Introduction

Overview

Business-to-Business operations (B2B operations) involve complex business activities and relationships between manufacturers and retailers. Claims and deductions form an important aspect of B2B operations. Customers raise claims or take deductions for many reasons such as to claim compensation for damaged goods and to claim promotional accruals that they are eligible to receive.

Settling claims and deductions involves determining whether a claim is valid, validating proof of performance conditions have been met, and tracking them. Sometimes, valid claims and deductions may not have the requisite proofs. Even in such cases, it is essential to settle these claims. These activities require resources, time, and effort. Customers may also submit invalid claims and deductions. While the claims remain unresolved, shipping and invoicing continue, thus giving interest-free credit to the retailers. Some of the challenges that organizations face today are those of settling deductions on time, and recognizing and preventing unauthorized claims and deductions.

Claims in Oracle Channel Revenue Management enables organizations to shorten the claims-processing cycle, and reduce claims and the associated costs. Information related to all the claims is stored in a centralized manner. This makes it possible for you to access accurate views of promotional spending and other variable costs. You can research, validate, and settle deductions, charge backs, and claims. You can also identify invalid and duplicate claims and prevent unauthorized claims and deductions.

Components of the Claims Process

The following figure illustrates the process flow for claims, starting from claim creation to claim research and settlement.

Process Flow for Claims

Claim Creation

Customers may submit a claim or deduct/overpay for many reasons such as OS and D- over, shorts and damages. If a customer makes any over payments or short payments a resulting deduction or overpayment transaction is created by AR into Oracle Trade Management. You can view, investigate and settle these claims.

Claim Assignment

After a claim has been created in Trade Management it must be assigned to an owner. Claim owners are responsible for claim settlement and resolution of any related issues. Ownership can be assigned either to individuals or a team. This assignment can be done manually or utilize our automated assignment engine based on a claim hierarchy established in Oracle Trade Management Territories.

Claim Approval

A claim must be approved before you settle it. After you submit the claim for approval, the approver receives a notification. The approval rules determine the approval flow. The approver may approve or reject the claim. After research has been done it must be submitted for approvals before settlement is complete.

Claim Research

Before settling a claim, you can:

• Determine whether a claim or deduction is valid or invalid.

• Determine the various reasons for which a claim is submitted, split the claim accordingly, and specify different settlement methods for each portion of the claim

  Find duplicate claims and remove such claims from the system.

Claim history enables you to record various changes made to a claim during the course of investigation. You can also use Oracle Discoverer to extract customer information, and use it for research purposes.

Claim Settlement

The claim settlement methods that are available in Oracle Trade Management are check, on-account credit memo, previous on-account credit memo, debit memo, Return Materials Authorization (RMA), automatic write-off, invoice credit memo, and contra charge. The settlement method that you can use depends upon the claim type. You can settle claims for individual customers and buying groups You can also settle via a user defined customized settlement flow You can also pay to third parties.

Reports

The following reports enable you to view the claim details during and after settlement:

• Claim Report: summary of essential claim details such as customer details, claim lines, payment details, and settlement methods.

• Claim Aging View: summary of claims and deductions by customer and by days due. Claim Aging View enables you to determine which customer has had outstanding claims for the longest period time and work on those claims.

• Claim Settlement History: summary of all information that is related to the settlement of a claim. Best practices would be to resolve all claims within a 30 day period. The older claims get the harder it will be to get invalid deductions repaid.

• Customer 360 Degree View: summary of all transactions of the selected customer including all the orders, invoices, debit memos and charge backs.