SupplyPike Academy: CVS 

[00:00:00] Sam Goll: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our webinar about CVS deductions. Really excited to have a conversation about this. Let Parker Johnson speak a little bit and harvest some information from his brain and get it out to everyone. I will do a quick introduction here. I'm Sam Gall. I'm an account manager at SupplyPike and I'll let Parker introduce himself real quick. 
 

[00:00:34] Parker Johnson: Yeah. Hey everyone. I'm Parker. I'm our product manager here on the CVS side. all things kind of research and questions about. the retailer itself, the industry, and what our product can help solve. So happy to be joining today. 
 

[00:00:48] Sam Goll: Thank you, Parker.  
 

as we start just a little bit of housekeeping, SupplyPike is a platform that uses software to enable suppliers to work to identify, recover, and prevent. 
 

So the get better side. of dealing with different retailers. And so the retailer we'll be discussing today is obviously CVS. this is our newest retailer we are working to, recover dollars with. And, it's a very exciting area. We already have a lot of people stoked about it. And, there's a lot of opportunity. 
 

And so as we continue on, Parker is going to be doing the lion's share of the speaking, but if you have any questions, please use the question answer area at the bottom of your Zoom. I will ask Parker any questions that pop up and we'll, continue on. And then there is a Q and A section at the end of this presentation as well. 
 

[00:01:48] Parker Johnson: Awesome. Yeah, I'll kick us off with kind of deductions at CVS. We can all learn more together and identify the common problems here with this retailer. so just a baseline, revenue loss is our coin term for any kind of deduction or chargeback or you name it program that kind of takes away from the bottom line, comes in a variety of forms that all retailers, including CVS. 
 

And so some of those common ones are your deductions. Other areas include returns, where they're like commonly agreed upon stuff where you guys split the costs with CVS. In some cases, it seems like on like when goods expire or they're not selling very well, they lump them into a returns program. 
 

co ops are your other promotions you've already agreed upon. Profit recovery is the name of their program. We're post audits and going back and checking for, previous, previous deductions they didn't, or, outstanding kind of balances that they were expecting to collect on. 
 

And those can happen to at a monthly cadence and go back as far as three years ago. so they can really scope back far on those profit recovery area. And then of course, like most retailers, there is a compliance portion, whether that's OTIF or ASNs or stuff specific to the small parcel program within CDS. 
 

those are the pieces of that. We'll focus mostly on today and what our initial solution with SupplyPike helps with is deductions. so we'll yeah, you focus mostly on that there, but we'll dive in. more broadly, what are the deductions portion of CVS? And these are commonly called AP deductions or other retailers may be called shipping deductions. 
 

another name for them within CVS is just a general warehouse payable. So these would be any deductions that kind of incur from shipping to a DC before it reaches a CVS store. And so the, the five major types here that we see most commonly will be like allowance deductions, pricing related deductions, your shortages, and then case pack, which is a variation of a shortage in a sense. 
 

and then any kind of tail end of that would be, this kind of other bucket, which includes like cash discounts. Taxes or fees and so the majority and most common of these is shortages as you guys expect. but KSPAC can be, somewhat bundled into that shortage bucket as well, but they do have kind of separate processes, and, ability to dispute those separately within CVS. 
 

And so if you're curious to know, where you can find your deductions and you can actually find all forms of RevLoss in this kind of main portal, it's the AP Vendor Portal or the CVS Vendor Portal. There's not really a conclusive name there, but it is hosted by SAP. So if you guys are not registered to that. 
 

It does have decent visibility into kind of all these different charges. it has these kind of four sub apps. And so the invoices page would be where the majority of this tracking goes. where the payments tab, actually shows the kind of bulk payments being made to you as a supplier and the kind of sub, vendor credits that are within those payments as well. 
 

And so that's where you can track, your overall payments and the individual different types of revenue loss that we talked about at the start of this presentation. They're all available here, when you're looking at that. And then there is also a, a dispute management dashboard within this app. 
 

So if you guys do want to go ahead and dispute. You can dispute the warehouse payables, which we previously talked about. Everything else, though, has a different process, so we go back, and look at, our revenue loss at CVS. These main deductions we got, which we got highlighted in blue, those can all be disputed through this kind of AP vendor portal. 
 

Everything else is either done through email, or, compliance actually has a separate portal called Traverse, which, hosts, the majority of that compliance program and how to dispute those as well. Yeah, for the rest of these like returns, co op, profit recovery, there are specific emails you can use to reach out about those and there is a whole guide on identifying what each charge type is based on the invoice number and so in the example here within these, once you're drilled down within a payment, You would see sub vendor credits and those would tell you the invoice number. 
 

And by seeing what kind of characters are added to the invoice number, like sometimes there'll be a leading, like FSI or some kind of trailing W, X, V, or R on the invoice. Those kind of alphabetical characters used, will be able to help tell you, what type of deduction it was and how you categorize it in those different revenue loss buckets that we just were showing here previously on this page. 
 

[00:06:43] Sam Goll: Parker, we have a question on how you're going to be tracking shelf life charges as well.  
 

[00:06:50] Parker Johnson: our current solution does not track shelf life deductions, but I would expect one of those to probably fall into either the co op or return buckets that they have categorized. So we do, you can find those in this main SAP vendor portal and that'd be something we'd be interested in researching further, so those are common issues and potentially common and valid charges you want more visibility into. 
 

And we definitely would love to talk further. 
 

And just moving forward with the disputing process a little bit more that I was mentioning. within that payment tab, you can, track your overall payments and the kind of deductions being hit on each of those payments. The invoices tab also has just kind of individual transactions, not the overall payment level, but just one by one to view and look for opportunities to dispute. 
 

So if you are, looking for invalid fines and getting hit with high percentage of rev loss, CVS, we've noticed, does deduct one of the higher percentages compared to the other major retailers. we've seen about 20 percent of your, bottom line on average is taken away from these different types of revenue losses and deductions. 
 

And they only provide an avenue through this main app with that kind of one bucket of deductions or warehouse payables we've talked about. but the way you would go about that is you would find a vendor credit memo or just an invoice with a trailing W, X, or V. Those are going to be the ones that have, that are a warehouse payable deduction. 
 

And those can then be disputed in the Vendor Dispute Management Dashboard within this kind of main SAP or CVS Vendor Portal app. but you also may not know if you haven't had access to this portal before. You may be relying on your accounting team to let you know when a deduction hits your books. 
 

And, I would be wary about that because sometimes these deductions can sit in an open status. and never be transacted. And so that's what the power of kind of this invoices tab is. You can see these deductions while they're still in an open status. And so if you ever go into a negative balance of CVS, they stop just running transactions altogether. 
 

They won't, run the payments. They also won't run the deductions themselves. until you get back into that positive balance. So if you wanted to try and get ahead of that and dispute deductions while they're still in this open status, you can use that invoices tab to identify charges and dispute to that vendor dispute management dashboard within this kind of SAP vendor portal app ahead of time, try and get back to a positive amount. 
 

And so within SupplyPike, we're already integrated into this portal to be able to start tracking this data and also, help, solve with disputing and using shipping documents that are required, for each of those different charge types we talked about. We'll go back here, For each of these different deductions, there are different requirements on what is needed to dispute. 
 

So at the bare minimum, you do commonly want like a POD or a BOL or some kind of shipping document. There's also a second portal called ImageSilo, and that'll provide backup on the actual deduction invoice itself. So there's usually a record of the portion of the invoice that did have a deduction, and you can include that as kind of proof that you've identified the deduction and reviewed it and send it CDS's way. 
 

In some cases, they might ask for, invoices or even packing lists for some of these charges, like the case pack, they require a little bit more, to help get past that burden of proof that there was an invalid charge. And then for, allowances and pricing deductions, they do often want, an allowance agreement or a pricing agreement or any kind of communication you've had with CVS that kind of helps prove that those may be invalid or not. 
 

We're wrongly charged for those types of deductions. 
 

And yeah, we mentioned, what SupplyPike can help offer here. And so if you've, worked with us in the past or are familiar with what we do. we try and integrate with these retailer portals to provide, clean data and a friendly experience here. so we'll build you dashboards and a deduction list view and a management page to go through these deductions and determine if you wanted to go after them or not and try and pull in those documents to make that process easier versus having to go to three or four different places to get all the required information to submit a dispute. 
 

We try and, stitch together with multiple portals and also go into those carriers or other integrations to provide all the documentation needed to win a dispute. And so that's the goal here with SupplyPike and with our recently launched CGS solution. we're doing the same thing we've been doing with other retailers and just trying to help out and saving time with, submitting those disputes in the first place. 
 

Yeah, if there's any additional questions about kind of CDS deductions and a breakdown of, what they are, how they fall into those different revenue loss buckets, how you can identify them better, we are all ears for the live Q& A here. 
 

[00:12:10] Sam Goll: Does the dashboard include ODIP? or compliance aspects?

[00:12:15] Parker Johnson: Yeah, that's a good question. our current solution is only supporting those main deductions we talked about, which, you can be disputed through that main SAP vendor portal, but we have seen a lot of traction with compliance at CVS and how it's, they do email you weekly and they're keeping you updated on your OTIF goals. 
 

And so that would be definitely a big, value add for us to look to include. So if you'd be interested in, helping with the research on the compliance side, we definitely would love to start to include. OTIF metrics and other kind of performance guidelines and even potential help with this feuding on the OTIF side as well, with our, as we continue to enhance this solution. 
 

So the short answer, no, don't currently have it in there, but, we can at least identify those charges and start to build a game plan around helping for those types of deductions as well. 
 

Awesome. if there aren't any other questions, want to give a shout out to SupplierWiki. They're our in house kind of content team, building resources around all the major retailers, including CVS now too. So you can check out their website for more information. We have started at least, build some resources around OTIF. 
 

So though we can't fully support that yet. I know it's been asked, if we can support OTIF, we do have some resources starting to build out. based on just some general industry expertise and reading through their documentation and dealing with other retailers. We started to build a map around how we think, you could start to frame your mind around the OTIF program or other types of charges too, as well. 
 

And then once again, this is, me and Sam's, contact info, or you can also find us just at SupplyPike. com. we're always open to talk and learn more, with CVS being freshly launched, we're happy to be able to support kind of those main deductions we've talked about today, but as we continue to expand, if you want to be a research partner and help us look to continue to, add more to our solution and make it, as best as it can be towards what your requirements are, feel free to let us know.  
 

[00:14:34] Sam Goll: Parker, before we wrap up, we do have a question. And if any other questions come in, please feel free to send them. will we be releasing a CVS ebook? And if so, do you have a ballpark timeline?  
 

[00:14:48] Parker Johnson: Yeah, I don't know off the top of my head what the timeline is for that, but I do know we have plans to build a full ebook around that. 
 

There's a plenty of documentation at CVS for us to go through, and, build a guide for suppliers. So I definitely would say stay tuned for that. and keep in touch on our SupplierWiki webpage for those resources as they come out, or you can sign up for the newsletter too as well and get updates. 
 

[00:15:14] Sam Goll: Thank you, Parker. yeah, but if there's any other further questions, please feel free to reach out to Parker or myself or anyone at SupplyPike. We will get you to the right people with the right answers. As Parker said, we're very excited about CVS. There's a lot of areas we are helping with at this time, and a lot more areas we're going to be helping with. 
 

excited to work with you all and continue to grow in advance.