INDUSTRY
IT Services
LOCATION
USA
SERVICES
Software Solutions Provider
SITUATION
As a leading open-source software provider, the organization has always focused on enterprises’ cloud solutions. It has left them with minimal to no focus on developing an in-house tool for managing the incentive programs they run for their salesforce. The deployed solution became a legacy over time, resulting in significant challenges due to its inability to cope with ever-changing market dynamics. It increased the time needed to process incentives; additionally, there was no assurance on the accuracy side. This resulted in a dissatisfied salesforce that lacked motivation and an organization with high attrition rates.
PROBLEM
Catering to 5000+ sales representatives spread across the globe, with a complete Incentive Compensation (IC) life cycle. The client faced a significant workload in integrating, transforming, and validating the data needed for incentive calculation. This also led to a slowdown in rolling out incentive plans across roles. The probable causes of the high amount of workload were:
- There was a notable gap between the way data was gathered from multiple sources and what was expected to be loaded into the IC tool.
- Complex business processes meant reps were spending less time on sales activities leading to missing their quota and raising disputes for exceptions.
- Ineffective changes in management workflows with unnecessary manual approval caused delays in calculation rollouts.
- Manual testing of workflows and systems resulted in errors, causing stakeholders to have an unpleasant incentive experience.
- The IC tool required manual interventions to handle plan complexities but failed to adapt to their special processing requirements.
- The Sales Incentive team’s redundant workload affected productivity and limited their problem-solving mindset.
APPROACH
To understand the problems faced by the client, it was important to comprehend their business processes and get a glimpse into their teams and day-to-day operations. This allowed us to answer our Whys and Hows of the IC implementation from the client’s perspective. After experiencing how the Sales Incentive team handled the IC life cycle, we began with the identification of processes that could be automated. Introducing small case studies with automated data preparation processes allowed the client to experiment with such initiatives at a larger scale. Process Improvement and Task Automation Projects were made for multiple teams in the Sales Incentive Department:
- Integrations were established to fetch and publish transaction reports from SFDC (Salesforce CRM) for Sales reps around the globe.
- Automated the identification of changes specific to new hires, employment type changes, promotions, transfers in the system for appropriate incentive plan alignment, and designed & implemented weekly Workday reporting for leadership review.
- Worked on creating and optimizing credit mapping rules to reduce calculation time in the IC tool.
- Initialized a custom quota validation process that allowed stakeholders to collaborate on their findings.
- Created custom reports for global teams to help resolve disputes raised by sales reps by providing curated data points from multiple data sources in a single report.
- Configured analytics dashboards for H.O. for them to track Plan Deployment Status for reps across Sales Teams.
- Developed detailed reports using transactional data to aid in identifying and validating high-income earners.
- Designed and developed a performance assessment & plan effectiveness process to better understand efficiency in the Incentive Compensation cycle.
- Helped to develop reports for Ad-Hoc analysis with strict deadlines.
OUTCOME
The effectiveness of the IC cycle implementation was exceptionally improved. With the help of automation and enabling process improvement methods, the client experienced better Incentive Compensation cycles. Some key performance outcomes were:
- 3X faster turnaround time to prepare data for calculation cycles.
- Increased stakeholder engagement by delivering detailed reports and timely updates for specific situations.
- Management time was reduced by 75%, allowing for periodic payout calculation planning.
- Workload distribution among the Sales Incentive team was more equitable, enhancing productivity and enabling testing for a better IC experience.
- Efforts and time required to provide Ad-Hoc reports and analytics were reduced by 60%.
- Processed standardized reports for dispute resolution, reducing Tickets by 15% on average each month.
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