"We'll Just Use Excel to Manage Our Rebate Program"
A client asked us how we "might quickly process tens of thousand of rebate claims". This has grown into a major service offering, processing and fulfilling over 100K claims annually.
Automation Saves The Day
Their major client was starting a major promotion, which involved coupons being returned by their retail customers to redeem for a premium item. They had never done this before and we did a quick calculation, and with the tens of thousands of claims they expected it would have taken over 5 man years to process. They assured us that that they could just use internal staff and Excel to manage the effort, but we knew they were going to crash and burn without some serious supplemental staffing and automation. We were engaged in a skunkworks project they presented to their major client a month into the promotion which saved the day.
This allowed a Knoxville-based company to strengthen their relationship with a national manufacturer by providing a feature-complete promotions management system. Over the last 5 years our software has processed over a quarter million claims, shipped ~240K items and created rebate checks worth near $4M with neglible error rate.
Full Featured
Scalable: Since this is web-based, additional staff can be brought on to meet any demand, working from home, paid as piece goods.- Rules-Based: Every promotion has unique business rules. Claims are evaluated against these rules to determine validity, so data entry staff only keys data, eliminating errors and increasing processing speed.
- Validation: Addresses and other entered data are validated against external services.
- Audit Trail: All changes and processing are noted on every claim and packing slip, so when something was done and by whom is always known.
- Batch shipping: Promotional items are shipped in large batches, making fulfillment as easy as sticking labels on boxes.
- Integrated shipping and tracking: Software talks directly to carriers (UPS, Fedex) to generate waybill, shipping labels, and fetch accurate shipping rates.
- Fraud Analysis: All claims are compared to detect duplicate claims and other fraudulent activities.
- Positive Pay: Integrates with bank positive pay service to greatly reduce opportunity for fraud, as all names, check numbers and amounts must agree to be payable.
- Notifications: Emails are sent directly to clients at key stages of the fulfilmment process. Bounce detection allows automatic use of alternate contact method: postcards.
- Customer Portal: Online site makes it easy for clients to check processing status, which reduces load on human staff.
- Complete Support: We provide operational support of your mission critical systems.
Rebate and Promotions Management Tools
Our rebate and promotions management tools facilitate turning your bounce cards and rebate forms into structured data ready to be used by your business. During capture, we validate addresses and each claim to ensure it satisfies your program rules, transcribing all data into a secure database. Our software is flexible, supports complicated compliance rules and, if you require, can select between different items based on the particulars of each claim.
For valid claims, our integrated fulfillment service ships your items or rebate checks. For invalid claims we can ship notification cards so that customers may re-submit or understand why their claim has not been accepted. Customer may check claim processing status via an online portal. Our fraud analysis tools monitor for abuse and fraudulent claims.
Your customer service department may securely search the claims database in realtime from a web browser, modify information, make notes and use this as a tool to facilitate customer interactions, with a complete audit trail. Your accounting department can see in real-time all activity and export reports. Our software has been developed in-house and can be customized to satisfy the unique needs of your business.
