A Point to Consider.

“FREE” is widely considered the most powerful word when it comes to advertising. But offers that promise free goods or services are often restricted to a certain timeframe or offer something additional that customers wouldn’t necessarily want or need with the purchase.

But what if you could offer your customers the benefit of earning credits towards free goods that they DO want each time they make a purchase? And what if that offer simultaneously resulted in increased customer loyalty, increased sales, and increased customer satisfaction? Enter the Rewards Points program.

They have been around for years. Frequent Flyer miles were most likely the origin of this novel marketing tool. But the approach has been adapted to allow customers to earn everything from free gasoline to your Thanksgiving turkey. The points approach has become a staple for the credit and charge card industries, and they should know a thing or two about consumer buying habits.

But how can you incorporate a customer rewards points system into your SAP Business One system? It’s a lot easier than you might think. First, there are a few factors that you need to think about. Who will be eligible to earn and redeem points? Which items will generate points? (You may not want to add additional cost to clearance or low margin items). With the use of a single Business Partner Property and Item Property, you can manage this aspect of the system.

At several clients where we recently implemented a points system, a simple SQL view displays Pending Points (invoiced, not paid) and Available Points (paid invoices less applied points). With a User defined table, we added the ability to add manual points adjustments. And with Third Wave’s Advanced Productivity Pack, we added a summary of points information to the Business Partner window with a button that shows all Points transactions and validations that restrict how many points can be applied to an order. You can automatically calculate a Sales Order cash discount based on the amount of points being redeemed and the customers custom defined cash discount factor.

Not a whole lot of work to implement such a familiar and powerful marketing tool for your own SMB. “Points” may be giving “FREE” a run for it’s money!

-Steve Ovadia, Consultant