Easing the Burdens of Retailer/Vendor Negotiations

The negotiation process between retailers and vendors is filled with constantly changing information in excel files and email. The process can be frustrating due to inaccuracies that can pop up due to the information changing hands and variable orders (e.g., quantity, type). The excel file has been the source of truth for a long time. 

Working with trusted parties such as vendors, distributors, and brokers, retailers can augment their reliance on spreadsheets with a system to follow the negotiation process ... even providing a quicker resolution to negotiations and improving the accuracy of the final contract. What's needed is a centralized intermediary for that information and that's where Kingland plays a role. 

The Kingland Platform isn't the source of truth for the data. It's the source of truth for the negotiation, focusing on the details so clients see the big picture. As an example, retailers can see the details of what's changed and why. 

The 3 Burdens of Pricing and Negotiations

We've seen three burdens carried by retailers for years.

• Technology
• Internal Systems
• Specific Terms and Timeframes

Many organizations have legacy systems because they work well enough. It can be cumbersome with teams managing ten different systems from ten other companies during the negotiation process. Scale that up a bit and you can understand how technology can help.

Internal systems aren't set up for complete data management. It's 2021 and departments continue to rely on Excel files. The information - sometimes accurate, sometimes not - is also used to correlate data with accounting. Unfortunately, some organizations use third parties to review all the contracts and paperwork to find any missing money. They're paying xx% of the money found. That's leaving money on the table for retailers. If the audit finds $200 million of bad revenue, that's, well ... you get the picture. 

Lastly, you have vendors scrambling to translate company-specific verbiage for various retailers. Using a common vocabulary simplifies and speeds up the process. 

Orchestrating the Process

With the Kingland Platform, retailers can make faster purchasing decisions with real-time transparency into tens of thousands of products. Think of the Platform as providing a consolidated view to manage list costs and contract negotiations for multiple items. Clients can pull in fully formed data sets to adjust categories of information and pricing as a whole. For example, clients don't need to adjust one can of green beans at a time until they've accounted for all that they'll need. Clients can also access a full history of changes so they can accurately audit their past actions. 

The cloud-based Platform also speeds up the negotiation process by sending notifications when a price change is made, and the retailer then can review the update/bid. 

This seamless, behind-the-scenes process eases the burden of negotiations by managing the source of truth during the talks. So when all that data is flying by, changing at a moment's notice, clients can rest assure that the most up-to-date information is in their system, enabling their teams to make the best choice for the customer.