Paper and Digital Benefit Summary

By March 1, 2021Whitepapers

Paper and Digital Real-Time Redemption Data, Reports, and Analytics

ICN’s system provides auditable UPC-level redemption information for both GS1 paper and digital down to the individual store level.

Paper and Digital Benefit Summary

Endless Opportunities for Real-Time Detailed Promotion Reporting and Analytics

A sample of the Lift Trend and Redemptions by Store reports are shown below.

Lift Trend

Paper and Digital Benefit Summary

ICN’s turn-key electronic clearing and settlement solution offers manufacturers the opportunity to eliminate the inefficiency, and dispute resolution time and expense associated with paper clearing and settlement.

  1. Eliminating Fraud: ICN tracks each promotion (digital or paper) at the retailers’ point of sale, ensuring that the correct manufacturer’s promoted products are purchased within the desired promotion period.
  2. Family Code Validation: ICN can effectively validate GS1 paper coupons at the family code level and digital coupons at the UPC level.
  3. Removing Deal Stacking: Since ICN clears both digital offers and paper coupons, ICN provides manufacturers with the ability, for the first time, to prevent multiple incentives from being redeemed when only one product is purchased.
  4. Tracking Redemption by Household: ICN reports usage by cardholder ID.  When the ICN direct-to-card capability for digital offers, or a unique serial number for paper coupons is used, the brand can get detailed redemption reports by household ID.
  5. Eliminates Disputes: ICN eliminates the handling and dispute resolution associated with paper coupons by validating at the POS.  The GS1 data is captured by the ICN Databridge software in real time
  6. Validating Expiration Dates: ICN reads the coupon’s expiration date and sends an ‘Expired Coupon’ code to the POS when a coupon is past the expiration date.
  7. Electronic Billing and Settlement: ICN’s electronic and ACS billing and settlement system using the captured realtime redemption data.  With electronic files and fully auditable documentation, all disputes are eliminated and the overall settlement process will be much more efficient.  And more …

ICN is an innovative software company that provides a turn-key electronic solution to, validate, clear, and settle GS1 Databar paper coupons at POS.

In addition, ICN can efficiently handle all of your digital incentive offers distributed through a variety of different media companies, and present you with “real time” redemption data for both paper and digital.

GS1 Databar Paper Coupons

For paper coupons, whether these come from Free-Standing Inserts (FSI’s) or Runn of Press (ROP), ICN utilizes the newly available data that is embedded within the GS1 Databar Codes in conjunction with data from actual purchases to validate, clear, and settle paper incentives.

Digital Coupons

Digital offers, whether these are delivered via the web, email, mobile devices, or in-store, including those that customers opt into through “Load to Loyalty Card” features are cleared electronically at the POS. Digital opt-in offers are pre-defined in ICN’s solution and upon receiving offer activations in real time, ICN awaits the scan of the customer’s loyalty card at checkout, and then validates offers against actual purchases in order to clear and settle these incentives. (No downloading and uploading of files to the POS)

How the Electronic Clearing, Validation, and Settlement Process Works:

ICN Process

ICN’s promotion management and clearing system connects directly to the
retailer’s point-of-sale (POS) system at the enterprise or headquarters level.
As the customer checks out, the following events occur:

  • Using the ICN POS interface, manufacturer UPC codes in the
    shopping basket are transmitted via the retailer’s wide area network (WAN) from the store to ICN’s servers.
  • During the check-out process, if the customer swipes a loyalty card, the ICN’s real-time application software determines whether the purchase of an individual UPC or group of UPCs meets the defined promotion criteria.
  • If so, ICN returns a Promotion Response message to the active transaction of the POS terminal containing the promoted item and the manufacturer or retailer coupon code. The customer simply needs to purchase the promoted items and look for the discount on the register receipt.
  • If the customer has paper coupons, those are scanned just as they are processed today. The ICN technology can read any of the data contained in the GS1 Databar and validate the family code, expiration date, and any other data points contained in the Databar. ICN even has the ability to report on the UPC level of purchases.
About ICN

ICN is a software-as-a-service company that provides retailers with patented, cloud-based promotion solutions. ICN’s paper coupon processing solution eliminates coupon fraud, validates coupon via cloud-based validation (inclusive of family code validation), coupon serialization, and e-clearing services of paper coupons. ICN’s promotion management solution provides retail marketing business teams with the power to run trade promotions, points programs, load to card digital coupon programs, and to clear/invoice manufacturers who participate in these promotional programs.

Media Contacts:

Rich Thibedeau
COO, ICN
860-517-9111
rthibedeau@icn-net.com