As discussed in the blog The Rebate Billback Challenge, there are a number of inefficiencies in the typical billback claims process that add unnecessary cost and complexity. While EDI 867 can bring standardization to the data exchange process, it fails to address many of the challenges that manufacturers face: namely the inability to bring context to the data it is providing. The data received by the manufacturer still shows the distributors product identification codes, not the manufacturers. The manufacturer must still map the product identification codes to their own and then validate the details of the claim. These steps can be extremely time-consuming and error-laden, which creates a number of challenges further down the line.
iTradeNetwork recently announced a new offering aimed directly at this problem. The iTradeNetwork Enhanced Billback Solution, a new module that can be accessed from within the Order Management System (OMS) user interface. Simply put, the Enhanced Billback Solution simplifies and standardizes the way rebate claims are requested, verified, and managed.
The Enhanced Billback Solution leverages EDI 867 to provide a simple and standards-based way for distributors and other buying organizations to submit billback reports to manufacturers. More importantly, because of the way that iTradeNetwork synchronizes product catalogs between trading partners, it automatically maps product identification codes so that each line item in a claim is presented to the manufacturer with their own product codes. This eliminates manual data mapping steps and improves data accuracy and consistency. The user interface provides a centralized view into all manufacturers’ claims, allowing trade spend staff to quickly review, edit and verify billback claims. It also provides the ability to compare contract terms and actual sales data so that discrepancies can be quickly identified and addressed.
There are a number of important features of the Enhanced Billback Solution that are important to understand:
Fully integrated solution for automating key billback processes.
Timely and accurate delivery of billback reports in standard format (EDI 867).
Regular synchronization of distributor and manufacturer’s catalogs to ensure accuracy.
Automatic rendering of line item information using manufacturer’s attribution.
Any time cloud access for viewing, editing and processing billback claims.
Automatic routing of approved claims to accounts payable.
Ability to compare contract terms and actual sales data, quickly identify and reconcile line item discrepancies, print reports on demand, and share data with third party brokers in real time.
From a manufacturer’s perspective, what this means is:
Huge efficiency gains. In fact, one of the early Enhanced Billback Solution customers estimated that they were able to reduce the bandwidth required to manage billback claims by at least 50%.
Verify a much higher percentage of billback claims with existing staff.
Reduce errors and resulting accounting discrepancies.
Improve customer satisfaction.
Arm sales to drive additional revenue from better managed rebate programs.
The benefits of the Enhanced Billback Solution are not only limited to manufacturers, however. The next blog in this series will look at how iTradeNetwork is providing benefits to distributors as well.
In the meantime, please visit the Enhanced Billback Solution page to learn more.