Salesforce adds out-of-the-box B2B rebate management to its CRM platform

2 Mar, 2021

Salesforce adds out-of-the-box B2B rebate management to its CRM platform

Cloud

The new feature will take rebate tracking out of spreadsheets and give visibility to sales teams, customers and anyone else that needs to see it.

Today, Salesforce announced the addition of Rebate Management to its customer relationship management (CRM) platform, which it said will make it easier to track what is a crucial, but often overlooked, source of revenue. “Despite their importance, rebate programs are often stuck inside back office ERP systems and point solutions or tracked on spreadsheets. In many cases, only the finance team has access to this data, causing a disconnect when sales teams and distributors need an update on progress towards their rebates,” said Salesforce Industry Cloud COO and GM, Jujhar Singh.

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Salesforce Rebate Management will integrate with any Salesforce cloud product and is designed to support businesses that rely on distributor networks to sell products, like the automotive industry, manufacturing and consumer goods companies. The hope, Singh said, is that digitizing rebate programs will “enable collaboration, automate program tracking and payouts and provide a single source of truth for rebate data, accessible to all relevant employees and channel partners in one place.”

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Singh writes that Rebate Management will allow any party that needs to track rebate statuses, like sales teams, to track their channel partner’s rebate statuses, view recent qualifying transactions, see what partners have qualified for, and determine how close channels are to qualifying for additional rebates. “Sales teams can now receive an alert about this opportunity and reach out to the partner to close a mutually profitable final sale,” Singh said.

In addition to aiding internal collaboration, Rebate Management will also include tools for automating, customizing and tracking the business intelligence metrics of rebates as well: It even goes as far as adding prescriptive analytics capabilities to rebate programs by using historic data to predict which channel partners will get the most benefit from rebate programs.

Rebate Management will also track payouts vs. revenue in various regional markets and let teams customize offers for specific regions and customers. In addition, the software will also automate program review and payout processes, which Singh said will free up finance teams and eliminate potentials for human error.

Along with enhancing internal visibility and supplementing rebate programs, Rebate Management is available for channel partners in their company portals as well. Using the portal, distributors will be able to check the status of rebates waiting to pay out, their current status for the month’s rebates and total savings over the course of the past year, which Singh said will increase transparency and aid in building trust between manufacturers and distributors.

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Rebate Management is the second channel and customer incentive program that Salesforce has launched in 2021, including Loyalty Management, which was launched in January. Both tools could be valuable in the wake of COVID-19 as businesses struggle with concerns over customer loyalty.

“As companies continue to navigate the pandemic and the economic recovery, rebate programs can be a crucial aspect to building loyalty with channel partners who help drive company revenue,” Singh said. Rebate Management is available now for any Salesforce customer with an existing cloud administrator license.