The new Spend and Rebate Forecasting process implemented this year is in its final quarter of review and input by our Plant Forecasters.  This estimated supplier spend for Q4 will be used to calculate the year-end rebate amounts by supplier and member.  Looking back, I was cautiously optimistic as DevonWay was developing the software system to capture this information, and after a year of using it, I am happy to say the results and ownership by our members has been great.  Each member has designated a team member I like to call the Plant Forecaster.  We have a mix of supply chain and site reps that have done a great job learning and implementing this new forecasting process.  Some key goals for developing the system were to eliminate the surprise of what the rebate actually would be at the end of the year and provide data to the members to assist with utilization of USA agreements to increase member savings.

Throughout the year the following data has been provided to the members showing potential actions and opportunities they can take to increase savings.

• Number of USA rebate agreements compared to number of agreements utilized by the member
• Agreements showing current supplier and member forecasted rebates
• Agreements that may be close to the initial or next highest rebate threshold, noting that with just X amount of additional spend all members utilizing the agreement could receive a rebate or higher threshold rebate
• Monitoring the members original forecast compared to the current forecast, points out the change in spend that has impacted our rebates this year due to COVID-19 related scope reductions during the year, or for example, increases in spend associated with our new MMC agreements

The data to date shows we do expect a fairly significant increase in our rebates for 2020.  I would like to personally thank the Plant Forecasters for embracing this new process and I look forward to seeing how we end up during the final rebate calculation in January.