Hiring rebate management consultants assists a company in undertaking effective discount management processes and practices. Since rebates are a useful sales tactic, working with a rebate management consultant can help a company maximize rebate benefits and avoid costly errors like late payments, over and underpayments. Such errors are associated with poor vendor rebate management like outdated contracts, uniform rebates, and high rebates for thin-margin products. Companies that hire discount management specialists to implement rebate programs are more flexible and better aligned to each vendor’s needs and offer incentives that boost customer loyalty while protecting the company’s interests.

More specifically, rebate management consultants offer crucial insights and support in the following areas:

Automate Rebate Management

Hiring a rebate management consultant can help a company to automate its discount management systems quickly. By leveraging the specialist’s discount automation expertise, the company can identify automation opportunities, review vendor options, and procure the right discount management solution. Rebate management consultants also help a company deploy the solution by onboarding vendors to the system, training sales, and procurement staff, and linking the system to the company’s overall supply chain systems.

Create Customized Rebate Programs

Rebate management consultants help a company transition from a one-size-fits-all rebate system to more customizable rebate programs. They help a company to segment vendors by product value, end price, and sales volume, metrics that help ensure rebates offered are customized to each segment. For instance, thin-margin or “skinny” product segments can get lower discounts compared to higher-margin product segments. Through customizable rebate programs, a company can also quickly adapt rebates to changing vendor relationships and product dynamics.

Protect Margins, Volumes, and Prices

Rebate management consultants perform the crucial duty of protecting company margins, volumes, and prices through carefully crafted rebate programs. To protect and grow margins, the specialists implement inclusion and exclusion matrices that determine which product lines get rebates and which ones are exempt. They help boost sales volumes by implementing rebate programs that increase discounts based on set volume targets. Regarding pricing, rebate management consultants help device programs that prevent customers from passing on savings to end customers, a practice that can severely undercut pricing and brand-building objectives.

Gain Fiscal Clarity

Hiring rebate management consultants helps a company to gain visibility of how much it owes and how much it is owed in rebates. With enhanced fiscal visibility, a company can easily calculate its P&L position with accurate rebate metrics factored in. By introducing greater financial clarity, rebate management consultants help a company identify and fix potential revenue leaks occasioned by poorly negotiated rebate agreements, inaccurate sales data, and an incomplete picture of all rebates currently on offer.