Incentive, recognition and loyalty companies can realize significant cost and time savings by partnering or licensing with a “Reward Solutions Provider”.

Here is our “Top 10 Checklist” of what a Global Rewards Solutions Provider should consider when choosing a Global Rewards Technology to support a Global Rewards Program.

1. Reward Selection: Start with the fact that you no longer need to source, select and aggregate data from many suppliers, with RMS you get one central data feed that includes every major reward category and all invoicing is centralized and paid on-line. Finally paperless accounting!

2. Global Catalogues: Few solution providers get beyond their own border but there is a growing number of Global Reward Solutions that offer a fully built out global solution. Reward delivery on a global scale through one simple API connection…now that Rewards on Demand!

3. Catalogue Management: Most Reward Management Solutions include robust catalogue management tools enabling your account team set up, filter and design client specific reward catalogues.

4. Automated Updates: Possibly the most important feature of a good RMS is the ability to automatically update all reward data but you must look for a RMS solution that offers daily and even real time data updates which ensures your clients are viewing the latest and most accurate reward selection; this feature will dramatically reduce out of stocks.

5. Order Tracking: Your RMS provider must provide you with a robust order management dashboard enabling your Customer Service team to track and verify all orders including courier tracking ID numbers.

6. Translations: Again, good RMS’s provide all data in the language of the host country, for countries like Canada and even across Europe you may need multiple languages for a single country. This is often a deal breaker for most providers since this requires specialized applications to manage dialects such as Russian and many Asian languages.

7. What’s New! Nothing stays the same and this is very true within reward management. One example of this is streaming media which will very soon replace the need for I-pods and MP3’s altogether – all you need is an account and you can build your very own radio station. Your reward provider had better be developing a constant flow of new reward delivery options as well as new sources that provide higher service levels and value.

8. SaaS White Labelled Solution: You should make sure your provider offers a SaaS solution that is fully white labelled; fully data API’s also allow your company to add your own reward display design ensuring a higher degree of personalization over i-frame solutions which are static and cannot be customized.

9. Customer Service Team: Your reward partner will also prove Tier 2 customer service support which is a dedicated team who trouble-shoot any order escalations. This is vital service and this team will be your one-stop-shop when escalations occur; be sure to ask for their Service Level Agreements.

10. Global Currency Management: When you evaluate your provider you must make sure they can also calibrate your points based on each country’s currency; this must be done on a daily basis as most currencies fluctuate daily and several countries like Venezuela have 25%+ inflation rates. Products and services that are bought locally one day are then sold to you by your provider who will convert the reward cost to your local currency and then you will in term convert this displayed your cost based on your point calculation. Your solution provider must be able to convert all costs globally to a single often US dollar equivalent and update these costs everyday!