manage every deal type while tracking, analyzing and optimizing the entire rebate management process.  

• Collaborative: Create, negotiate, and execute deals together, then track progress in real-time in one trusted location to promote better alignment.

• Controlled: Share the data you want to share, both internally and externally, while configuring workflows, approval processes and audit trails to maintain transparency and compliance.

In service of that, we’re rolling out enhancements that are in line with this definition. We’re creating a better claims management process, increasing how comprehensive and collaborative Enable is. We’ve rolled out inventory rebate accounting and special pricing agreements, and lots more. And we’re only just scratching the surface of what AI can do for rebate management.

We’ll allow you to manage even larger amounts of data with greater ease, help you scale your rebate programs more efficiently, improve your ability to quickly and effectively handle your special pricing agreements and much more.

You'll also see even more growth from the Enable team, allowing us to continue to serve our customers at the highest levels of excellence.

We’re so excited to be with you on this journey toward a healthier, more collaborative supply chain.