$500K+
Recovered from an 8-vendor pilot
~$1B+
Procurement spend analyzed across brand partners
3TB+
Unstructured contracts, emails & spreadsheets reconciled
40
Variant types identified across the promotion lifecycle
Retail Operating Context
The Unclaimed Value Gap in Travel Retail
In travel retail, vendor value is created at the promotion but captured at settlement. And when these two points exist on different systems, the funding that was legitimately earned quietly goes unclaimed.
Global travel-retail & duty-free operator
Airport, border, and downtown stores across multiple regions.
~$1B+ procurement spend
Pilot analyzed across 8 vendors — beauty, liquor, tobacco, confectionery, and luxury brand partners.
High Volume Of
– Brand-funded promotions across concessions and store formats
– Vendor allowances, markdowns and promotional support
– High frequency of SKU and price changes across travel locations
– Multi-currency, multi-region point-of-sale transactions
Complex Environment Combining
– Promotion funding negotiated brand-by-brand, season-by-season
– Disparate promotion, POS and finance systems that don't reconcile end-to-end
– Decentralized concession ownership across airports and regions
– Funding terms living in emails and brand agreements, not systems
The Problem
How Discrepancies in Item Codes Created an Inadvertent Revenue Shortfall
Promotion funding and vendor allowances were negotiated with brand partners but never recouped for the loss that occurred between promotion inception, point of sale, and settlement. Travel retail operates on brand-funded promotions: a beauty house funds a gift with purchase, a liquor brand backs an airport activation, and a confectionery supplier sponsors a seasonal display. The funding is real, agreed upon, and material. However, it is negotiated through email and brand agreements, executed at thousands of points of sale, and settled weeks later in a finance system that has never seen the original promise.
Identical promotions were funded inconsistently across periods; sales were recorded, but payments were never collected. The data across promotion, POS, and vendor systems that could catch it never reconciled.
The same patterns recurred again and again in an 8-vendor pilot — a deliberately narrow slice of the market:
01
Identical promotions funded inconsistently
The same SKU, store set, and offer funded in one period, missed in the next.
02
Sales without funding
Promotions that ran and sold through, but whose vendor funding was never claimed.
03
Relaunch gaps
Promotions relaunched under new IDs while sales continued under the old, breaking the funding trail.
04
Unapproved promotions at POS
Offers reaching the register before funding agreements were confirmed.
Each system worked in isolation. What was missing was the layer connecting promotion intent to settled funding, and even across just 8 vendors, that gap held real money.
Uncovering Hidden Value Across the Promotion Lifecycle
By unifying promotion setups, point-of-sale execution, and vendor-funding commitments into a single view, clear and recurring value patterns emerged across the entire promotion lifecycle.
Primary Impact Scenario
Promotion Funding Mismatch
$300K+
single largest recovery source in the pilot
There were cases where identical promotions (same SKU, store set, offer) were run in consecutive periods, but the funding was applied to the promotion in one period and skipped in the next. Sales at POS were good, but brand-committed funds went unclaimed since there was no integrated view of the promotion and its funding source.
How The Leakage Occurred
– Inconsistent flags across the same promotional periods
– Active POS sales but no funding claims attached
– Agreed terms were in the email thread but not tied to the executed campaign
Total Value Recovered: $300K+ (represents the highest recovery source of the pilot)
Connecting The Dots: Unifying The Lifecycle
Full visibility was established across three critical layers:
Beyond this primary pattern, additional promotion-critical scenarios emerged:
$110K+ Recovered
Missed Vendor Funding on Relaunches
Campaigns were relaunched under new IDs while POS sales continued under legacy IDs, breaking the link between volume sold and vendor support.
$60K+ Recovered
Misattributed Promotional Units
Units sold under one promotional campaign were attributed to another, causing funding to be claimed incorrectly, or lost entirely.
$30K+ Recovered
Unapproved Promotions at POS
Promotional discounts hit the register before funding agreements were fully confirmed, running sales against unsecured vendor support.
Broader Patterns Across the Vendor Base Emerge: Within the larger vendor base, beyond the identified cases, a number of trends emerged that reflect similar issues:
› Markdown and Allowance Under-Collection
Brand-specific support markdowns for slow-to-sell items were not captured against final price reductions.
› Volume Discount Opportunities Lost
Volume thresholds were met in a given region or by a particular business unit, but were not aggregated across business units or regions, resulting in lost rebates.
› Price-Protection Shortfalls
Price reductions by suppliers were not captured on inventory in transit or on hand at the time of announcement.
› Invoicing Surcharge After Price List Reductions
Invoices were issued using higher prices after price list reductions were already in place.
› Gross to Net Cash Discount Capture Shortfalls
Cash discounts were captured on a net rather than gross basis, reducing overall discount capture.
Even within an 8-vendor pilot program, multiple variations of the issues above were discovered. Within a truly large vendor base spanning currencies, volumes, and travel-retail splits, these patterns would further proliferate.
How We Solved It
From Visibility to Impact
Discover Dollar did not start by looking for "errors." It started by restoring commercial context to retail financial execution.
Structured data (ERP+)
Unstructured data (3TB+)
Structured data What the systems already know: promotion setups, POS transactions, funding master records.
Unstructured data Where the real agreement lives: brand emails, promotion contracts, and funding amendments.
01
Commercial & Financial Data Ingested
Promotion setups, POS transactions, vendor funding agreements and settlements were securely connected across systems.
02
Commercial Context Extracted
NLP read brand emails and promotion agreements to identify what was actually promised, not just what posted at the register.
03
Intent Matched to Execution
Agreed promotion terms were matched against POS sell-through and vendor settlements to expose where funding never followed the sale.
04
Value-Impacting Mismatches Surfaced
Mismatches were prioritized by dollar impact, not transaction count, so teams focused on the recoveries that mattered.
05
Visibility Embedded as a Recurring Layer
Once validated, the signal became an ongoing layer, catching the next promotion cycle's leakage before it compounds.
Proof of Metrics
$500K+
Recovered
From a preliminary review of eight vendors
$380K+
Discovered (Additional)
Potential funding shortfall observed during analysis
8 vendors
Pilot scope
~$1B
Spend reviewed
40 types
Leakage patterns across the promotion lifecycle
Recovering millions was the quick win; building lasting resilience was the true transformation. With fundable items remapped and automated at the line level, manual chasing is replaced by automated billing leaving the leak closed for good.
One-Time Recovery. Continuous Protection.
Frequently Asked
FAQs
More than $500K recovered from an 8-vendor pilot, with the single largest source, a promotion funding mismatch, accounting for $300K+ on its own. A further $380K+ in additional funding shortfall was identified during the analysis.
The first recoveries surfaced within the 8-vendor pilot itself, identified directly from the operator's live promotion, POS, and vendor-funding data.
Because nothing looked broken. Promotions ran, sales recorded, and billings proceeded on schedule — but promotion, POS, and vendor-funding systems never reconciled with each other, so funding that was earned but never claimed simply fell out of view.
Ongoing. Visibility was embedded as a recurring layer connecting promotion intent to settled funding, so the same signal catches leakage as each new promotion cycle enters the system.
Existing procurement and retail data only: promotion setups, point-of-sale execution records, and vendor-funding agreements, connected securely with no disruption to existing systems.
About Discover Dollar
Discover Dollar helps enterprises identify and recover value in the source-to-pay and merchandise functions that even the most sophisticated systems miss, finding value where systems silently stop, not just where they error. Discover Dollar has saved $450 million for Fortune 500 partners by solving recovery-audit problems and turning one-time recovery into a permanent reconciliation layer inside the AP function.
Discover Dollar Inc USA · 600 N Broad Street, Suite 5 #3308, Middletown, Delaware 19709 · +1 (856) 379 1108
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