Ten Reasons Why Customers Pick SAP Commissions

Working for Callidus (now SAP) for 20+ years implementing SAP Commissions, I had a front row seat to see how the product matured and why customers choose SAP Commissions for managing Sales Performance Management (SPM). Whether your organization has 50 people on variable pay or 100,000+, SAP Commissions has proven itself to be a one-stop shop for every customer. Whether you are a high tech business, med-devices manufacturer, an insurance /banking service provider or a retail organization, SAP Commission’s robust functionality works well for all industries.

I have seen customers moving from Excel or home-grown legacy tools to SAP Commissions. I have also seen customers migrating to SAP Commissions because they had outgrown their current SPM vendors. If you look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SPM over the past five years, one constant they cite is the robust functionality of SAP Commissions. The core architecture perfected over 20 years has allowed customers to scale up the software as their businesses grew.

Granted, the last two years have required customers adjusting first to SAP’s ecosystem, and then to HANA. They also had to deal with implementation partners who may not have in-depth product expertise. I was happy to hear that SAP is focusing on SAP Commissions and is investing heavily in ensuring customer success.

Below are ten reasons why I believe businesses are choosing SAP Commissions:

1. Complexity –

SAP Commissions state-of-the-art architecture designed 20 years ago and is updated to scale. It has been the backbone that has handled complex calculations and millions of transactions. There is no other tool that can handle complex calculation, as well as allocate transactions to multiple people based on complex criteria, as done by SAP Commissions. SAP Commissions’ formulas, multi-dimension lookup tables, territories, legal rule editors are the best in the market.

2. Scalability –

SAP Commissions is a one-sized tool that fits for all customers, whether they have 50 people on variable pay or 100,000+. Many current enterprise customers started their SAP Commissions journey when they were small startups. As they have grown, they have never had to think about switching their SPM tool.

3. Performance –

SAP Commissions can handle millions of transactions for their customers. The last time performance metrics were published, their average calculation runtime was less than 30 minutes. For smaller payee/transaction customers, this means a calculation runtime of minutes.

4. Auditing –

SAP Commissions provides extensive auditing functionality allowing customers to be SOX compliant. Audit logs can be easily extracted and reported on.

5. User Interface –

SAP Commissions’ new UI is easy to use. Its task-based functionality using the Walk Me feature makes it much more intuitive. Navigation is seamless and response to the queries is fast. Research Views allows customers to trace from transactions all the way to payments.

6. Effective Dating –

SAP Commissions’ pervasive effective dating functionality is across all its objects, allowing users to make changes at the granular level. This ensures accurate calculations without any workarounds.

7. Integration –

SAP Commissions leverages SAP’s Cloud Platform Integration and Smart Data Integration tools to connect to other applications like SAP ERP, Successfactor, Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Workday, and ADP to bring the data into SAP Commissions and push the data back. Spectrum was the first partner to use CPI for integration with SAP Commissions and had first-hand experience with SAP CPI.

8. Dashboard –

SAP Commissions’ dashboard and widgets are rule-based and easy to configure. They can be updated in minutes and do not require IT involvement. Given that dashboards are dependent on rule configuration, it is recommended that they are designed sooner and not left till the end.

9. Workflow –

SAP Commissions provide out-of-the-box easy to use Communicator workflow, which allows configuration of plan distribution and dispute management. For customers having complex workflow requirements, SAP Commissions come with Enterprise Workflow applications.

10. Analytics –

SAP Commissions comes with a built-in SAP Analytics Cloud license for users to access pre-built analytics reports via Performance Optimizer. Customers can purchase enterprise SAP Analytics Cloud license to build additional analytical reports and dashboards.

The SPM market is crowded, with the various options seemingly quite similar. SAP Commissions is a great solution for many companies. If you are evaluating SAP Commissions, feel free to reach out to me . I’d love to have a conversation about how it best fits your needs and your best steps for getting started.