Laticrete Cuts Weeks of Manual Rebate Management to Seconds with Enable

The Company

Founded nearly 70 years ago, LATICRETE is a family-owned manufacturer specializing in tile and stone installation materials. The company’s product portfolio ranges from adhesives, grout, and waterproofing systems to adjacent categories like masonry installation and cleaning solutions. While LATICRETE has grown into a global brand, its focus remains on providing high-quality installation materials for tile and stone projects.

A Collaborative Finance-Sales Approach

At LATICRETE, rebate management sits firmly within finance, led by Karl Besescheck, VP of Finance. While Karl oversees manufacturing and broader financial operations, he plays a critical role in partnering with sales on rebate strategy.

“We left the administration side strictly in finance for a couple different reasons,” explained Karl. “Number one is the numbers, so it just makes sense. But number two, it takes some of the emotion away from the relationship that exists between sales and the customers. Finance is less emotional and very focused on the numbers, and that’s worked really well for us.”

This division of responsibilities allows LATICRETE to remain objective with rebates, while still fostering collaboration between finance and sales.

Rebates as a Long-Term Partnership Tool

For Karl and his team, rebates are more than just financial levers—they are a key to building lasting partnerships with distributors and retailers.

“I think rebates show your customers that you’re in it for a long-term relationship,” said Karl. “We try not to just focus on the transactional behavior of day-to-day business. Instead, we focus on encouraging growth and market share gain within our categories.”

Because the tile and stone industry in North America is a mature market with limited organic growth, LATICRETE uses rebate programs to help distributors capture market share. The company also enforces commitments to agreements, reinforcing accountability by reserving the right to withhold rebates if customers fail to pay invoices on time.

Annual Rewards Over Quarterly Payouts

When it comes to rebate payment schedules, LATICRETE takes a different approach than many competitors. While some large distributors expect quarterly payments, Karl and his team believe annual payouts create stronger alignment.

“We view the annual payment as much less transactional,” Karl explained. “It’s harder to tie the math directly to day-to-day purchases, and instead, it reinforces working together to hit bigger objectives. We think it’s much more meaningful to hand customers a large check at the end of the year versus four smaller ones.”

Driving Growth Through Innovative SPA Programs

LATICRETE also works with distributors that use special pricing agreements (SPAs)—a strategy that rewards growth within certain customer subsets. Historically, managing these programs was cumbersome in Excel. With Enable, the process has become much more efficient and collaborative.

“Enable helped us guide distributors to provide information in a more palatable way,” said Karl. “It’s definitely driven growth. If I look at distributors that offer SPA programs, they’re up 10 to 15% more than those that don’t.”

The Challenges

Annual Programs Created Bottlenecks

LATICRETE’s rebate programs are structured on an annual basis, which created major bottlenecks both at the beginning and end of each year. Program formation, documentation, and calculation all happened in concentrated bursts, placing an administrative strain on the finance team.

“The biggest thing is because the rebate programs are annual, all of the bookends—the formation of the programs and then the calculation—happen during one time of the year,” explained Karl. “It’s just such a bottleneck, and it’s manual. You’re creating Word documents, saving them as PDFs, manually typing in numbers, and making sure they get to the right people.”

This challenge was amplified at year-end. With the company closed between Christmas and New Year’s, the finance team returned in early January facing the daunting task of calculating 30–40 rebate programs all at once.

Complexity Increases with Growth

As the company scaled and added customers, managing rebates became increasingly complex and labor-intensive, particularly due to the demands of calendar-year run programs and the associated manual calculations and tracking. The team expressed frustration with spending too much time on non-value-add tasks rather than on activities that could drive strategic growth.

Limited Practice, Limited Improvement

Because rebates were only calculated once a year, the process never became more efficient.

“It’s not overly complex, but there are a lot of them,” said Karl. “And when you only do something once every 12 months, you never really get better at it.”

The result was significant opportunity cost—time spent on administrative work that could otherwise be focused on more value-added activities.

Key-Person Dependency

Rebate management was historically managed by a single individual at LATICRETE, creating a potential risk despite the process being well-documented for audits. While Karl noted that the team was “buttoned up” thanks to audit requirements, having rebates concentrated with one person was far from ideal.

“Even if someone else could step in and figure it out, you never really want something that important sitting with just one person,” Karl reflected.

The formation of new rebate plans could take as long as 45 days—from drafting documentation to securing approvals—leaving some customers waiting until late February to receive their programs for the new fiscal year. Now thanks to Enable this admin time has been cut by 90%.

An Administrative Burden, Not a Value Driver

Ultimately, LATICRETE’s rebate management became an administrative burden rather than a strategic enabler.

“These programs are important to us, but the way we were managing them was very administrative in nature,” Karl said. “We want to remove as many of those tasks as possible from a human.”

The Platform

A Partner, Not Just a Vendor

When evaluating solutions, LATICRETE was determined to avoid the common pitfall of investing in “shiny” software that looks promising upfront but doesn’t fit the business long term. With Enable, the experience was different.

“Enable took the time to understand us as a business and make sure that they were a good fit for us just as much as we were a good fit for them,” said Karl. “We’ve bought software before that looked nice, but by implementation we realized it wasn’t the right decision. With Enable, that was not the case.”

The company went through multiple demos and felt confident in both the product and the partnership from the very beginning.

Outstanding Support and Onboarding

For Karl, the onboarding and ongoing support have been a standout.

“The support and onboarding has been absolutely outstanding. I really don’t have another word for it,” Karl shared. “It almost feels like the Enable team are coworkers, not a consulting partner or software provider. That’s super important to me—and to my team.”

This collaborative relationship has helped LATICRETE roll out Enable smoothly across finance and sales, reinforcing cross-functional trust.

‍Ending Bottlenecks, Streamlining Processes

Enable has eliminated the bottlenecks that once slowed down rebate management.

“Enable has ended those bottlenecks. We can push a button and do a renewal. We can push a button and do a calculation or an accrual. It’s just so much faster.”

What once took weeks of manual work can now be completed in seconds. Renewals, calculations, and documentation are all streamlined and error-proofed, with professional, standardized outputs.

Faster Calculations and Payments

With rebates centralized in Enable, audits are more efficient and rebate calculations are completed significantly faster. Sales teams also benefit from greater autonomy, as they can now access rebate information directly without relying on finance for every question.

“It’s definitely given us the ability to pay significantly quicker by 4-8 weeks,” said Karl. “Instead of customers hounding us in February or March asking where their rebate is, we’re ready to go on January 5th. That makes it much more meaningful to the customer as well.”

Strengthening Finance and Sales Collaboration

Perhaps most importantly, Enable reinforces collaboration between finance and sales. Both functions now share ownership of rebate programs, ensuring alignment with commercial goals and financial strategy.

“Enable has helped support the continued collaboration between finance and sales,” Karl explained. “When we make a change to a program, leadership knows both parties have already done the math and had the strategic conversations. They trust it more because it’s not just finance or sales—it’s both.”

A Foundation for Strategic Growth

Beyond streamlining, LATICRETE sees Enable as a platform to evolve its rebate strategy. Karl has handed off day-to-day administration to newer team members, encouraging them to bring a fresh perspective and explore more innovative approaches to rebate programs.

“We’re now evolving as a business and trying to find things from adjacent industries that really work. Part of the reason I passed the torch to Lauren and Andrew is to remove my rigidness and old way of thinking. I look forward to this becoming a really big thing in the next couple of years.”

Karl Besescheck | VP, Finance

Takeaways

• What once took weeks of manual work (Word, Excel, PDFs) is now automated. Enable has ended year-end bottlenecks, accelerated calculations, and empowered sales with direct access to rebate information—leading to faster, more meaningful payments.
• By keeping rebate administration within finance, LATICRETE ensures objectivity and removes emotion from customer relationships—while still fostering close collaboration with sales on strategy.
• With streamlined processes, LATICRETE is moving beyond administration toward innovation. By involving newer team members and leveraging Enable’s capabilities, the company is exploring more creative rebate strategies to fuel long-term growth.

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‘While expanding might present challenges—such as existing distribution from competitors—Enable provides a framework that helps us analyze our programs, ensuring we're at least on an equal playing field. This way, we can avoid losing out on rebates, even if we're not the preferred vendor partner in those markets. Overall, this strategic approach allows us to navigate expansion thoughtfully and effectively.’

Brennan Hall Director of Duct Fab Supplies and Air Distribution Products

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‘Milner comments, “The support we've received from Enable has been exceptionally impressive. There were occasions when we required accelerated assistance and Enable was there to support us promptly. Their humble and adaptable approach, working at our pace during challenging times, was greatly appreciated. All in all, I couldn't have asked for more, and Enable's support has been truly fantastic.’

Alan Milner Commercial Director

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‘I picked Enable as it looked like a very elegant solution, and it certainly checked all the boxes against all the issues that we were having internally. And frankly, when I searched for rebate management software and asked around, there weren't too many players. Enable is the perfect niche solution.’

Ted Dometita CFO

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