The Unexpected Benefits of Being a Sales Compensation Software User

When you buy Sales Compensation software, you make an investment for your enterprise. An incentive automation tool enhances success not only by speeding up the operations and reducing effort, but also by improving the operational mindset and quality of overall incentive program management in the organization. After all, ROI of your investment has to be looked at in that context. Unfortunately, these additional advantages are often overlooked.

A good system implementation framework provides constant reminders of where the loopholes obstruct the productivity of your team and other parties associated with the operations. Mentioned below are some more inclusive benefits of your incentive calculation process automation:

1. Development of As-Is Process Map:

You certainly cannot paint the walls of a house before building them. Good approach focuses on mapping out existing process flows and defining dependencies during requirements gathering. Most of the time operations teams are juggling several tasks and responsibilities at the same time that doesn’t allow them to look at a bigger picture. The experienced incentive team with automation focus does that with far more ease and ensures alignment of the execution of tasks in a particular order. Consequently, possible disruptions during downstream steps are avoided to a great extent.

2. Identification of Bottlenecks and Process Gaps:

Proactively analyze processing hurdles and manual touchpoints to understand root cause for quality issues and delays. You should dig deeper into reasons for inefficiencies and revalidate the importance of certain time-consuming manual steps that opens up the process for further challenges. You should rethink process design to smooth out bottlenecks that may be costing you money by involving all the key process stakeholders and taking their inputs for operational process flow changes. Having a logically established process to use that is recurring, is useful in reducing chances of errors and boosting the morale of employees.

3. Definition of Input & Output Design Grids:

Standardization of data improves clarity and decreases ambiguity. It allows users to manage future changes and requests a lot more effectively. A good implementation approach focuses on proactively defining input and output structures and touchpoints to limit chaos during data exchanges while processing. It allows you to automate data transfers and significantly reduce the chances of error.

4. Design of Operational Calendar:

Clearly defined dependencies can be leveraged to develop an ongoing operational calendar that takes into account all the key steps associated with data ingestion, parameter management, incentive processing, reporting and approvals. Most of this can then be managed with the help of scheduling capabilities of the platform and automated reminders for various touchpoints. Good platform allows users to efficiently manage operational timelines assigned to individual tasks, helping in identifying problems and solving dependency conflicts even before you begin. Even if the operations change and deadlines are pushed further, plans can still be adjusted with utmost ease and you can still keep your progress on track.

5. Design & Management of Parameters:

Proactive understanding of the business touchpoints, historical changes and expected future events can facilitate design of parameters and exception tables that can effectively drive the ongoing processing. This enables significantly higher change efficiency and helps the system be in sync with market events all the time.

6. Workflow Definition:

Design appropriate workflows so that oversight on changes, exceptions, and adjustments are enabled. You need to ensure that all the operational paths are covered including sales credit mapping, query/disputes, payout approvals, etc. All the business process touch points should have an appropriate workflow defined to enable accountability within the process.

7. Improve Incentive Plan Effectiveness:

Building a growth-oriented feedback culture is extremely important to improve sales performance. Consistent and regular feedback from salespeople helps you improvise the incentive plans/schemes, resulting in improving the overall effectiveness of your incentive plan. In a way, good platforms can help you gauge the pulse of how your salespeople feel, and what frustrates them. Enabling users to report disputes helps in identifying process gaps. In addition, a good platform also gives you post hoc plan performance dashboards that can be used to make further tweaks to your incentive plan and ensure that the plan continues to perform at the desired level. If you know what's working or not working then the adjustments to the plan can be made easily.

8. Enable Transparency:

Giving access to interactive reports and dashboards to the salesforce can significantly improve the alignment and motivation of your salespeople. Actionable nudges can be enabled with the help of the platform for better planning by salespeople. Improved analytics synergized with the increased capability of data to be seamlessly flown to BI tools, resulting in far more accurate predictions being reported and ultimately better business decisions being made. In addition, salespeople can have access to gamified tools and what-if calculators to model out different performance scenarios and better understand the expectations and their earning potential.

Conclusion:

Comprehensive sales compensation management platform and experienced implementation teams can act as catalysts to improve the overall effectiveness of your incentive program. The time for organizations to prepare themselves for the next year is now and in order to do so, identifying the right tools and partners that can help them change their incentive game, is crucial. With the right combination of tools, people and processes only a winning incentive program can be implemented.