Frictionless claims defence by Salitix turns a £500 claim into an £80k counterclaim

A global snacking company with over 75 brands and annual revenues of more than £2.8bn saw growth driven by in-store promotional activity. As a result, their commercial finance teams were receiving hundreds of historical funding claims – claims for incorrect or missed funding – in a given trading year. In response, they developed a policy of automatically validating claims under a threshold value.

Challenge: Managing high volumes of claims

The company wanted to find a way to manage a large volume of claims without imposing significant resource and administration costs on commercial teams. There was also a need to keep negotiations out of the commercial dialogue, so that any claims disputes did not impact ongoing relationships with retailers.

Solution: A comprehensive sales audit to reconcile all payments

Salitix was employed to provide a friction-free managed trade spend review and place the validation of retailer claims within a comprehensive sales audit – one which reconciled all sales and funding payments against activity to determine that what was paid for reflected what was agreed.

Results: Turning a £500 claim into an £80k counterclaim

A £500 claim that had been validated by the account manager was passed to Salitix to review. The claim showed that increased retros had been agreed in principle based on a CPI being authorised, and the increased retro had been universally applied across a product range. This claim was for a small number of SKUs that had not received the increased retro and the claim was for the difference. Sounds straightforward, right?

When the Salitix auditor examined the email archive evidence, it became apparent that the CPI had been rejected and an agreement reached whereby the old retros would remain in place in return for the CPI being waived. In fact, none of the SKUs should have been subject to an increased retro. This meant that a £500 claim that would otherwise have been agreed became an £80k counterclaim when the total value of increased retros was quantified and repaid.

“The account manager who had negotiated the deal had left, and when I reviewed the original retailer’s claim it contained evidence that supported the increased retro. I could also see that other SKUs had had funding invoices paid using the higher retro value. Without access to the departed account manager’s emails and the small claim value, this was an easy one to validate… incorrectly! The £80k repayment was extremely useful to receive back into the current trading budget – thank you Salitix!”

Customer Finance Manager, global snack company