July 2005                        return to newsletter contents page

FTG Relieves the Headache of SPIF Reporting

Manufacturer incentive programs designed to motivate distributor sales representatives can sometimes be painful for distributors to manage. Now Focus Technology Group has a solution that is making distributors and manufacturers a lot happier.

“Even though we regularly sent sales tracing data to manufacturers, we still had to send separate monthly or quarterly reports breaking down sales by DSR in order to get compensated,” says Jim Bradley of Bradley Caldwell. “But now FTG handles our SPIF reporting to manufacturers who use their sales tracing services.”

According to Duke Hrabe of Farnam Companies, Inc., manufacturers benefit from this service as well. “Before we started receiving FTG’s reports, our DSR incentive programs took weeks to pull together and manage. Today we login to the FTG reporting system, export a print-ready report and we are finished.”

What makes this possible is FTG’s unique sales tracing approach that combines its dynamic Web-based reporting system with a practical understanding of the animal health industry. Distributors send one file containing sales of all products to FTG for processing and sorting by seller and manufacturer. FTG “maps” or assigns DSR’s to individual sales transactions and calculates incentives based on criteria provided by the manufacturer.

For example, one program may pay twenty-five cents for each dose of horse de-wormer sold, while another measures percent growth in a particular product category. Regardless of the program details, sales are mapped, converted, and reported by FTG to the manufacturer on the distributor’s behalf.

Best of all, the SPIF reporting service is free to the distributor. Chris Glaser, FTG’s Vice President of Operations explains it this way: “As part of our commitment to the animal health industry, we feel an obligation to do everything we can to streamline distributors’ data reporting and take cost out of the supply chain. Our sales tracing platform allows us to create this kind of report very efficiently.” He goes on to say: “If you are still sending SPIF reports to manufacturers, please contact us and see how we can be of assistance.”

For information about this and other FTG services, contact Phil Lawler, Director of Business Development at (502) 857-8645, or visit www.focustg.com.