Data Acquisition, Data Syncrhonization
Stacy Jackson
The irony of the modern age: sometimes the more connected we are, the less connected we feel. Once upon a time, you called Grandma on Sundays. Now maybe you send a text message or email. Those old friends from college get a passing comment or “Like” on their Facebook pages while you try to keep tabs on work email, personal email, update your LinkedIn profile, pay bills online, monitor your child’s grades, all while posting tweets about the movie you are half-way watching on Netflix. So many ways to connect can leave us scattered, distracted, and dissatisfied.
As more...
by Janet Zlokovich
As we get older, we gain new knowledge, become more experienced and realize that staying healthy will require us to do more than when we were younger. The right diet, exercise, vitamins and regular doctor visits are all part of the regimen we need to consider for sustaining good health and maintaining a positive quality of life for longevity. Similarly, trade spend management can draw many parallels from this mind set for creating a sound framework and functionality of Answers Systems contract solutions for foodservice. Just as your healthcare provider completes a patient history to better understand how...
By Janet Zlokovich
We are seeing where more manufacturers need our expertise for their Trade Promotion data acquisition. Three sides of the foodservice trading partner triangle – manufacturer, distributor & operator are implementing new enterprise systems and purchasing software applications for their rebate tracking, so there is a downstream impact on their Trade claim reporting. At Answers Systems, we turn this into a positive!! We look for the ultimate benefit the industry will receive from new trading partner capabilities, particularly when they result with an improved billback claim output file or transmission method for delivery. This especially applies to distributors, since...
By Susan Sanford
So you have reached that point where you realize there is not enough time in the day to get your work done. What do you do? Like most, you will probably read a time management book, take a class, or use the latest technology to organize your day. All of these resources will incorporate some sort of strategy to help you find efficiencies in your processes; usually incorporating a “touch it once” theory. Every time you can save a touch point, you can save time. Your Trade Contract Management works the same way.
Maybe the whole sentence could...
By Brian Maloney
Don’t you hate it when you have to fill out the same information several times while at the doctor's office or when you are filling out a loan application? You end up missing something or rewriting the wrong thing, and then you have to get the paperwork handed back to you. Why can’t they just let me fill it out once and all the places that need that info just automatically get it?? Now imagine if the contract management process in the Foodservice industry were like this. It’s getting there.
Over the past couple of years we’ve started seeing...
by Kristin Avery
In America, it is important to create new and innovative ways to set businesses apart and make them unique. One way that businesses have creatively set themselves apart from the competition is by playing with the grammatical spelling of their name. For example, Cash and Carry is spelled Kash-n-Karry. If you haven’t noticed it before, I’m sure you will now notice it everywhere. Every time I see one of these crafty signs I often imagine how hard it would be for a person learning English for the first time. How coming to this country and trying to learn...
Tracy McQuilkin
Data acquisition and cleansing in the process of rebate settlement can be a challenge. Each day in the Settlement Department here at Answers Systems, we work with thousands upon thousands of fields of data. The data we capture is only as good as the data we receive. Many times in the course of data acquisition, we get partial or illegible information. We do our best to cleanse it and capture it, but there are times when we run into roadblocks.
Sometimes during the rebate settlement process, we have to place a claim on “pending” status or “on hold” to...
by Tracy McQuilkin
When performing rebate settlement for our foodservice manufacturer clients, we often get the following question regarding pendings:
Why can’t we just override the pending and pay it?
Short answer: we can, but we don't recommend doing this.
When you override a pending, all you are doing is fixing that one claim instead of addressing the root cause of the claim in error. Why not take a few extra minutes in your contract management process and either update the contract in the ContractPro® solution, or ensure that your customer has the correct contract terms on file in their system?
If you update the contract...
by Brian Maloney
It’s almost impossible for manufacturers and distributors to keep track of all the locations in the foodservice industry and which Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) each location may/may not belong to today…and that’s hoping each location belongs to just one GPO when it relates to foodservice purchasing.
The issue is so mind boggling at times that whenever the topic comes up, everyone just shakes their heads, agrees that it’s a big problem, and then they move on without even trying to figure out possible solutions.
Here’s a solution . . . .the Foodservice Industry needs One Source that maintains all the GPO’s and which locations...
Getting Started with submitting Electronic Billback Reporting for deviated billbacks . . .
Many distributors are unsure of where to begin. When I talk to them about sending a data file for their deviated billbacks rather than emailing a static report format, distributors are sometimes hesitant because they want to make sure one solution and the same file layout will satisfy every manufacturer trading partner’s requirements.
The good news is there are easy-to-adopt industry standards for
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