Aaron Conant  0:18  

Happy Wednesday, everybody, my name is Aaron Conant, I'm the co founder and managing director here at BWG Connect. We're a networking and knowledge sharing group with 1000s of brands to do exactly that we network in knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it is shaping digital. We're fully focused on you know, helping brands figure those things out. And so we do that in a variety of ways. A lot of one on one conversations, I talk with 20 to 30 brands a week to stay on top of those trends also help a lot of people out with digital strategy as a whole that startup the fortune 100. Now, don't hesitate anybody to reach out always love a great conversation. The other one is just events, which are virtual, a lot of them like this. But we also do, we're going to do close to 100 in person small format dinners, and a few full day events in New York City would love to have anybody join any of those. The last one is, we've kicked off a podcast and we podcast and we can drop a link there in the chat to it but just taking the digital leaders that we've come across over the past five years, and just giving them an opportunity and a 30 minute segment to kind of explain what's going on from their point of view. So as we kicked us off a couple of housekeeping items. Number one, we want this to be as educational informational as possible. So at any point in time you have any questions, drop them to the chat, drop them into the q&a, or email them to me, Aaron Aaron@BWGconnect.com. And the other thing is, we're gonna try to wrap up at least a minute early to give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. But with that, the idea of recovering chargebacks Groots back to you know, kind of this underlying theme that is popped up over the past year and a half is making Amazon less margin dilutive. And just have a lot of as companies have seen their Amazon business explode. Even people that didn't think they had a problem in this space, it's now you know, the red flags are going up on their finance team. And so we got some great friends partner supporters, the network over a DimeTyd. And I just had a ton of brands reaching out saying, hey, this thing is amazing. This product is amazing. And so we just had a great relationship now with Rohan in the team over there around you know, help solving this issue and a ton of other aspects of the product as well. But here to answer as many questions we can throw at him today. But Rohan, if you want to jump in, brief intro on yourself and DimeTyd, we can kick it over to Tim for an intro on himself. And then we'll jump into the conversation sound good?

Rohan Thambrahalli  2:48  

Yep. Perfect. Thanks. Thanks, Aaron. I appreciate you having us on again. My name is Rohan Thambrahalli, I'm the founder of DimeTyd. Which is which is ultimately fin ops platform fully automated finance than ups and UPS platform finance operation platform for one P vendors. And, you know, for us, when we think about fin ops, we really think about we don't first as as Aaron mentioned, how do we help vendors, you know, recover, you know, recover fees that were where you've been overbilled and underpaid? Second, you know, identify leakages, profitability, leakages that might be happening. Third, you know, fully automate and operationalize this dispute and chargeback process for vendors. And lastly, really deliver efficiencies within your Amazon business and really give you a data and and the ability to look at your Amazon business purely from a finance and operations standpoint. So happy to be here again, and excited to to do to have this conversation. 

Aaron Conant  4:16  

Yeah, Tim, we're gonna kick it over to you. 

Tim LeBeau  4:18  

Hi, great. Thank you so much, Aaron, for organizing this. My name is Tim LeBeau. I'm the president CEO of a pretty massive automotive parts and distribution business. Based in Southern California, we do roughly 20,000 skews and we do about 5000 SKUs on Amazon. So from my perspective I am on on this call is as you can imagine that many skews and you can imagine the amount of POS and volume we do on Amazon. We had a massive issue with like Rohan's word of profit leakage. I think that really sums it up. Um, you know as you do the walk from, you know, sales to gross to net then you have have all these other discounts that are taken by Amazon that are just way too hard to get. So kind of my perspective on this call is is the actual consumer of this of this software. And hopefully, I could give some insight on to how it's impacted our business and how we built improved profitability from using the service.

Aaron Conant  5:22  

Yeah, so quick reminder, if anybody has any questions at all, drop them in the chat or the q&a, and we can get them answered. I think one of the top one is, you know, one of the most common types of chargebacks that go undetected, right, and the term Amazon chargebacks is just, I think, loosely thrown around to cover every all the unrecovered money from Amazon. Right. And so there's a variety of different chargebacks that are out there, or fines or fees. You want to kind of walk through just a little bit around what those are, and then what are the most common ones that are missed?

Rohan Thambrahalli  5:59  

Yeah, and that's a great point, Aaron, you know, I would go as far as saying that when when we use the term chargeback. You know, immediately people are thinking about operational chargebacks, right? P on time delivery carton, continent, all of those operational chargebacks they are important, and there, they get a lot of attention. But, but, you know, they make up overall a very, very small percent of the profit leakage. Where we see the biggest profit leakage happened for for for Amazon vendors is in, in in short pace, where, where Amazon is, you know, paying, you know, short paying them. And then And then lastly, in over billings, where Amazon is over billing their vendors across hundreds of different instances. So when we think about, you know, chargeback we, you know, we like to actually use the word deductions, because then we can say, chargebacks, you know, under deductions, you have operational chargebacks, you have short pains, and over billing.

Aaron Conant  7:16  

In, you know, Tim, I'll kick it over to you like, the, why is that kind of like, hold true, where you found it? And what was the, what was that kind of that breakdown? And were you aware of it ahead of time? Because and then how do you? How do people explain it to their executive team? Because, yeah, you know, it's this weird time where you, you, you say, Hey, I think I've got all this unrecovered money in the finance team says, no, no, no, we got it. Got it. And you're like, I'm not sure if he got it or not? Because it's not here.

Tim LeBeau  7:49  

Yeah, so I mean, my, my experience is, you kind of hit on a lot of interesting points. So first of all, no one wants to admit, like, Hey, I didn't catch all of our deductions, right. So it's kind of a hard thing to admit that there's more money out there that I can recover that I have no idea how to do it. But in reality of it, you know, a lot of this was kind of it was we do, you know, we could do 3000 invoices, pos with Amazon a week, and sometimes more, right. And my issue with with is the deductions or the short pays, or whatever it is, could be anything from, you know, 75 cents to $4, or whatever it is, right? So when I look at it in the individual, invoice by invoice level, it doesn't make sense for me to hire a bunch of people to spend a lot of time going after it's currently playing a game of Whack a Mole, right? Like you never catch up, where my deductions, you know, could be, you know, twice as much of what I had to pay on salary to hire people to go get him. So that's not a really great use of, you know, resources for me is I'm constantly resource complaint, so constrained. But if you look at the aggregate of how much if you add all these things together, right, if if it's $10 per invoice times, 3000 invoices a week, suddenly, that's super important to me. And suddenly, that's like, Okay, now we have a big issue. So that's why I kind of, you know, when working with Rohan and his team, saying, you know, none of these things on an individual level is important is significant. They're all important, significant. But wow, if I take a step back and take a look at this, this is really important. And then the other thing that I also have been able to do from as a business leader is taking the data that I get from this, and using it, you know, in a in a Six Sigma process to go look at, hey, what are the root causes of our deductions? And how can we as a company put processes in place that actually will prevent the deductions on a go forward basis? So it's two part one is Yeah, can I get the money back and that was awesome, but to take the knowledge that I get From this data and apply the learnings to my business processes, and help my company just continue to sit, stay profitable moving forward. Yeah, awesome. Well,

Aaron Conant  10:10  

you know, and Sarah and like, why, why do you see that these deductions go unnoticed? Right. Like, I don't necessarily know if they're hidden, nor maybe they are. Love to hear your thoughts there.

Rohan Thambrahalli  10:25  

Yeah, you know, I would say buried is probably the right, right word. They're not necessarily hidden. Right. They're definitely buried. And, and I think I think, you know, what, to two big, two things that I like to speak about first, is that, that this is not because somebody's not doing their job. It's is, it's primarily because the opportunity cost, right, of, of actually going through this stuff manually. In Tim's example, you know, if it's, if it's $3, you know, per invoice is, is the opportunity cost worth it right. And in for for us, what we've done is, is that we've automated this entire process, right, so now, even if it is $1, per invoice, and over the last five years, you've had, you know, 500,000 invoices, that's $500,000, right? That we can, we can identify and recoup and do this whole process from start to finish on a platform that's fully automated, without any resources requiring on the customer side, that all of a sudden becomes very, very powerful. So a quick question

Aaron Conant  11:51  

comes in is, do you? Who's the ultimate user of the platform? Is it the finance team or the EECOM? Team?

Rohan Thambrahalli  12:01  

We start with the E comm team, and very quickly become best friends with the finance team. Right? Because because they are on on the other end, you know, spending, you know, hours manually trying to, you know, identify or do cash application or what have you. Which, again, you know, our platform does fully automated manner.

Aaron Conant  12:27  

Awesome, awesome. So it's not necessarily an individual brand can take a look at this. And they can kind of probably do an analysis SKU by SKU number of POS by POS, the process is doable manually, but it just becomes, you know, how much of the resources as you grow? Right, in the course case of, you know, 5000 skews? Is it worth the effort or not?

Rohan Thambrahalli  12:49  

Yeah, and the other thing is, you know, we're, you know, we continue to identify new ways, or new instances where, you know, these deductions are happening, right. So, thus far, you know, outside of just operational chargebacks, we've identified close to 110 different instances now, right. And, in, you know, Amazon's system is so complex, and it's so automated, that, you know, pretty much every week, we were looking at the data and we see a new deduction that we've never seen. And we have to then, you know, write logics for that one specific instance, you know, no matter how small it might be. But, you know, again, our goal is to make sure that we have logics built onto the platform, for every instance, where profit leakage is happening, regardless of how small it is. So that's, that's the other things and then the calculation that needs to happen to, to, to come to the monies owed, and have the supporting data to be able to validate that yes, you know, the money is in fact owed. So, so that's for us is, is kind of what we live and breathe every day. Actually, we kind of get excited when we see a new one. So it's another one we need, we need to read logic for

Aaron Conant  14:15  

now. It's just funny how you know digital, you know, you think back five years ago, even on Amazon, you could do a lot of this stuff manually, you know, even uploading, you know, new items set up forums could be done manually. Now, it really helps to have a syndication tool. Paid media on Amazon, you can't do without technology. Now chargebacks has become so sophisticated and so like you're saying buried in the technology. You know, Tim, okay, what are you what was your biggest pain point? Like? I can tell you mine was doing when they asked for proof of delivery. Oh, yeah. And they don't require signature and I can show you it leaving my dogs. I can show you where we add a signature. I'd pick up but you don't require signature. So I don't have the proof of delivery. But I love to hear

Tim LeBeau  15:08  

my biggest pain point is, is the size of the deductions per deduction was so small, but the aggregate was so large. So I kind of joke with Rohan a little bit on this on the stat, you know, as a business leader, I'm always it's like I'm running a marathon, right? I'm always looking at the goal, I have so many other things to look at this, that the other thing, but if you think about it, if you're running a marathon, which business leaders are doing, and you have, you're running next to dimes on the road, right, there's a bunch of dimes lined up on the road, you stop and pick up each time you run, by the way, or do you focus on the end of the race the marathon. And if you stack dimes next to each other on the way on a marathon, you'll find 2.3 million dimes, which is $235,000, roughly, that you run past on your way to the marathon. And I think that's exactly what DimeTyd's software is. It's all the times you've run by while you're running the marathon of your business, that you just don't have the time or the wherewithal to stop and pick them up. So the service that Rohan provides and DimeTyd provides is the ability to automatically go back and pick those up and at the end of your race, you have an additional $235,000 that you didn't have otherwise. Right? Yeah, because we're focused on everyone who he deals with is focused on a task, the tasks that you cannot stop and pick up each one of these times along the way, irrational never finished the task at hand. So that was my biggest issue that I had on this is you see the money right in front of you, but you don't have the wherewithal or the resources to pick it up. And with the DimeTyd software, you know, it's it's products that are really automated, so I don't have to do all this heavy lifting. And it's to me, it's been a godsend.

Aaron Conant  16:55  

Yeah, I love it. I agree. I think, you know, my biggest thing I should say, just from a business standpoint was, I don't know my profitability. Yeah. Right. Because I don't know where they're taking it for what and how much you're supposed to get back how much you're able to get back. Right. And, and then the flip side, my finance team, they hated Amazon, right? They hated it. And it always sat off to the side. And I was that was on vendor Central. So they always hated it. And there was always stacks and stacks of paper. And I had, you know, a rolling, you know, six figures of chargebacks that I was trying to figure out, you know, Rohan what's the biggest pain point that you hear from brands on on your side?

Rohan Thambrahalli  17:41  

You know, there's kind of three buckets that that we what we hear from our, from our customers. First one, of course, you know, we know we love kind of doing a look back. So when we onboard a customer, we love kind of going back, you know, five years for over billing three years, 444 shortages, and we don't look back. And in every case, we've been able to identify dollars that were left on the table. So immediately right off the bat, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a value we can provide to the customer. So, first thing is like, Wow, we had no idea there's there were all these pennies there, right? And we go, we go to Tim's analogy, we go kind of historically go back and accumulate all these pennies, and, and oftentimes, it's meaningful dollars. Second is, you know, this spin UPS piece of the function for naps is is, is 100% manual, right? There is no ERP system out there or any other system that that is helping brands automate this entire fun ops function as when dealing with with Amazon. So, that's a pain point we hear all the time, you know, you know, you've got brands that are that have, you know, anywhere from, you know, two to eight FTEs is sort of dedicated to managing this function, depending on how big they are. And then lastly, you know, the sheer volume of data, right? Being able to look at the data, analyze the data, and then pull out actionable information from the data is super, super difficult and cumbersome. And so that is kind of where we're constantly looking to see how we can simplify and automate all of these things.

Aaron Conant  19:56  

So quick question. It's a very basic one. So how do you make money Any, you taking a percentage? And as another one that comes? In what rate? Would you expect to recover disputed dollars for short pays related to shortage and price claims? So two different ones there. Yep. Yeah. Then another one, just Just what is implementation time on the platform? You don't want to take three months to plug in. Right? So three different questions. Yeah, that's right. You know, take array, and, you know, a lot to get up and running.

Rohan Thambrahalli  20:36  

Yeah. All great questions, I'll answer the easiest one first, implementation, super simple. We don't need, we don't need access to any ERP warehouse management system or any other system, we just need contributor level access to vendor Central. And, and that's all we that's all we need. For us to kind of do an initial analysis, look back, it'll take seven to 10 business days. And then we'll we'll be we'll share the findings. Secondly, how we make money, we kind of look at it in two different phases. Phase one is 100% of time, we want to go back and do a do a do a look back, because not only it shows the power of the platform, but more importantly, identifies where the leakages are happening, profit linkages are happening based on historical data. So for the first historical look back, our fees is 100%. Success based, there's no there's no retainer, there's no upfront cost, we take a percentage of whatever we're able to recoup. And then on a go forward basis, it's a subscription model. Based on based on what types of different modules the customer is, is wanting to use on a go forward basis. And last, but third one was, what is our what is our what is our success rate? When we look at our success rate, as I mentioned, when we you know, we bet three different buckets, right, so for operational chargebacks. For the for the operational chargebacks, that we're able to dispute because because because there are operational chargebacks that are being incurred, that are justified, right, so those those chargebacks obviously, those are not disputable, the ones that are that are that are disputable, you know, our success rate is in the 90s. On the operational chargebacks. In shortages, when we do the historical look back on shortages, our success rate is between 60 to 70% on shortages, because we're looking going back three years, right. And on a on a go forward basis, it's in the 80s. Because we're we are chewing them up on a go forward basis constantly. So we have a higher success rate. On overbilling. Our success rate is, you know, north of 93%.

Aaron Conant  23:19  

Awesome. And then there was another question that came in this. And so this in particular is for one PL me, right? And,

Rohan Thambrahalli  23:26  

yes, our platform is for one payment or solely.

Aaron Conant  23:31  

Awesome. So we got it just a couple minutes later, there are no other questions that people want to drop into the chat or the q&a. More than happy to get those answered. But Tim will kind of kick it over to you like key takeaways for people and then I'll jump over to Rohan. And then I just said a couple people asked about the podcast. In that I'll put a link in there. It is just this will be to a single podcast, but you can just subscribe going forward where we talk to other industry leaders. But the key takeaway here, yes,

Tim LeBeau  24:01  

so you know, there's a couple things here that you know, I'm listening to I'm kind of going back at my journey with DimeTyd. You know, the first one the most impactful one to me, was the audit of my history, got a ton of data, got me money back right away. And that took about 10 days roughly to go through that whole process. So super quick. But the thing that's really helped me going forward is an ongoing ability to profitably run my or increase my profitability and my business to Amazon. And you know, the font the the financial ops part of it is super important. Just a cash application part is super important and it's made me a lot smarter of a business leader. And it's made me ability to kind of more properly manage my Amazon business where a lot of the stuff I was doing in the past are doing somewhat blind you know, all businesses good business right type of thing. Now a lot smarter and I'm able to grow my business a lot more profitably.

Aaron Conant  24:03  

Awesome, we're like at Digital two point now you have to operate at the next level,

Tim LeBeau  24:38  

right time for digital 1.0 is all businesses good business, right? So, so it's helped me kind of manage into that 2.0 sphere.

Aaron Conant  25:23  

So really quick, do we actually learn how to dispute chargebacks, or any extra insight or strategies that have worked around disputing chargebacks and then Rohan, if you want to wrap us up with key takeaways, and then more than happy to connect you with Rohan or tea? Or Tim? Like, they're cool, just jumping on the phone and kind of lending, you know, industry knowledge as a whole?

Rohan Thambrahalli  25:43  

Yeah, you know, the kind of the, the, the truth of tricks of disputing? Yeah, it's, it's, it's really all about making sure that you're staying staying on top of these, on top of these disputes, and also how, you know, how you guys have vendors, Format Data, is also critically important. You know, you know, we've got several folks on the team that have been sort of involved in the, in the finops, piece of the business at Amazon, and over the years, we've obviously build SOS come up. So those key things onto the platform. But, you know, our recommendation always is, is to, to do have a very forensic mindset, when you're looking at your, your, your your deductions, and then diving as deep as you can into into the data. You know, so that would be the kind of the biggest takeaway there. And lastly, you know, to sort of wrap this wrap this thing up, you know, what we're seeing today, even even even six months ago, major emphasis on not necessarily, you know, driving top line, per se, but major emphasis on really focused driving profitability. And our focus on that end is to really make sure that we're giving the tools and the data and the levers for businesses to be able to really look at their business, from a financial standpoint, because we strongly believe that unless that is 100%, control, the top line will, will be there, but the profitability will continue to suffer.

Aaron Conant  27:56  

Yeah, and I, we're gonna have to wrap it up here. But I just want to touch on one point, which I think is why you guys came highly recommended was, it's not just the idea that you're gonna go in and do this on a routine basis, but you actually have a platform that the teams can use on a regular basis. And to take a look at profitability. It's not just you're handing it over, they run off, do their thing, come back and dump it back over to you. It's actually a tool that you can use to manage it includes profitability. And so with that as the axis of the team on what's working and what's not. And so we have to wrap it up here, just because we're a couple minutes over, but I would encourage everybody line is it's worth setting up just having them do an audit, seeing how much money is out there. And whether it's this low, and you're doing a fantastic job, or if it's really high, and it's worth doing it internally or, or using a software platform that's out there like DimeTyd. But again, they're not just taking it and running away with it. It's a platform that you get to use. So with that, Tim, thanks so much for your time today. Rohan Again, thanks so much for being such a great brand partner supporter, just so many brands, the network, really appreciate you jumping on. And with that, we're going to wrap it up. Again, thanks, everybody who doubted and thanks for the great questions. Look for a follow up email from us. We'd love to have a conversation with you and encourage everybody you know, set a follow up time with Rohan team at DimeTyd to have them do an audit and that they're ready take care of stay safe look forward to having you at a future event. Alright, thanks again, everybody.

Rohan Thambrahalli  29:19  

Thank you.