Formica
Overview
The main goal of the Formica G2 system was to improve distributor relations by paying accurate rebates in a timely fashion, improving communication with their distributors, and reducing administrative cost. Formerly, many distributor rebate requests were faxed in or keyed in by Formica employees that made this system slow and costly. The BCD consulting group assisted Formica in developing a system to improve distributor visibility into the rebate system to submit and track rebate approvals and payments, automate routine tasks and improve maintenance functions which reduced administrative cost. Among the programs developed was a robust rebate upload program where a variety of rebate files could be uploaded instantly into the system, a scheduling program that allows distributors to view and/or update their rebate schedules, many maintenance programs and reports which were driven by a sophisticated SQL search.
Formica Competitive Pricing (FCP) Authorizations
The FCP Authorizations portion of the site allows Formica personnel to work with or display authorized distributors depending on authority level. Authorized lists can also be downloaded into an excel spread sheet. By clicking on a distributor, users can drill down to view a list of their customers which can also be maintained. A searching facility provides the ability to search for customers within that distributor, or within a certain area. These lists are downloadable as well.
FCP Schedules
Each customer has a rebate schedule that displays their rebate margin for each product. Schedules will cover all possible rebated price points, which will drastically reduce administrative work and distributor confusion. Depending on their authority, the user can add products and modify the schedule, as well as download the schedule. This schedule is calculated using complex formula that is completely transparent to the user. They can view previous schedules and can also download this into an excel spread sheet.
Requisition Loader
Distributors require an easy way to upload large requisitions to the Formica system. Over the years, these have been sent to Formica in a certain file format that they still support. Now the distributors can log and it upload this themselves. They also created a new file format that holds more information and they have given the distributors a third option to send the data as a comma delimited file. The data is read from the submitted format by the WebSmart program and then output to the appropriate fields in a data base file. Once this is done, this requisition is sent through an "audit" where each line is validated for discrepancies.
Reporting
There are 4 separate reports to assist the distributors. The first 2 allow extensive searching of the rebate history and the rebate log. Once they have narrowed down the data they want, they can download this to excel as well. The third report is called the “A-H” report which shows the amount of square feet sold to date, versus their goal and other similar data. The fourth report is a requisition report which displays line items for the selected requisition. You can also select the distributor if you have the proper authority.
Client Comments
"Thanks for all your help with the project. It was a tremendous learning experience for me, and we turned out a nice system in the process. I'm sure I'll be talking to your services group in the near future. Thanks again." - Dave VonHaeffen
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