The Company

This global home improvement retailer, established in 1978 and headquartered in the southeastern United States, operates over 2,300 stores across North America. The company provides a wide range of products, such as tools, construction materials, appliances and services, serving both professional contractors and DIY customers.  

A Senior Analyst on the rebates team who manages over 200 national account customers generating more than $10 billion in sales in 2023 told us, “As a retailer we utilize a variety of incentives to enhance the shopping experience, drive sales and build customer loyalty. Each type of incentive has its unique level of complexity in terms of management, implementation and tracking.”

Rebates offer customers money back after a purchase, requiring customers to register credit cards, which shows proof of purchase within a specified time frame. These can be in the form of manufacturer rebates, promotions, or National Account rebates.  

Whereas loyalty programs are tailored specifically for our professional customers, these programs offer benefits like discounts, exclusive offers and preferred pricing on specific items.

These incentives play a crucial role at the retailer for several reasons:

• Driving Customer Loyalty and Repeat Purchases: Rebates incentivize customers to return for future purchases. By offering value beyond the initial transaction, the retailer can build stronger relationships with their customers, encouraging them to choose them over their competitors.

• Encouraging Higher Spending: Often, rebates are designed in a way that encourages customers to spend more to qualify for savings. This strategy not only increases the average transaction value but also helps drive sales of complementary products.  

• Vendor Partnerships: Rebates often come in partnership with their suppliers, allowing the retailer to offer attractive deals without fully bearing the costs. This collaboration strengthens their vendor relationships and supports their ability to provide competitive pricing.

Robust Rebate Strategy

The Senior Analyst said, “Having a robust rebate strategy is essential for our retail business because it aligns with our goals of driving sales, enhancing customer loyalty and maintaining a competitive edge in the retail industry. The retail market is highly competitive, and rebates can differentiate us from other players. A well-crafted rebate strategy can make our pricing more attractive without sacrificing perceived value, helping us retain market share and attract new customers.”

Incentivizing The Right Behaviors

When designing rebate programs, the retailer focuses on encouraging specific customer behaviors that align with business goals, enhance the shopping experience, and deliver value to both customers and the company.

They target:

• Increased Purchase Frequency and Loyalty: Rebates motivate customers to return for future purchases by offering rewards or cash-back on their current transactions. This strategy fosters long-term loyalty and encourages customers, particularly professionals who make frequent large purchases, to choose the retailer as their preferred shopping destination.

• Higher Spend per Transaction: Rebates often include thresholds that incentivize customers to increase their basket size to qualify for the reward (e.g., spend $100 to receive a $10 rebate). This approach boosts the average order value, helps clear inventory, and promotes sales of high-margin or seasonal products.

• Encouraging Professional Customer Engagement: Rebates targeted at professional customers aim to deepen their engagement by offering rewards on bulk purchases, frequent transactions, or specific product categories relevant to their businesses. This strengthens relationships with professional customers, drives repeat business and enhances their overall value.

The Senior Analyst explained, “Our rebate programs are strategically designed to influence customer behavior in ways that drive sales, enhance loyalty and support our broader business objectives. We ensure that our incentives not only appeal to customers but also provide measurable benefits to us as a retailer.”

They added, “We regularly re-evaluate our rebate programs to ensure they effectively drive the desired customer behavior and align with our strategic goals. This ongoing assessment is crucial for keeping our incentives relevant and effective.”

The Challenges

High Volume of Vendors, Products, and Rebate Programs

Managing rebates and incentives manually had become increasingly complex and time-consuming for the retailer, especially as the number of vendors, products and rebate programs expanded. Manual processes made it challenging to track, validate and reconcile rebates accurately, leading to inefficiencies and errors. As the retailer continued to grow, so did the complexity of managing relationships with multiple suppliers and rebate programs.

The Senior Analyst explained, "We needed a scalable solution that could grow with the business, handle increasing data volumes and support the expansion of our incentive strategies without adding operational burden. Investing in Enable allowed us to address these challenges by providing a centralized, automated and transparent platform for rebate management. This decision wasn’t just about solving immediate issues; it was also about positioning the business for future growth, optimizing rebate strategies, strengthening vendor partnerships and ultimately driving better business outcomes."

The Senior Analyst added, “With Enable, we’ve been able to manage the large volume of rebates tied to our 21 product collections with greater accuracy, efficiency and strategic insight, ensuring we capture all eligible rebates and maximize our financial returns.”

Manual Rebate Calculations

The Senior Analyst shared, "Before implementing Enable, managing rebate payouts for our professional contractors involved a series of manual and often inefficient processes. This approach posed several challenges, making it difficult to ensure accuracy, timeliness and alignment with our broader business objectives. Essentially, rebate calculations were stored in a Microsoft Excel workbook, requiring us to manually calculate rebates for thousands of customers."

The Software

Why Enable?

The retailer chose Enable from among several software providers primarily for its API connection, which allows Enable to access their database and ensures both systems work from the same set of data.

With Enable’s centralized platform, customer contracts and reporting are now housed in one user-friendly system, providing all stakeholders with easy access to contract updates and reports.

The Sr. Analyst noted, "Automating our previously manual process has given the team more bandwidth to manage daily tasks, especially during our busiest months."

10/10 for Support

The Senior Analyst shared, “Enable promised us white-glove service and they have delivered since day one. There has never been a time when they failed to support us, no matter what questions we had."

The Senior Analyst rated the support from Enable as "10/10." From onboarding to implementation and even hosting weekly meetings, Enable consistently demonstrated that they valued the retailer and were committed to their success.

"We understood from the start that the implementation timeline would depend on our team’s availability and Enable was incredibly flexible, working closely with us to accommodate our schedule," the Senior Analyst added.

Reporting In a Matter of Minutes

The Senior Analyst explained, "Enable has streamlined our reporting process, allowing the team to focus on more strategic projects that move the business forward. What used to take 45 days now takes minutes. Not only do we get reports almost instantly, but we can trust that the data is accurate and clean. This improvement gives us the bandwidth to respond to sales associates and customers during our busiest times of the year, like June and December/January."

The Senior Analyst continued, "Enable also enhances our data analysis by giving us deeper insights into how our customers are spending and whether they’re growing, which helps us make more informed decisions."

Contract Visibility and Version Control

Enable’s automated workflows ensures that all relevant stakeholders are promptly informed of any contract updates. Teams can set up custom alerts for changes in terms, rates, or other critical details, keeping everyone aligned with the most current information.

The Sr. Analyst noted, “Enable provides real-time updates to contracts, with any changes instantly reflected across the platform. The built-in version control allows us to see a history of changes, including who made them and when. This feature offers complete transparency and helps prevent errors due to uncommunicated modifications.”

Strategic Rebate Management

The Senior Analyst explained, “Enable has greatly improved our strategic approach to managing vendor rebates and driving business growth. It offers a transparent view of our rebate programs, ensuring we meet both internal and external audit requirements. This transparency minimizes the risk of errors and disputes, allowing us to handle rebates with confidence and strategic insight.”

They added, “Enable transforms rebate management from a back-office task into a strategic tool that adds value for us, helping us maintain our competitive edge in the market.”

Supporting Long Term Growth

As the retailer continues to expand, Enable will become increasingly crucial to their long-term rebate strategy by promoting more efficient, data-driven and scalable rebate management. Looking ahead, Enable will allow experimentation with innovative rebate models, such as dynamic or performance-based rebates, which can be adjusted in real-time based on market conditions or strategic objectives. This flexibility will be essential for staying ahead of industry trends and meeting evolving customer expectations.

The Senior Analyst notes, “Enable will not only support our growth but also actively drive our ability to implement a forward-looking, strategic rebate management approach. This will enhance our vendor relationships, optimize financial performance, and support our long-term vision.”

Enable Is an Invaluable Tool for Any Retailer

The Senior Analyst said, “I would highly recommend Enable to other retailers because it turns rebate management from a traditionally manual, error-prone process into a strategic advantage. Overall, Enable empowers retailers to streamline rebate management, turning it into a strategic and profit-enhancing function. It’s an invaluable tool for any retailer looking to optimize operations and drive business growth.”