The faster sales incentives are paid out, the better it is for employee morale. Sales is a fast-paced game, and representatives expect their companies to move quickly when it comes to compensation. Agents become disgruntled when their checks are tied up due to administrative issues. For many salespeople, the delay in payment is almost a form of punishment despite their excellent work.

Vendors are at risk of losing their top performers if they don’t develop compensation solutions and optimize their payment channels. Recently, companies have begun turning to software to track their incentiveplans and and allow workers to track their rewards. The applications can be fully tailored to suit a business’ needs and reduce overhead expenses. Chris Cabrera, CEO of Xactly, which produces compensation management programs, believes that computer applications fill a need for every business without hurting the bottom line.

“Every company had pain and knew it needed to automate sales compensation,” Cabrera told Selling Power Magazine. “But they did not want to spend millions of dollars to do it. So a lightbulb went off in my head. There was a better way to do it.”

Cabrera and Xactly developed a cloud-based incentive compensation management (ICM) program called Incent. By putting the application online, the company made it possible to have cutting edge technology without installing expensive hardware or locally-stored software.

The benefits of moving into the cloud
The most apparent benefit of shifting ICM to the cloud is real-time,automatic updating. The news source writes that manually keeping records in spreadsheets on programs like Microsoft Excel has an error rate of 3 to 6 percent. Mistakes can cause internal frustration. Xactly’s application can be connected to other sales programs so that nodata is lost in translation and incentives are calculated based oncorrect information.

Additionally, the cloud creates greater transparency in the payment process. Companies used to take weeks to cut checks, so employees would never know if mistakes were madewith their rewards. Incent allows agents to log in and track their monitor their numbers as they close deals. The cloud-based platform even has a calculator so that representatives can look at their potential earning power from hypothetical sales.

Every company has its own payment schedule, and it’s important that incentives are paid on time. With Incent, Xactly has made it simple for businesses to monitor performance and compensate salespeople as soon as the pay period ends.