A recent Alexander Group survey showed 59 percent of participants reported quota setting as the top challenge among over 20 choices for their sales compensation program. Accenture research tells us that about 90 percent of companies leverage some quota-based incentives. Clearly, quota setting and management is a major focus for most sales teams. Read more
Tag Archive for: incentive compensation management
Squeaky wheels usually don’t go away; they just get louder.
Imagine you purchase a new car. The car is shiny and runs great, but after a year maybe there are few things you wish were different – the seat design could be more comfortable or the road noise is louder than you expected. Maybe you just bought the standard model. Now you wish you researched a bit more or requested a few more accessories. Or maybe in reality you just need a quick tune up. Read more
In the age of cloud-based applications and anytime access across many devices, having digital security in place that’s smart, flexible, and reliable is essential. Every day, RSA sales reps help businesses meet these requirements with industry-leading security solutions, providing them with the peace of mind and confidence needed to be successful. RSA in turn wanted to give reps that same level of certainty about their compensation payouts so that they could move from deal to deal without having to worry about the accuracy of those numbers. Ironside’s Sales Performance Management (SPM) team partnered with RSA to help make this a reality. Read more
Medical devices save lives every day. You’d think a product with an upside like that would sell itself, but in reality it requires a knowledgeable, highly motivated sales force to deliver it where it’s needed most. Nova Biomedical, one of the leading manufacturers of blood analyzers, wanted to be certain they were giving their sales reps the support they needed to excel in their space. To accomplish this, they partnered with Ironside to establish a modern sales performance management (SPM) system and strategy that would be capable of providing the robust compensation and reporting assets needed to accelerate sales success. Read more
“Content is King” is a phrase made most famous by Bill Gates in a 1996 essay, but it’s been used many times before. I believe he was referring to what will drive the internet for years to come. In my mind, this saying was and is still true in media. Just take a look at Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and other organizations creating original content. You can even go further outward and consider any social media platform and all original (or shared) content in a company’s data stores. Read more
Continuing from where we left off in the last article, I wanted to go more in-depth on which incentive compensation management (ICM) reports you should start with as you begin moving toward a full-scale sales performance management (SPM) strategy. In my experience, ICM implementations include at minimum both a compensation statement containing high-level compensation information and a detail statement, also called an Individual Performance Report. Although the quality can vary, these two reports cover the immediate needs of an ICM system in which the primary goal is to calculate and pay variable compensation. Read more
Are your reports an asset or a liability? It’s an important question, but it’s one that many compensation administrators typically see as secondary as they put on and take off the many hats they wear on a daily basis. It’s time we started reevaluating that assumption. Of course, the number one priority with incentive compensation management (ICM) is paying commissions correctly and on time, but a strong reporting strategy tied to that process can make a huge difference in terms of building employee trust and increasing productivity. Read more
Last month, we gave you a few summer reading suggestions from our experts, and they were so well-received we decided to bring you three more book recommendations from some more Ironside luminaries. These book recommendations will take you into the final stretch of the season feeling enriched with new insights into organizational growth, analytics strategy, and motivational methods. We hope you enjoy this list as much as you enjoyed the last one. Happy reading! Read more
Like many products, Cognos Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) goes through regular updates. The most recent release was Cognos ICM 9.0 on May 5th, a follow-up to the version 8.1.3 release on February 13th. Both of these releases included some big changes. The majority of these changes affect model development – creating and modifying your system. Speaking as an implementer of ICM systems, I feel that the features rolled out this year will help me do my job easier and faster. Below are several examples to show you why. Read more
On June 23rd Ironside hosted a High Impact Incentive Compensation Reporting and Dashboarding webinar, where we reimagined what can be done with incentive compensation reports using our expertise in and success with transforming business through an enhanced user experience. If you are a consumer or creator of reports for any level of the sales organization and beyond, then this webinar is for you. Read more
Ironside is a data, analytics, and AI consulting and technology implementation company. We work with clients to understand their business objectives and day-to-day challenges, then employ our deep expertise in data strategy, architecture and engineering, integration, business intelligence, AI, and generative AI. We create technical solutions and practical approaches designed to drive smarter, data-driven decisions across a company and help it move further and faster toward its business goals.