By Elizabeth Allcock, Marketing Executive at Enable.com

Finance teams play a key role in rebate accounting and claims processing. Even throughout the pandemic, B2B deals are still being calculated, accrued, and allocated. This particularly applies to rebates, which are prevalent across more than 50 industries due to their significant impact on a business’s bottom-line. But since COVID-19 hit, this has caused disruption for 83% of those involved in B2B rebate deals. So, where do we go from here?

The next phase we’re entering has just as many challenges as the first, with finance teams entering a new era that requires new strategies to ensure survival and a return to growth. What should finance be doing and where should their focus be? Enable’s report gives us some answers.

Transitioning from outdated, manual processes for managing rebates

Although many in the finance and rebate accounting space were embracing automation prior to the pandemic, the move to a remote working environment has put outdated and manual financial processes into the spotlight. The senior finance team will be requiring more regular updates than usual, so finance needs to make sure they have everything they need to hand which can’t always be done when using manual processes.

In Enable’s report they found that with such large volumes of information to manage, finance teams are relying on outdated processes such as spreadsheets (34%) and traditional ways of signing of their trading agreements (44%) which only increases the likelihood of errors and inconsistencies in the rebate management process.

In particular on average, 4% of rebate revenue goes unclaimed which means many companies are missing out on hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars each year. With trading agreements becoming increasingly more creative and complicated, many companies are lacking in the specialist software that is required to manage this complexity in an efficient and accurate way.

The digitization of rebate accounting

Whilst many organizations have been focusing on digitization of the finance department for some time now and many already had the business support and resources to stay at the forefront of new technology. But in reality, finance departments have been happy to proceed as they have always done with varying levels of non-digital approaches included in their day-to-day job roles. However, this current crisis has put the spotlight on inefficiency, exposing rebate management processes that continue to be manual or human driven.

Enable’s study reported that 64% found many challenges with their current rebate management system due to key person dependency and being very time consuming. Therefore, this only enforces the need for the digitization of rebate accounting for many finance teams.

Managing rebates remotely

With the uncertainty that COVID-19 has brought, businesses have been forced to take measures that ensure employee safety, ensuring everyone is following the government’s strict guidelines for social distancing to help halt the spread of COVID-19. This now includes enabling your finance team work remotely which is beginning to gain widespread acceptance from employees and employers alike. In Enable’s report they found 16% are now working from home.

With it now becoming apparent that it could be months or even longer before it will be safe for employees to return to the office. Remote working has turned the traditional finance department status quo on its head. No more passing physical paperwork from desk to desk, CFOs need to reflect on the lessons of the past few months and explore ways to incorporate best practices that will help their organizations adapt to this new remote working model. Making sure they are equipped to collaborate efficiently and communicate effectively for successful execution of their B2B rebate deals.

Making collaboration a priority

If finance teams were to communicate clearly across the business and collaborate, this could help reduce the impact on revenue, profits and the operation of the business. However, Enable’s report has shown the opposite that only 15% are working in effective collaboration with suppliers and making sure they are being paid on time.

Finance need to have real-time visibility of their B2B deals and a strong understanding of what’s involved with each deal. This will ensure informed decisions are made and reduce the risk of disputes that could damage or even jeopardize collaboration between their trading partners.

It’s time to stop thinking of B2B deal negotiations as adversarial competitions, trying to outdo our trading partner. Instead, we need to think of them as a collaborative way to achieve reliable and mutually profitable growth for both sides of the trading relationship.

What’s next for finance?

As countries across the globe emerge from lockdown at different times and at different paces, managing B2B rebate deals between trading partners will not be an easy task for finance. One way to move forward is to rethink and rebuild how they engage their supply chain partners to make sure rebate accounting processes can be done more efficiently with increased collaboration and the best rebate accounting software.