Business to Business
Our client, a leading player in the telecommunications industry, presented us with a complex commission payment situation.
Our client’s key concerns were:
• the cost of managing the sales incentive process
• obtaining accurate data and therefore paying incentives accurately
• keeping the sales force motivated by paying them accurately and on time.
Their situation involved:
• 400 sales people who frequently moved and changed, with additional sales people regularly joining the team
• multiple roles including customer acquisition, account management, telephone and field-based
• multiple levels in the management hierarchy
• multiple performance measures and multiple incentive plans (a dozen including all variations)
• 1000s of customers with a complex territory structure
• 100,000s of data records to manage each month
• annual review of commission plans meant the system needed to respond to change
Our approach
Our first step was to form a project team of key stakeholders from our client’s management team and our performance incentive experts. We then undertook extensive consultation to fully scope the project. This led to a functional specification, which was signed-off by our client.
Next, we created a pilot, so that PerformanceCentre™ could be tested in a
safe environment.
Once the project team was satisfied PerformanceCentre™ was ready to launch,
they rolled it out across the business, as follows:
• A single web-based portal was created so that all staff requiring access to reports could access them from one place. This provided immediate access for sales staff and management to key information.
• A central database provided one central repository for all information, which improved control of the information and reduced administration time.
• The sales people believed in the project
because they could get easy and timely access to reports and, at any time, they knew the status of their commission.
The efficiencies created meant our client reduced admin time by more than one full time equivalent.
The Results
Initially, our client was cautious as to whether PerformanceCentre would be able to manage the complexity of their sales incentive reporting.
]The initial pilot provided them with the opportunity to test out the software, without making a full financial commitment. The results were encouraging.
In the enterprise-wide rollout, PerformanceCentre proved its ability to reduce costs, provide more accurate and timely information and most importantly, to keep the sales force motivated and focussed.
Learning and actions
Subsequent to the enterprise-wide rollout, the following actions have been taken:
• The number and types of reports have been expanded to provide information to a range of stakeholders
• The costs for any modifications have been agreed up-front to avoid any surprises in relation to billing (or the total cost of maintaining PerformanceCentre)
• A high level of customer service and support has been provided to the system administrators
