The Company

Our client is the largest conference - call service provider in the world. They serve over 400,000 individual conference leaders in more than 40,000 organizations around the globe with a range of audio, web and video conferencing services. They have a strong U.S. presence, which includes five call centers and 26 sales offices across the world.

Current Scenario

The client has over 500 sales representatives. Sales commission is an integral part of their remuneration. Currently, the client manages the commission payment to the Sales Representatives through a manual system that is maintained in an excel spreadsheet.

Business Problem

This system is working but is very labor intensive and lacks automation. It was meant to support a smaller sales team. As the business and the sales team grew, it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage multiple compensation plans using the spreadsheets.

Because spreadsheets lack the ability to filter data, they had to use separate spreadsheets to administer individual plans for each and every commissionable employee, making this a labor-intensive process.

Since spreadsheets have no databases, it was hard to track complicated compensation plan variables that can easily include products, territories, commission rates, and more.

Solution

• Develop a web based application that duplicates the functionality of the current manual commission system.
• Design and execute a User Interface similar to Microsoft Excel and a technical framework that can suit any business scenario. The system should be scalable to handle ever increasing business needs.
• Maintain a detailed audit trail of the formula (incentive calculation and percentages) for every month and year for each sales rep, office manager, regional manager, general manager and others.
• Define and develop month-end and year-end closing routines.
• Generate reports for each sales representative and office manager combination with an option to print just the data or just the comments or both.
• Provide security levels based on client requirement
  
• Export to multiple document formats such as MS Excel, word document or .xml format, if needed
• Maintain back-up of the data for the past four years. The data should be archived every month and have an online backup and an offsite backup.

Results

Lister was called in to study the need and develop a solution. Now, Lister has replaced cumbersome spreadsheets with a newly designed and built automated sales commission system. The system improves timeliness and accuracy in calculating and delivering incentive compensation. The system also enables sales representatives and managers to track performance and actual commission earnings.

The overall sales incentive process is now integrated, smooth, efficient and it takes significantly less time to manage.

Benefits

• Quicker & more accurate commission payout process
• Easy reporting for management
• Effective audit system. Anyone can change the data based on the requirement
• The web based excel interface is used which is completely formula driven and can link to any database
• The sales commission for the individuals can be calculated for any year end or month end
• The role of every individual operating the sales commission reporting system is clearly defined
• The dashboard developed in sales commission is easily customizable and can be made using flex charts
• User-friendly interface enables training team members with limited IT knowledge
• Role based access privileges for security

Architecture

• The Sales Commission System is based on Microsoft .NET architecture and uses AJAX.
• The front end is developed using asp.net and the coding is done through C#.
• The back end is developed using Oracle database. This system can be developed for use with MYSQL, SQL server, to name a few.