Deal signoff is a critical stage in the rebate management process. If a deal is not signed off on, it can’t be actioned, and an unactionable deal isn’t useful. The quicker an agreement can be negotiated, agreed upon and signed off on, the quicker money can flow. Unfortunately, signoff can sometimes be delayed due to disputes, lack of clarity, duplicated information or inconsistencies.  

Usually, trading partners find themselves working with fragmented information spread across multiple systems, with different record keeping tools. This fragmented information and these disparate systems and processes can become a headache for trading partners. Fortunately, there's a better way. All these challenges can be addressed by access to a collaboration portal that becomes your single source of truth.

Obstacles When Signing off Rebate Agreements

Version Control

It’s quite common for businesses to dig through endless files and email chains trying to determine which version of an agreement to update because they can’t determine which version is the most recent iteration, which is a draft and which is the final and approved contract. Plus, accidentally saving over a version is incredibly easy to do accidentally. If a team member isn’t paying attention, they may mistakenly save over a contract iteration someone else still needs, ultimately confusing your adult trail.

Without version control, changes become permanent. Version control ensures every update to a document is clearly delineated, ensuring that no one accidentally saves over a file and that everyone works from the latest version.

Difficulty Finding Latest Agreement

Often, proposed deals are negotiated by email, with details being sent back and forth between the parties. This isn’t only an inefficient way of arranging deals, it also leads to huge inefficiencies later on, as trading partners have to scroll through long email chains or suffer cumbersome search functions to find a particular agreement and check the terms and conditions.

Slow Completion

Facilitating agreements from conception to execution can often be a slow process. In many cases, it can take several weeks to complete. A big cause of this delay is not having a collaboration portal in place to sign on the spot. Other factors include printing issues, logistics and delivery, access to physical copies when traveling or working from home and worst of all misplacing the agreement altogether.

Many Revisions

With rebates being so complex, there might be a lot of back and forth on negotiations and revisions. These revisions can become an issue with offline systems, with some amendments falling through the cracks or a lack of communication surrounding these changes.

The Benefits of a Collaboration Portal for Deal Sign off and Approvals

Approval Workflows

With a collaboration portal featuring automated approval workflows, every individual who is involved in the approval workflows will be instantly alerted to anything that needs actioning. Approval happens more quickly, and the right departments are alerted to anything they need to know about. Thus, speeding the deal sign off process as much as possible.

Activity Log

Never lose sight of an agreement again with a collaboration portal that comes with a built-in activity log, detailing any changes or updates made to an agreement (as well as who made the changes and when they were made). This allows you to catch up on the status of a deal instantly rather than seeking out a lengthy briefing from someone in the loop and avoid any potential disagreements.

Audit Trail

In the event of an audit, maintaining a detailed audit trail is essential. You should have a clear understanding of where all of your agreements are kept. A collaboration portal in the cloud will help create a better way to manage and organize files and is not susceptible to paper decay, physical breaches or theft.

Standardized Agreement Format

With a collaboration portal, documents can be created easily with already compliant templates. Plus, drafting, editing and changes to a contract are much easier for all key parties to manage. Without standardized agreements, your legal team has to create and review every contract from scratch. This way, each party can execute an agreement faster than ever.

Sign off and Approve Deals in a Timely Manner

A lot of time goes into manually following up on unsigned agreements and physically sending them out. Not anymore thanks to a collaboration portal. This allows both parties to access the agreement in real time, add comments and ask for revisions before signing anything. With this process in place, everyone gets the chance to sign off on a win-win deal in an appropriate time frame.

Legally Binding and Compliant

When agreements are readily available, secure, and quick to execute, companies have a better legal assurance that they’re in the right and the contract itself is legally binding. The goal of keeping these contracts on a collaboration portal, after all, is to ensure that businesses have legal covering with a digital signature in place.

Collaborator Is the Only Way to Sign

Don't jeopardize deals chasing down wet-ink signatures. They take too long, and any delay puts even the best deal at risk. When it comes to closing deals, the only way forward is Collaborator from Enable that can close faster than any other solution. It can reduce friction during the negotiation process, cut delays during review and signing, and allow people to view and sign contracts no matter where they are, in real-time. Discover what other benefits Enable’s Collaborator can bring to your business.