Much as the smartphone industry is, Boston-based mobile app developer Apperian is growing rapidly due to an influx of new clients and customers. While the company already had a basic compensation system in place, its rapid expansion has made it increasingly difficult to manage and calculate commission payments each month.
To solve the issue, Apperian turned to Xactly's Express sales compensation management software, a solution designed for quickly growing small- to medium-sized businesses. Express is a self-service compensation management tool, which will make sales and commission-based activities much easier and less time-consuming for businesses such as Apperian.
"We have a fairly straightforward comp system, but we're growing our field team so quickly that we found we were spending more and more time each month calculating commissions," said Brian Day, Apperian's chief financial officer. “After we calculated commissions for all of the salespeople in a spreadsheet, it still didn't translate into a statement that was easy to present to them or that could scale as we grow."
One of the biggest benefits of the new software is transparency in regard to compensation. Agents can use the ICM solution to gain real-time access to their compensation information, enabling them to see where they stand at any given moment. This type of tracking gives representatives a significant amount of freedom and also relieves any pressure and wasted time from them trying to figure out their own ways of calculating compensation.
Express also gives agents greater insight into customer activity, allowing them to follow leads from initial contact to final sale. This provides them with the ability to evaluate their own sales performance and identify any possible hang ups that are preventing leads from making a purchase.
"The system will eliminate current spreadsheet-based processes and reps will be able to check statements online quickly," Xactly adds. "Sales managers will be able to pull reports and view individual and team performance at any time, allowing them to identify and resolve potential performance issues."
Sales compensation is no longer just for the largest companies with huge budgets and thousands of salespeople. ICM and SPM vendors are now developing software for to fit the needs and budgets of smaller companies as well, so businesses such as Apperian can benefit for dedicated sales solutions.
