Dealer scheme visibility: state the next target, do not make the dealer guess

Each scheme in a circular is clear enough alone. The difficulty is that they are written separately and counted on different things. A volume slab counts total tonnes or units. A growth scheme counts the same purchases against last year's figure for that dealer. A product-mix scheme counts only the premium range. A consistency bonus counts whether a minimum was met in each month of the quarter. The scheme engine can hold all of these, and Unotag configures sixteen scheme kinds, but the dealer has to hold them in his head.

Each scheme has its own threshold, and the thresholds do not line up. So the dealer's real question, "how much more should I buy this month", has an answer that no single scheme states. The sales officer usually answers from memory, for the one scheme he was told to push. The dealer buys to that, and misses a second threshold that sat a few units further on.

The usual response is a calculator: enter a quantity, see the payout. It is useful and should be there. But a calculator answers only the question the dealer thinks to ask. He types 480, sees a figure, types 500, sees a bigger one, and has no way of knowing that 484 was the point at which a growth scheme opened, or that fifteen of those units had to be from the premium range to open another. He is searching in the dark for cliffs that the system already knows the position of.

The engine has every threshold for this dealer in configuration and every invoice counted so far. It can work out the points where something changes and say so. The app should therefore state the next target and the two after it, across all schemes, and keep the calculator for exploring beyond them. On Unotag the partner app shows next targets, a calculator, and the invoices counted per scheme.

The second piece of visibility is grouping. A flat list of schemes with a progress bar each makes the dealer read every one. Splitting the list in two is easier on the eye and on the decision:

• Earning now. Schemes where the dealer has crossed the entry condition and is accruing, with the current rate and amount. These are settled questions; the only thing to show is the next slab.
• Not yet qualified. Schemes that apply to the dealer but have paid nothing so far, each with the gap to entry in plain words: "24 tonnes more" or "15 tonnes of premium grade more". These are where the decision lies.

A dealer reading the second group sees at a glance what is within reach and what is not worth chasing this month. Schemes that do not apply to him at all should not appear in either group.

A next-target figure is only as believable as the progress figure beneath it. If the dealer thinks he has bought 475 and the app says 460, he will not act on "24 more". Under each scheme, the app should list the invoices that were counted, with date, product, quantity and value, and mark any invoice that was excluded with the reason: outside the period, product not in the scheme, billed to a different dealer code, a return. Most disagreements turn out to be an invoice in transit or a purchase billed under an old code, and both are quick to resolve when they can be seen. Clubbing old and new dealer codes in the master removes the second kind altogether. How invoices arrive is covered in ERP integration with SAP and Tally.

The following is an illustrative example with invented figures, built to show the mechanics. A cement dealer has bought 460 tonnes by the 24th of the month, of which 85 tonnes are premium grade. Four schemes apply to him:

At 460 tonnes the dealer is earning ₹18,400, or ₹40 a tonne, from one scheme out of four. Asked what to do next, most dealers would say "reach 500 for the next slab". That is right but incomplete: it does not tell him that the mix of those 40 tonnes matters. The app's next-target list would read:

Adding 40 tonnes, under 9 percent more than he has already bought, takes the dealer from one scheme to four and from ₹18,400 to ₹57,500. The extra ₹39,100 works out to ₹977.50 for each of the 40 additional tonnes, and his earning across the whole month rises from ₹40 to ₹115 a tonne. If the 40 tonnes contain no premium grade, scheme C stays shut and the total is ₹52,500, which is ₹5,000 less for the same quantity. That one line, "15 of them premium", is the kind of detail a dealer trying numbers in a calculator would not find.

The following target, 750 tonnes for the ₹80 slab, is 250 tonnes away. The app should show it as out of the short list or mark it as distant, so the dealer is not encouraged to over-stock. The QPS guide works through the dealer's break-even on holding extra stock.

The behavioural effect concentrates at the end of the period. A dealer who can see that he is 40 tonnes from a point where four things open at once has a concrete reason to place one more order, and a concrete size for it. Without the figure, the last-week conversation is the sales officer asking for "some more billing" and the dealer asking what is in it for him, and neither knows precisely. With it, the order is specific, the dealer can check the result in the calculator, and the officer is carrying the dealer's own numbers and not a request.

It also changes which dealers the field team visits. A list of dealers within a short distance of a target is a better call plan for the 25th than a list sorted by size. And it works in the other direction: a dealer far from every target can see that too and will not be pressed into stock he cannot sell. The partner can ask for the explanation in his own language, or by voice, which matters when the owner is not the one who reads circulars. The scheme communication plan covers the messages that go with this.

It would be dishonest to present this as costless. Making thresholds visible makes dealers better at reaching them, so more dealers will qualify than under a scheme nobody understood. If the scheme was budgeted on the assumption that a share of dealers would miss out through confusion, the cost will rise. Visibility also sharpens end-of-period loading where slabs pay retroactively on all units, as scheme A does here. Both are properties of the scheme, not of the app. The answers are to project the cost on real purchase history before the scheme is saved, which Unotag does at configuration, and to look at whether a marginal slab or a cap would serve better. Incentive slab design compares retroactive and marginal payout, and the slab designer helps place thresholds. A scheme that only works when dealers cannot read it is not one to keep.

Earnings shown in this much detail are also sensitive. They should sit behind a tap, not on the home screen, for the reasons given in the channel partner incentive app guide.