Procure Plus Holdings specialise in the procurement of products and services for a wide range of social housing clients. As a not for profit organisation, Procure Plus employ a range of construction, procurement and IT specialists to secure and manage sustainable, market-leading prices, working as a valuable part of the supply chain to improve communities.
The Challenge
Procure Plus had developed their own in-house rebate management system which was doing an OK job, but their desire to introduce different deals meant that their system was no longer fit for purpose.
The framework they had in place contained everything they needed; recording revenue, materials and labour for all work carried out in the housing sector, for example. Using percentage per transaction rebate deals it was important to track all the work carried out in order to balance at the end of each period.
The system they’d developed internally had worked well previously, but the business wanted greater flexibility to be able to apply more than the 1 or 2 types of deal they’d been limited to in the past. With a need to position deals differently with suppliers, and to be able to talk about them with customers, Procure Plus knew they needed to invest in a new system.
Furthermore, because the existing system was being outgrown by the business needs, they had introduced manual spreadsheets to bolster it, but this made the whole process laborious and untrackable, rendering the entire internal system undependable.
They looked at the issue with the in-house dev team but had to weigh-up the time and effort it would take to rebuild a new system vs other business-critical projects. Essentially, if they were to develop in-house again, they knew they would have less time to develop other systems that would make a difference to their customers and the supply chain. To avoid allocating resources in the wrong place, the business engaged with e-bate.
The Solution
After researching and speaking with multiple rebate management software providers, Procure Plus decided on e-bate above the others for multiple reasons but overall, because e-bate matched the requirements of the business perfectly and were incredibly flexible.
From the first call the business were reassured that the e-bate solution had been built in a thoughtful way and that the system would be implemented and supported by a friendly, knowledgeable team who understood their needs.
The Results
All rebate processes were brought together into one place, and what was a semi-automated and manual process became totally automated and dependable.
All deals and revenue can now be seen in one place and efficiency is greatly improved, especially in the Finance team as they can now harvest all information from one source instead of having to search in multiple locations using multiple people.
e-bate set up a supplier portal for the business too, to enable suppliers to log on and retrieve information and download details of a claim with total transparency, helping to avoid questioning and cutting queries right down. This has also strengthened supplier relationships.
