Why do organizations choose to work with waste brokers? Two important reasons come to mind:
- Increased recycling
- Reduced waste costs
Maximizing customers’ recycling rebates aligns with both goals and represents an opportunity for waste brokers to add value and grow revenue. Surprisingly, some waste brokers are hesitant to get too involved. Let’s explore why and how RecycleERP can help.
Dealing with the Complexity of Recycling Rebates
Managing recycling rebates for a large portfolio of customers can seem incredibly overwhelming—especially for waste brokerages that primarily rely on manual processes and outdated technology. Here’s why:
Recyclables must be viewed as separate material streams. One new material stream can involve more customer service requests, more vendor relationships, more negotiating, more paperwork, and more follow-up. Taking on “more” isn’t easy with a team that’s already stretched thin.
Rebate math can be very tricky. Tracking customer service requests, vendor activity, and payment statuses in spreadsheets is theoretically possible. However, dealing with credits—in the form of recycling rebates—adds a new level of complexity that’s difficult to track with spreadsheets. Vendors essentially become like customers, and customers become like vendors. Lots of checks moving around, lots of journal entries, and plenty of room for error.
Market-driven pricing creates a sense of unpredictability. Market prices for recycled materials continually change. Predicting the financial impact of recycling rebates can feel like a moving target.
Profit margins may be lower than other waste streams. No doubt, adding a lower-margin revenue source could detract from a waste broker’s overall profit margin. But, 20% of something still feels better than 100% of nothing—especially when you factor in the intangible value of providing better customer experiences.
Let’s Make Recycling Rebates Worth Your Time
RecycleERP can help you achieve a more sustainable recycling rebate workflow. For starters, RecycleERP is built for managing customer and vendor information. Centralizing relationship data into a structured, cloud-based system provides a solid foundation for efficiently and accurately processing rebates.
RecycleERP supports multiple pricing scenarios—rebate pricing, market pricing, and formula pricing—so waste brokers can build their business logic into the system and bypass mind-numbing spreadsheet formulas. Analyzing profitability by relationship, service date, invoice, and other criteria makes it easier to understand the financial impact of rebate programs.
Built-in controls in RecycleERP protect waste brokers from accidentally paying customers for unpaid vendor rebates. Connecting RecycleERP to popular bookkeeping software simplifies rebate check accounting. RecycleERP also offers easy-to-use reports and dashboards so customers can see how much they’re recycling—and how much money they’re saving.
Ramp Up Recycling Rebates with RecycleERP
Looking for a better way to manage recycling rebates for your customers? Browse our monthly pricing plans or request a demo of RecycleERP. It only takes a few extra rebate checks to achieve ROI!
