“There’s more than one way to skin a cat”, as the saying goes, and retailers are generally quick to leverage innovation in business. However, the cost of doing business increases as complexity increases, and it’s not surprising that companies balk at being asked to pay more for additional tools to manage innovation.
The systems that dominate business financial management vary in their ability to provide retail-specific functionality, and also in their ability to interrogate the data they collect. It’s clearly critical for businesses to be able to get an accurate picture of what is going on in their business, but when a system can’t flex with the business or is ‘shoe-horned’ into doing something it wasn’t designed to do, the results can be painful. However, some creative thinking and deep knowledge of a purpose-built system can lead to innovation in ways that not even the system’s designers anticipated, to the benefit of the business.
What our data showed us
Retailers who are using RDM - Australia's leading rebate, trade promotion, and deal management tool - reap the benefits of better tracking and management, but some are also leveraging this powerful tool for other areas of their businesses. Distributed business structures can benefit from the powerful incentive-driven algorithms in RDM that are required for calculating earned incentives.
How are retailers benefiting?
RDM's detailed and flexible elements have enabled our clients to use the platform for purposes that support their businesses:
Create true partnerships with suppliers
RDM reduced the amount of time both retailers and suppliers spend on administering rebates and deals, and in the process, reduces claim disputes.
Leverage the power of data
RDM’s transaction-level data provides a powerful way to analyse promotions at the most granular level, and identify poorly performing products more quickly, rather than waiting till a promotion ends.
Ensure correct royalties reach rights holders
Distributing royalties is a global growth area with the rise of businesses like licensed merchandise. RDM is being used to distribute royalties relating to seed patents - calculations that are extremely onerous if performed manually, or with systems that are not designed for these functions.
Incentivise employees and customers
It’s not just retailer/supplier relationships that can benefit from RDM’s powerful rule engine. Employee commissions, particularly supplier-provided incentives, can easily be implemented using RDM, ensuring 100% accuracy and transparency in payments to staff.
What retailers are saying
Officeworks and Supercheap Auto both use Profectus' RDM platform for exactly these purposes.
When claims are raised, Officeworks has the product-level information at their fingertips to support the claim and determine the performance of individual SKUs on a daily basis. While it is usually not possible to change a promotion while it’s running, retailers can use real-time information generated by RDM for ongoing negotiations.
Supercheap Auto is able to supply product and deal performance data to Trade Partners, providing valuable insights into optimising promotions for mutual benefit. No more guessing – decisions are based on hard data.
What we say
Knowledge is power – and RDM provides unparalleled levels of data analysis and calculation. This means better business intelligence, but it also provides a new opportunity to change paradigms that have been accepted as intransigent – opening the door to more transparent, cooperative relationships between retailers and suppliers. The examples cited above are nowhere near the end of RDM’s versatility; we foresee potential applications with determining and paying royalties in multiple industries, application of loyalty programs, and expansion of the use of the pricing engine for managing customer rebates. The only limitation is your imagination.
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