Video! 2012 Sales Performance and Technology Survey Results

What's the current state of technology use in the design and administration of sales incentive compensation programs? Find out as Jim Stoeckmann, CCP, Senior Practice Leader, WorldatWork, and Justin Lane, Director of Strategy Services, OpenSymmetry, share insights in the recent survey results including use of various technologies, biggest pain points, timeliness and accuracy of incentive payouts, and evaluation of the administration process.

What a great preview face!  :-) 

Big Things Have Small Beginnings

Twelve years ago when I first got involved with the automation of Incentive Compensation I never envisioned what the industry would become from a technology perspective.  The first releases of products just didn’t work and required an enormous amount of pre-processing and the creation of manual processes to achieve something close to a desired state.  The products matured and the problem moved on from core feature functionality to scalability.   Once scalability had been addressed we spent a few years implementing giant sales forces and certainly didn’t see the value proposition for what I call Micro-Sales Forces (MSF) of less than 100 representatives.  My thought process at the time was that MSF should be administered using Microsoft office applications like Excel.

Side note: From OpenSymmetry’s 2012 Sales and Technology Survey we found that >90% of companies with less than 100 sales representative use Excel to Administer compensation.   Survey Results here - http://www.opensymmetry.com/2012-sales-performance-and-technology-survey-report-now-available.html  Administration in Excel has been shown to be less than optimal for accuracy in commission calculations.   

But then simultaneously, as the footprint and vision of the technology moved from Incentive Compensation to Sales Performance Management, a number of dynamics came into play –

1.    Multiple companies had mature products that at the very least could provide Big Calculator functionality

2.    The idea the software could be paid for with perpetual fees or pay-as-you-go as opposed to capital outlay + maintenance fees  

3.    Hyper-Competition (combined with smarter buyers) in North America drives down average seat per month price to a reasonable level

4.    Emergence of Cloud / SaaS solutions       

These dynamics, with the emergence of Cloud solutions being the lynchpin, allow for companies with MSF to reap the benefits that previously were only available to much larger enterprises.   

How does Cloud based technology for sales performance make such an impact?  Well obviously cost – no need to build out infrastructure and attract, train, and retrain talent to manage a system over time, configure plan or reporting updates, or to roll out upgrades.   Less obvious are things like security and reliability that are inherent in the best of breed Cloud solutions.

One of these solutions that have been in the news in the past few days is Xactly with the announcement of their Express prodcut’s seamless integration with Inuit’s Quickbooks.  More details here http://www.xactlycorp.com/media/2012/07/xactly-express-adds-seamless-integration-with-intuit-quickbooks%C2%AE/  

The Express product built natively on the Force.com platform already provides the out-of-the-box connectivity to Salesforce.

Both of these pre-built connections are important to the success of Xactly as a company as it continues to drive down the cost of implementation as well as targets users of already installed software that have MSF that are well served by their Express offering.    

The core benefits for a company with a MSF using a Sales Performance Management solution include the ability to rapidly configure sales compensation plans, accurately calculate commissions, export payments to payroll, provide transparency and reporting to motivate sales representatives and business analytics to make decisions. 

The range of companies who could benefit from SPM has grown to encompass sales forces from as small as five to sales forces in the hundreds of thousands.   Bottom line if you have a sales force you should be looking at Sales Performance Management.   

OpenSymmetry's 2012 Sales Performance and Technology Survey finds sales compensation processes still plague many administrators

Press Release today about the annual Sales Performance and Technology Survey that I'm involved with.   So many people to thank this year that have assisted in making this a great survey with great results.   The WorldatWork organization  has been a fantastic partner in promoting and administrating the survey.  OpenSymmetry's marketing team has been instrumental in keeping me on track with deadlines and helping to review content and give critical feedback. 

I'm very excited about the survey results that will be released on July 10th, as well as the different venues where I'll be sharing results and insights as well as providing actionable next steps for organizations.   More details about upcoming webinars and conference break-out sessions to come soon.  

The full press release can be found here http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/6/prweb9644878.htm

Below is an excerpt that gives some details about the survey itself - 

Too many manual adjustments, program complexity and data problems are the top three challenges in Sales Performance Management that organizations face in their day-to-day work. This was the key finding in the “2012 Sales Performance and Technology Survey” by OpenSymmetry Inc., a leading Sales Performance Management and Incentive Compensation Management consulting firm.

Now in its seventh year, the 2012 survey was conducted in partnership with WorldatWork, a global human resources association that provides training and certification in HR specialty areas including sales compensation.

"We see plenty of opportunities for organizations to move the dial towards best practices in sales performance management,” said Justin Lane, Director of Strategy Services, OpenSymmetry. “As more businesses adopt technological solutions, payment accuracy will improve and more importantly, the technology will enable timely and rich information to truly drive sales force behavior and improve performance.”

To request a copy of the survey report, please click here.

About the Survey
The Sales Performance and Technology Survey was administered between February and April 2012. There were 460 participants from a wide variety of industries worldwide. Fifty per cent of respondent companies employ 5,000 or more employees. Respondents represented different types of organizations including private sector-publicly traded 50%; private sector-privately held 34%; public sector (local, state, federal government) 10%; nonprofit/not-for-profit 6%.

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SPM Vendor Conversation with Excentive International

The landscape of the Sales Performance Management (SPM) space continues to evolve.  This year alone there has been two major acquisitions and a number of very competitive selection deals in a North American market that is certainly heating up as we get farther along into 2012.   

A number of recent competitive SPM deals have been won by Excentive International.  Excentive International is well established in the EMEA market but to North American buyers it may be a company that many people aren't familiar with.  To provide some more information on their company and how they are building momentum in a hyper-competitive market space I sat down and had a discussion with Joe Kaddis, North American GM and President of Excentive International.

Justin: For the people who aren’t familiar with Excentive International, tell us about the company

Joe: Excentive International is a Total Compensation software provider, which makes us absolutely unique in the marketplace.  That means we cover all aspects of compensation, including sales incentive compensation, bonus plans, salary planning, performance reviews, and long term incentives.  We are a global and employee-controlled company, with 60+ industry leaders that span virtually every vertical – we work with some of the  largest, most complex and international companies in the world such as Vodafone, Telecom Italia, Turkcell, Mercedes, Stryker, Orange, Novartis, Total BearingPoint, Saudi Aramco or Veolia.  We partner globally with OpenSymmetry, as you know, as well as with Accenture and Avanade, and some local comp vendors in other parts of the world. 

Justin: This year looks to be a breakout year for Excentive in N. America, what would you attribute that success to?

Joe: Yes, in line with our global strategy, this year is proving to be significant for North America. Our model has proved successful in Europe and now the same model is proving success in the US.  In addition to the strength of our model, the ability of our solution to support compensation complexity, global scale and manage change also contributes to our growing success in North America. Case in point is a win we have had recently at a major software vendor.  They are the definition of complex with  25K+ Sales people and  1000+ individual plans, and generate more than 40M transactions per day, from  100+ countries and 6 continents.  After an intense 6 month evaluation against just about every player in the Industry, Excentive International was unanimously chosen because of our ability 1) to manage complexity, 2) to change easily and quickly and 3) to communicate effectively. Fundamentally Excentive International’s solution empowers companies to use compensation to adapt and grow in their markets. 

Justin: Who do you see as your competition and how do you differentiate / stack up against them?

Joe: There are two arenas in which we compete; ICM and HR compensation.  In the ICM/Sales area we compete against the traditional ICM vendors like Callidus and Varicent.  In HR compensation – salary, bonus, performance reviews, etc. – we typically compete against HR suites like SuccessFactors, even though often times we are used alongside those suites.  As a 3-year old company, currently our biggest challenge is name recognition.  Given our relatively small size, we can’t really afford to compete for deals without winning them. We are now spending much more time on analyzing an opportunity before competing for it, making sure it is in our sweet spot: large complex compensation project. Doing this, our win ratio is very high.  Generally, the more exhaustive the evaluation, the better we fare: everyone has a good looking demo, but it is when the customer takes the time to really understand the “how” and the “why” that we win.  

Justin: Anything else you would like to promote – upcoming conferences, webinars, articles, etc. 

Joe: We will be conducting one on one briefings by appointment at World of Work’s Spotlight on Incentive Compensation in Chicago August 29-31st and Total Reward Conference in Toronto on September 19-21st.  Please email me directly at Joe.Kaddis@excentive.com or call me at 203-557-3691 to set up some time at the event or to discuss your compensation management projects.

Justin: thanks Joe, appreciate your time. 

Some relevant links -  

Excentive International: http://www.excentive.com/

WorldatWork's Spotlight on Incentive Compensation (I’ll be attending as well): http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/salescompspotlight/html/index.jsp

Total Reward Conference: http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/toronto2012/html/index.jsp

For the latest and greatest in Sales Performance Management follow me at #SPMconsulting 

New Sales Performance Management Vendor Guide

Once or twice a year I help to lead the effort for my company to release a Sales Performance Management vendor guide to help people looking for SPM technology to have a single overview and quick look at the overall market. This initial look at the universe of vendors is often times an essential step in the vendor selection process.

The biggest changes to the guide this year were two acquisitions and one departure from the space. Merced Systems was acquired by Nice and Varicent was acquired by IBM. The departure - Sungard no longer markets a SPM application. Other changes from the prior guide are the updated branding from Callidus Software, now CallidusCloud and the inclusion of a full page for Iconixx Software who have re-appeared in the market and are starting to gather some momentum in the space.

From the OpenSymmetry website description of the guide, "With dozens of SPM solutions existing on the market, selecting the right one for your needs can be a complex and time-consuming task.This guide was prepared by OpenSymmetry to provide an introduction to the leading suppliers of incentive compensation automation tools. The information contained in this document has been gathered from official corporate websites and is subject to verification by each individual vendor.

The sales compensation software vendors included in this review were selected based on their client base, corporate recognition and contribution to the field of SPM. Each has significant qualities within their services or software that should be reviewed when making a decision on the purchase of an incentive compensation solution."

The guide can be downloaded @

FREE SPM Vendor Guide

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Any questions or comments? As always - Happy to help.

Effectiveness of Non Cash Rewards

I’ve been in Orlando this week doing client work as well as watching people building their arks in case this torrential rain keeps up.  Today at lunch I went to the local affiliate one of the national chicken wing restaurants.  At the end of the lunch my waitress ashamedly and without making eye contact asked if I would like to buy on of their bottles of wing sauce to take home.  I declined as I could see the bottles on the counter and they weren’t going to fit into the TSA rules for carry on liquids.   But I did ask what was in it for her.  She did her part by providing excellent customer service throughout the meal and then asked for the sale so if it was a $1 SPIF I’d be happy to add that to the tip for her efforts.  She told me that the waitress that sells the most sauce in a week gets first pick of shifts and sections.  I asked if some sections were better than others and she told me that yes they were and pointed out the most choice sections.   As I thought about the incentive that the company had put together I was impressed by the ability to take something inexpensive to them and use it to motivate a desired behavior, i.e. sell the high-margin add-on sale.  A secondary effect is that the people best at sales get the prime shifts and locations – which is exactly what is going to drive the most revenue overall for the restaurant.  

 

A variety of industries use similar metrics to allow the best sales folks to cherry pick the best opportunities and I think for the most part it’s a good idea if designed and executed properly.  You are getting your top people aligned with the best prospects and in the long run the poor performers are easily identified and can be re-trained and coached or ultimately self-select themselves out of a job.  In the example above was the plan optimally rolled out?  Not really, this young lady who had done a great job pushing appetizers and drinks failed when it came to the add-on sale at the end.  For example, it would have been a much easier sale with eye contact and getting to me say yes to the fact that I had tremendously enjoyed the sauce, would I get the same sauce next time or try a different one and then finally ask for how many bottles would I like to add to my order for $4.99 (less expensive than the grocery store) price.    

For the latest and greatest Sales Performance Management Technology and Process News and Strategy follow me on twitter @ #SPMconsulting  or https://twitter.com/#!/SPMconsulting

Announcement of the OpenSymmetry 2012 Sales Compensation Automation Trends Survey

OpenSymmetry 2012 Sales Compensation Automation Trends Survey

2012 Sales Compensation Automation Trends Survey

WorldatWork and OpenSymmetry are conducting research into how sales compensation programs are automated. We are interested in understanding what types of technology and reporting are used in your organization. This survey is not exclusive to U.S. organizations.

The survey is designed to take no more than 15 minutes of your time. Your answers will be kept strictly confidential and will only be reported in aggregate.

In exchange for your participation, the results will be emailed directly to you. The deadline to complete the survey is close of business on Friday, April 6, 2012.

Click below to begin the survey.
Sales Compensation Automation Trends

A PDF of the questionnaire is available for your review and to assist you in preparing your responses; however, only online submissions will be accepted.


After the collection and analysis of the data I'll be conducting a webinar to deliver the results and recommedations to achieve best-in-class compensation automation and administration.