Maximizing Manufacturing Revenues with Rebates with Mark Wilham

Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. Our guest today is Mark Gilham. Mark is a rebate expert, director, and evangelist at Enable, a SAS solution for B2B rebate management used by manufacturers, distributors, and wholesalers across 50 states. Mark started his career at a major financial institution and progressed to senior finance roles in the construction industry, where he witnessed firsthand the strategic value of rebates. Mark, welcome to the show. Mark Gilham: Hi, Lisa. Thank you for having me on. Lisa Ryan: Please share a little about your background and what led you to be an evangelist for rebates. Mark Gilham: Sure. It's quite a job title. I started nearly a decade ago after moving out to the financial industry. And I went into the construction industry, where I went to an organization with hundreds of millions of pounds of rebates. And what they realized was they needed financial controls. So, for example, a bank would have to manage all this money because this rebate was multiple their profit. So I was brought in and worked with them for many years optimizing the administration side. And as we optimized that, we moved into how to enhance the management and laterally into how we add strategic value with our rebates and look at how they're used commercially.  And yeah, it's been, as I said, a big journey, and then more recently, I transitioned over to Enable. as you mentioned, they provide software that manages rebates. We were inclined to use Enable throughout this whole time. And what's been great is that they're coming over to help the industry rather than just the company I was working for. So for me, it's not about the software. This is more about how we strategically use rebates to add commercial value. Lisa Ryan: And when you're talking about rebates, I know in the past they have had a bad reputation where people have used them to either mask pricing or come up with these complicated schemes that made it almost impossible