by SpectrumTek | Mar 31, 2020
While sales performance management (SPM) software has been around for two decades, many organizations still struggle because of a lack of comprehensive and well-integrated technology architecture. There are many reasons for this, but the primary reason is that most organizations start with just one component of SPM – Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) – and then let the “technology landscape” evolve organically. This results in an architecture that happens by default, not by design.
Before you select your SPM vendor, you should think about what type of SPM architecture best fits your needs. In order to do that, you must think about the technology and system capabilities needed for end-to-end SPM automation, not just one or two business functions within it.
Our new white paper, written by Anil Chouhan, a practice lead here at Spectrum, SPM Architecture Options: How to Pick What’s Best for Your Organization, delivers a guide on how to look at various components of SPM in your organization and how to pick a technology architecture that is capable of supporting comprehensive SPM automation.
The white paper elaborates on various business functions within SPM and guides you to a structured approach on how to map technology capability required for each function. Two distinct scales – Importance and Complexity, are used to score various technology capabilities for each function. Various types of technology solutions (not specific software) are then analyzed for the technology capabilities you may need.
Download SPM Architecture Options: How to Pick What’s Best for Your Organization to help you with your SPM planning process.
by Mita Dave | Apr 13, 2017
Sales Performance Management (SPM) involves multiple business processes, and hence, the procurement and implementation of an SPM Tool (such as Callidus, IBM, Xactly) requires a significant amount of planning and effort.
The planning must start long before you schedule vendors demos. There is no point in conducting vendor demos if your organization is not yet prepared to travel the road towards SPM automation. So how do you go about evaluating your preparedness?
To determine your organization’s readiness for an SPM tool, here are the top 10 questions you should answer:
1. What is the Business Justification?
The answer could be Cost Savings, Enhanced Reporting, Operational Efficiencies, Auditability, Calculating Payments or something related. Whatever it may be, if you can’t come up with a couple of strong business justifications, you will find it difficult to make a business case for the tool. Although it doesn’t all have to be about the financials, you have to be ready with a worksheet that shows the numbers. To learn how to build a business case, here is a link to a webinar that could be very helpful to you: http://bit.ly/2pvd1Ts.
2. Are the Executives on board?
Have you discussed your plans with your executives? Do they understand the high level budgetary needs for such a project? Do you have their verbal nod for a ballpark budget?
If your executives aren’t okay with the estimated budgets, maybe you have gotten ahead of yourself. Save yourself some time and initiate the vendor demos only after you see your executives warming up to the idea.
3. Are Compensation Plans Stable?
The most common reason for SPM implementation failure is that the compensation plans are in a state of flux, sometimes even changing while the implementation is in progress. Are your organization’s comp plans still going through significant changes because of evolving market landscapes? If so, you will have a tough time keeping your SPM implementation on track.
Taking this into consideration, you are not ready for an SPM tool. And yes, when you are told that the tool can handle all future changes without any time or effort, take it with a grain of salt.
4. Do you have enough Time?
From vendor demos to go-live, SPM projects will take no less than 4-5 months. If you are too close to the beginning of the new Plan Year and the deadline for Pay file is already in sight, you have probably missed your window of opportunity. If you decide to move forward at this point, you will be scrambling to move fast, thereby compromising the quality of your decisions, and creating a huge risk to the project overall. You are better off planning a mid-year rollout, which will have its own challenges, but at least you have time to plan for it.
5. Are Business Processes Mature?
When the organization is growing rapidly, HR and Finance are constantly tweaking the organizational framework. For this reason, or maybe due to a recent M&A, if the processes and policies in the organization have not yet been solidified, it is difficult for the implementation team to configure the new tool. A lot of time and effort would go to waste in changing the tool configuration again and again.
For example, if the new hire draw policy is changing every few months, the SPM tool can’t really be successful.
6. Do you have IT Systems providing Reliable Data?
SPM tools can’t operate in a vacuum. If you don’t have HR systems providing reliable Payee data or ERP systems providing sales data, you will have huge challenges with the SPM tool. Garbage in, garbage out. For instance, if new hire notices are coming to the commission administrator on Post Its, you are not ready for an SPM tool. You must first invest in HR tools and processes.
7. Is IT Leadership ready for one more Tool?
SPM implementation projects require IT budget and resources. If the IT team has resource constraints, or there is another large IT initiative, such as an ERP upgrade planned for the year, then IT will not be very happy about supporting an SPM implementation. A quick synch up with your IT leadership would help ensure that no such major roadblocks exist.
8. Is the Cloud an option?
Almost all major SPM tools are now available only as SaaS solutions, where the software is hosted in the vendor’s Cloud. What that means is, if your organization has a strong preference for On-Premise solutions, your choice of vendors becomes very limited.
It’s better to clarify with your business leaders if Cloud solutions are an acceptable option. If not, knowing the road map for all software vendors, you may want to abort the idea of packaged solutions or wait for your organization’s mindset to change.
9. Do you have Resources to support this Project?
After the tool is implemented, you may be able to cut the headcount in commission operations. But initially, you will have to dedicate a great deal of time and energy in evaluating and implementing the tool. If you are unable to free up any of your current resources and can’t find the budget to hire external consultants, it will be extremely challenging for you to get this to the finish line.
10. Is there an M&A on the Horizon?
Last but not least, if there is an M&A on the horizon, it’s better to wait on an implementation project. The new company may already have an SPM tool, and it is almost guaranteed that your business team will want a single SPM tool catering to the joint salesforce.
If you need further assistance with getting you prepared for an SPM project, please contact us at mktg@spectrumtek.com.
by SpectrumTek | Nov 14, 2014
You have done the hard work with internal assessments of your sales performance management needs distributing RFIs and RFPs. Now you are getting vendors to come in for sales talks, and you better be prepared to ask them the tough questions.
Spectrum and its consultants have worked with well over 100 firms deploying SPM systems and based on our experiences, we have assimilated some key questions that will help you in the final selection process.
The questions fall under three categories – product features, pricing, and support.
1) Product Features
Basic feature evaluation is covered by most teams. Here are some of the important but often ignored areas to question the vendors:
SaaS versus On-Premise – If vendors offer both on-premise and SaaS deployments, understand if the vendor has a clear preference. In case of many vendors, only the SaaS product is being actively managed and upgraded.
Data Integration – Does the SPM product have a built-in ETL tool or does it rely upon other external ETL tools? Some SPM products include this while others do not. Typically if they’re included your end users can do more ‘heavier lifting’ within the product.
Reporting – You should understand what it takes to build new reports. This task is easier in some tools than others. Are there any out-of-the-box reports available? Are they useful for your organization?
Workflow – Another important question to ask your vendors is about the workflow possibilities. Ask the vendor if the software handles disputes, territory alignments, quotas (setting, communication, approval, and/or relief). Can the system generate email and other types of alerts?
Mobile Use – Look at how the end user experience is on mobile devices, especially for sales reps. How easily is that experience supported (heavy and specific mobile configuration efforts or part of general definition that then translate well to mobile)? Understand if the vendor has an app that they use or if this is done via web browser.
2) Pricing
Your vendors may provide you a range of pricing models. You have to spend some time to understand the pricing parameters of the contract and understand what may increase the prices. If it is SaaS model bid, you have to size up the hardware and build out databases. If the actual data used is much more than planned, you will end up paying more (sometimes a lot more) money to the vendor. Ask questions to understand the storage variables and how sensitive this is.
Most companies also base pricing on payee or overall user counts. Get your vendors to provide the incremental cost if your users increase as well as saving if your user counts fall.
Be sure to ask about the pricing after the initial term and seek a rate hike cap on the future pricing. Check if there is an early termination fee, and if so, seek to eliminate or negotiate this fee lower.
Don’t forget to ask about not-so-obvious costs related to implementation, training, upgrades, test environments, data retention, data archival, data backup, etc.
For implementation fees, you may have fixed bid contracts on the table which come with a set of fixed assumptions. Often these assumptions are broad enough that they leave your implementation vendor plenty of leeway to seek additional fees. Pay attention to these assumptions and seek to clarify them so you really understand the implementation parameters of your project.
3) Support
Be sure to clarify the ongoing support model with your vendor – what’s available for purchase and what you are in fact purchasing.
You want to first make sure your vendor provides a helpdesk and/or web support and then look for a service level agreement (SLA) on response times for fixing bugs and addressing product defects. Understand what self-help tools are available (i.e., online help, knowledge bases, user community, etc) and work to gauge their level of helpfulness (some are not actively managed and are more to simply say a YES on RFP responses).
Most vendors provide product support but not configuration support. You need to understand whether the support is a skill you want to build and maintain in-house or if you prefer to use outside assistance. If you want outside help, some of the software vendors provide this as an optional service as do specialized 3rd party SPM/ICM service providers, including Spectrum Technologies.
Last but not the least don’t limit your reference checks to customers provided by the vendor. Use your network to find out more customer references independently to gather as much information as possible to guide your decision.
Good luck with your upcoming vendor evaluation! To discuss this further feel free to email us at info@spectrumbiztech.com.com or call us at (408)-813-1443.
