Maximizing the SPM technology investment with managed services
A case study on SCC’s continual improvement for sales performance management
Industry: High Tech
Challenge
SCC had a vision for its Sales Performance Management (SPM) system. Even though SCC had made huge gains in calculating and managing commission payments in just a few short years through the initial implementation of its SPM tool, it knew that to make the most of its investment, it would need to enhance these gains with continued improvements. With new challenges and changing business conditions, there was still a lot of potential for the SPM system to maximize the ROI.
Partnering with OpenSymmetry, SCC replaced its manual, homegrown systems with Varicent, a robust SPM solution that not only supports over 300 payees, 50,000 transactions per pay cycle, and Sales Commission dashboards with drill to order line detail, but also gives them deep insights into the sales team’s performance trends. The new SPM system empowers SCC to apply plan changes in a timely manner, shorten the time for calculation processing, and more proactively handle data. It also led to improved reporting and analytics and more accurate forecasting.
In order to maximize its investment in the SPM technology, SCC made the decision to continue its partnership with OpenSymmetry in an advisory role. OpenSymmetry’s Managed Services would provide the strategic oversight and training needed to help SCC reach operational SPM self-sufficiency on a day-to-day basis while providing a designated OpenSymmetry team to call on for support for initiatives such as complex enhancements, best practices for process improvements, and configuration for new dashboards and reports.
Solution
As the relationship between SCC and OpenSymmetry evolved, the OpenSymmetry team focused on training and empowering the SCC team to do all necessary fixes and changes in the system themselves. This included:
• UPGRADING the Varicent environment to the latest version (v10)
• PERFORMANCE CHECKS and calculation optimization
• DESIGN REVIEW SESSIONS for issue and enhancement implementations
• DOCUMENTATION and execution of performance improvements
Meeting with SCC one to two times a week, the OpenSymmetry Managed Services team would work with SCC to develop additional wins in the system to improve it and find time savings in different areas, making small changes that would accumulate to large gains in the system as a whole.
OpenSymmetry Managed Services provided a designated core team of experts that had a deep knowledge of the company’s sales compensation history, pay calculation timeline and process, business model, and sales culture. This meant giving tailored solutions that took the nuances of SCC’s business into account, as well as knowing what kind of process improvements to look for.
Results
SCC and OpenSymmetry have been in partnership for over four years, and SCC has seen the following improvements from the Managed Services relationship:
Increased self sufficiency on the SPM system
Improved SPM dashboard for timely information
Reduced processing time despite increased data volume
On the horizon, SCC will deploy a data purge to streamline its system and further reduce processing time and the need to make manual adjustments while working to exploit the new v10 functionality.
To learn more about OpenSymmetry Managed Services, please visit opensymmetry.com/services/manage
Download a PDF of this Case Study >>
ABOUT SCC
SCC unleashes the potentials of IT for global businesses, as one of Europe’s largest independent IT groups. Operating out of 65+ locations in the UK, France, Romania, Spain and Vietnam, SCC delivers limitless IT solutions in partnership with the world’s best technology vendors. They provide multi-awardwinning data centre modernisation services, networks and communications, workplace productivity, business process outsourcing, security and innovation solutions to customers in a broad range of public and private industry sectors. They’re trusted to discover, design, supply, migrate, manage and optimise IT that supports European economies through enduring partnership, driven by curiosity and inspired by innovation. www.scc.com
“For our business, we need things to move as quickly as possible. Working with OpenSymmetry, we are consistently able to make system improvements to knock off time for different processes in our SPM system.”
Want The PDF Version?
About Us
OpenSymmetry enables clients to achieve greater operational efficiency and get better sales results. We are a global consulting company specializing in the planning, implementation, and optimization of industry leading technology suppliers of sales performance management solutions.
CONSIDERATIONS WHEN REPLACING YOUR SPM TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION
Understanding the challenges companies face when migrating Sales Performance Management (SPM) technology solutions can be a significant undertaking. This paper is designed to provide high-level guidance to stakeholders who carry this responsibility. As OpenSymmetry has helped many companies evaluate and effectively migrate to new technology solutions, we are sharing seven key areas that we find critical to completing this kind of effort.
1. CURRENT STATE ASSESSMENT & FUTURE STATE PLANNING
A critical initial step before migrating to a new SPM solution is understanding how well your current program is performing across people, processes, and technology. From there you can devise a future state vision for how your SPM program should operate. By understanding both current state gaps and what your future state needs look like, you can effectively begin defining requirements while also clearly articulating success criteria. It’s important to recognize that your previous or initial SPM implementation may not have gathered all necessary processes/requirements, so it’s vital to take a fresh, holistic view in this first step.
2. DATA INTEGRATION
One of the most complex and time-consuming requirements is determining how to best leverage current source data feeds to support the new platform. Within the context of your current state assessment and future state planning, the team should review what their reporting, analytics, and any future state compensation elements needs are to ensure a meaningful inventory of data requirements are defined. SPM solutions vary in terms of how data is gathered, translated, and uploaded into the system. Some solution applications may have a standardized format requiring additional configuration, whereas others may have the ability of data field mapping, which provides additional flexibility. The ability to own the data translation from your source systems to the SPM platform is key. Another focus point is to ensure that you evaluate all manual feeds to incorporate automation, as well as any additional error validation processes.
3. HISTORICAL DATA
Migrating historical data is an often-overlooked requirement when moving from one SPM platform to another. To keep costs down and minimize complexity, clients may want to ID only the data that is needed to ensure ongoing management of comp (e.g. payment history) and then transfer detail-level data into data storage to be referenced at a future date. It is important to consider what historical data is needed for the new system for reference on future payments
4. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Each SPM solution may require users to interact with the system in different ways. This area may need additional attention, especially as it has the potential to improve processes currently employed to manage sales compensation. Understanding the impact a new system will have on current processes, as well as those who manage the processes, is critical to ensuring a successful launch and ongoing management of core processes. As an example, two of the leading solutions in the market have very different expectations regarding the skills users need to possess to effectively maintain compensation plans and reports and, in some cases, execute the day-to-day activities. Defining expectations of your staff related to the new technology, prior to the project, will ideally give your organization the necessary time to introduce training that ensures effective ongoing management of the program.
5. WORKFLOW
SPM solutions vary widely in their ability to support automated workflow. As a result, there are significant challenges for sales compensation teams related to an SPM migration. Capabilities can range from templates to existing documentation, levels of routing, and even implementation of a stopgap for a payee to accept plan documentation prior to payout. Within the context of your future state definition, capturing and defining areas where automated workflows can be leveraged is a necessary part of the core requirements. Before a new system is deployed, it is important to map these processes out to drive user adoption, leverage the SPM system as an auditable repository, and minimize email management.
6. REPORTING & ANALYTICS
It is critical to develop a holistic vision of information distribution to the various stakeholders and tools used to deliver this content (i.e. static pages vs. dashboards). Similar to workflows, different vendors have various capabilities related to reporting for the end users. Assessing these capabilities against your business requirements is imperative to the success of the roll-out. For example, some vendors require more robust configurations in the system (e.g. crediting logic) to enable specific analytics capabilities, while some solutions, architected specifically for reporting and analytics, have much more robust capabilities. Another area for consideration is the use of the vendor’s reporting solution against your in-house technology stack. Some solutions make it easy to port data into new environments, which could be a consideration in helping to keep the number of reporting tools requiring management to a minimum.
7. DEPLOYMENT
The implementation of a new solution should be designed to minimize the impact on payees and managers. One of the most critical aspects of your effort is assessing how all stakeholders will be impacted and how to mitigate any disruption. It is important to identify upcoming changes for your sales organization, administrators, and other internal partners with a plan in place to offer the steps needed to ensure the best chances for solution adoption.
The first step when considering a new SPM platform is an assessment of your current program and the development of a future state vision. OpenSymmetry offers a no-cost workshop to help you gain an understanding of how your current SPM program performs against your needs and industry best practices, as well as a readout on current solutions in the market.
Leveraging the OpenSymmetry assessment methodology and knowledge of the leading SPM providers, you will be equipped with:
• A current state analysis scorecard
• The framework for a business case to support change
• Contemporary intel on the SPM market and SPM vendor capabilities
• High-level deployment and license cost estimates