John McCracken Senior Vice President of Sales latest blog john.mccracken@inovis.com As Senior Vice President of Sales, John McCracken leads the Inovis worldwide Sales organization with a focus on driving new business in new and existing vertical markets.

Watch the Video

Q. What challenges do companies face with managing deductions?

A. The common theme I see between retailers and vendors is specifically around the fact that both of them believe the information they have in their system is correct and they cannot get the information from one system to the other and synchronize that data between organizations. So, when they are actually issuing a chargeback or an invoice offset, they can't get that information to synchronize with the actual information that is being sent from that company. So, for example, one says that they did have an invoice and a P.O. and the other says they didn't have the invoice and P.O. that matched the actual invoice number. That's where the problem occurs and then they have to resolve that solution without real fact based information.

Q. What's the common theme you see with Retailers and Vendors?

A. There's a lot of benefits that come from a deduction management program. You'll see that the vendors and retailers are both looking at similar data, and trying to synchronize that data. And the information that is in the vendor side needs to be the same that's in the supplier side. And today, that information is done in two separate systems. What we are trying to do and the benefit that we resolve for them is that now the data is synchronized and they both can view that information and they know exactly that they will have a fact-based discussion regarding any invoice offsets or any deductions that are coming their way.

Q. What benefits can be garnered with an effectively managed deduction program?

A. The way Actionable Intelligence will help with a perfect order is actually bring visibility both to the vendor and supplier. It will also allow the vendor to actually quarantine that information and reduce the amount of errors that are being sent over proactively. Today it's all in reactive mode. What we're trying to do as an organization at Inovis is allow the vendor to capture that information and reduce the number of errors that are being sent over to the actual retailer to avoid any invoice offsets and deductions.

Q. Can retailers improve perfect orders through Actionable Intelligence and Deduction Management?

A. Today the key challenges that Inovis sees when we are working with customers is the fact that they cannot exchange data with information that is relevant to their systems. Both organizations are working on two separate systems with two separate pieces of information and they can't synchronize the data. So what we do is we come in and provide a solution where that information is synchronized and also the transaction is clean prior to sending it so there are no deductions and invoice offsets in the process.