How National Instruments Created a Path to Sales Performance Management Optimization
A case study on NI’s SPM program health assessment
Industry: High Tech
National Instruments (NI), a global leader for automated test and measurement systems, has a mission defined by three drivers: productivity, innovation, and discovery. These drivers infuse all that they do, and this is a story about how their unique culture brought big discoveries to the sales compensation process.
When the NI team launched a large sales compensation plan optimization project in 2019, they took it as an opportunity to view the entire sales compensation process through a fresh lens and uncover improvements to fuel a more productive administration approach. They brought in OpenSymmetry to conduct an objective program health assessment. An unbiased current state assessment and evaluation of their SPM instance diagnosed how well their existing configuration met NI’s business needs.
Challenge:
Through the health assessment, NI wanted a clear view of the SPM configuration and whether or not it was optimized to meet their sales compensation program needs. The NI team was willing to consider a potential overhaul of the technology if it proved not to be a good fit, and they were open to assessing other technology vendors for a better fit solution, even if it meant incurring upfront costs. This required a deep dive into administration and internal processes to evaluate the setup and day-to-day management of their solution. Project objectives included:
• Gain a comprehensive understanding of current program health
• Identify future state needs for managing sales compensation
• Evaluate SPM capabilities against business needs
• Assess other leading ICM (incentive compensation management) vendor capabilities against NI program needs
• Develop program recommendations along with next steps, associated costs, and timeline
Solution:
The assessment conducted by OpenSymmetry was built around a comprehensive framework called The 5 Cs, which considers all aspects of a sales compensation program:
1 | COLLECTÂ Examine inputs and people/revenue data integration, preparation, and outputs
2 | CREDITÂ Evaluate crediting methodology for direct and indirect payees
3 | CALCULATEÂ Assess the accuracy and efficiency related to rules, formulas, and other calculation variables
4 | COMPENSATEÂ Review verification of payments, HR payroll process, and approval workflows
5 | COMMUNICATEÂ Appraise the end-user experience and reporting of analytics/performance measurement
During the project, the NI team was able to talk the OpenSymmetry team, a neutral external resource, through daily processes and explain the system set-up and performance. This provided a chance to identify ineffective processes and the root cause(s) of daily frustrations. The NI team was surprised to learn that some of the inefficiencies were not rooted in the technology, but inherited from the configuration of source systems. They needed to treat the problem at the source.
Fortunately, the configuration issues had a clear direction for next steps, and this eliminated the need to consider a new technology. This realization gave them greater confidence in the SPM platform and an opportunity to leverage compatible tools to maximize the SPM instance’s efficiency.
Result:
Productivity, innovation, and discovery
Through the current program assessment and future state planning, OpenSymmetry uncovered a series of quick wins for NI’s sales compensation team – high-impact adjustments that would take a low level of effort but yield a high ROI. Ultimately, this project led NI to identify areas where sales compensation processes could be streamlined and automated, updating the SPM configuration in conjunction with their annual sales compensation plan rollover. OpenSymmetry’s recommendations for the enhancement of specific business processes drove internal efficiencies, saved resources and time, and minimized non-value-added work.
Because OpenSymmetry’s long history as SPM consultants came with a broad network of clients, they were able to connect the NI team to another client with a sales compensation team who had implemented many similar changes as those recommended for NI by OpenSymmetry. Equipped with the results of the program assessment, future state recommendations, and learnings from a peer that had overcome many of the same challenges, NI was now ready to push their sales compensation process to be true to their mission statement – driving productivity, innovation, and discovery. NI looks forward to driving productivity like never before by executing OpenSymmetry’s recommended changes and enhancements and applying new innovations to their sales compensation process and technology configuration.
To learn more about how you can benefit from an SPM program assessment and future state planning, go to opensymmetry.com/services/strategy-services/.
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ABOUT NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS
NI (ni.com) develops high-performance automated test and automated measurement systems to help you solve your engineering challenges now and into the future. Their open, software-defined platform uses modular hardware and an expansive ecosystem to help you turn powerful possibilities into real solutions.
“It was a positive experience. The OpenSymmetry team was well prepared and knew what they were doing. Also, whenever they did not know the answer, they would do the research and get back to us rather than giving a premature answer that they didn’t know for sure, and I really appreciated that.”
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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