Sales incentive calculations & reporting for a top global pharma manufacturer.

The challenge

The client needed a Sales Incentive Calculation Engine and field reporting capability with automated one-click processing and integrated data transformation through parameterized web-based interfaces for monthly calculations. Their previous SPM solution presented several challenges:

• Significant manual touchpoints due to plan complexity, with manual data collection and transformation from source systems.
• Certain components left unimplemented due to complexity.
• A lengthy processing timeline of two weeks with high stakeholder involvement.
• A tedious change management process that delayed rollout.
• Offline management of the payment approval process.
• A tedious plan change process without access to analytics or a plan modeling ecosystem.

Objectives

• Automate calculation of sales incentives and enable in-house management without external consultants.
• Deliver agility and responsiveness, pulling data from internal sources automatically.
• Provide flexibility for managing complex plan types and performance measures through an easy-to-use platform.
• React and adapt for faster system rollout for ad-hoc plan changes, with automatic data ingestion and transformation.
• Support various plan types and complex calculations, with access to functionality based on evolving business requirements.
• Configure plan acknowledgment and multi-level payment approval workflows.
• Deploy an integrated sales incentive platform with quarterly change management support, achieving high levels of automation and repeatability.

The solution

Incentive platforms rollout

• Raw data formats collected, collated, sanitized, ingested, and transformed automatically using Data Manager.
• Aurochs Incentive Manager configured for complex calculations (e.g. portfolio-level qualifiers, multipliers) and eligibility management for scenarios such as new hire status, transfers, and leaves.
• Parameterized web interfaces drive ongoing sales incentive calculations.
• One-click processing enabled from data load to reporting.
• Easy-to-use interfaces configured for managing change parameters during ongoing operations.
• Analytics and visualizations provided for evaluating plan performance and effectiveness.
• Input validation and output validation summary reports available to identify anomalies and outliers upfront.
• Field incentive performance scorecards and summary reports deployed across hierarchy levels using Field Reporting Manager.
• Excel and PDF-based reports aligned with the current communication paradigm.
• A new interactive HTML report implemented with an embedded what-if calculator.

Change deployment

• Implemented plan changes for the new year.
• The implementation required changing the core measure from multi-level goal attainment to a layered ranking plan.
• Eligibility exceptions were further changed to account for the new plan type.

Approach

• The Aurochs team conducted a comprehensive Proof of Concept (POC) for one of the most complex business units in the US.
• POC results were compared with the client's existing system to demonstrate solution capabilities.
• The POC involved detailed analysis of the client's requirements and business processes, implementation of the solution for the complex business unit, testing and validation against the existing system, and presentation of results to the client for evaluation and feedback.

The results

The complete incentive system implementation was finalized with detailed User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Key performance outcomes:

• Complete automation of the complex eligibility calculation paradigm with no manual intervention.
• Implementation process completed in 4 weeks, compared to 13 weeks in the legacy system.
• Plan and report changes for annual plan changes made live in a workshop within approximately 4 hours, compared to 3 weeks in the legacy system.
• Total operations time reduced by over 50%.
• Standardization in implementation facilitated easy resource transition and reduced project risk.
• An integrated quality assurance framework identified input issues early, reducing the output processing timeline by over 50%.
• Contract secured to deploy an incentive compensation solution suite in more than 100 countries across 3 key businesses.