AVEVA

AVEVA Select Central, formerly Wonderware West, is an authorized distributor of AVEVA software in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions. As one of the world’s largest Aveva sales and support providers, they offer industry-specific Select Central for industrial software needs.

The Challenge

AVEVA Select Central had previously used Callidus Cloud, but found the software was diffcult to support and the user interface was complicated to navigate. They ended up resorting back to a proprietary system to calculate and communicate incentive compensation for their sales staff. The process was time consuming and prone to errors due to a lack of automation.

“For a company of our size, the commission plans were fairly complicated,” explains Jason Bass, President and General Manager, AVEVA Select Central. “Across our sales team, there were multiple personas within the organization and each persona had four or five components that drive their individual comp plans. In addition, every sales rep has different quotas, base rates, accelerators, and salaries. The inside sales team also gets compensated differently based on product and industry. We needed a better way to support all of those different plans and we needed the flexibility to make changes to those plans as necessary.”

The Solution

AVEVA Select Central’s main goal for a new software solution was to automate commission calculations. In addition, they wanted better transparency for their participants. They wanted their sales reps to be able to see the data and have confidence in knowing that their commission checks were accurate. There had been issues in the past with their sales people not trusting the data and going back and doing their own shadow accounting. They also wanted a software solution with an intuitive user interface that their participants would feel comfortable using. Finally, it was critical that the software could integrate with their SAP ERP data.

“We went through several demos and evaluated a number of vendors. Performio could meet all of our requirements, but it really stood out for its superior user interface,” says Bass. “We knew with Performio that the users would like using the software and feel comfortable with it. We also wanted to stop relying on expensive consultants every time we wanted to make a change to the comp plans.”

The Results

Today, the finance team calculates sales comp daily by entering SAP data into Performio. They pay commissions monthly and the sales managers, Controller, and General Manager review the data in Performio each month. The biggest time savings resulted from the automation of pulling all the data into Excel and making it customized, private, secure, and visible for all participants. The process which used to take 10 - 15 hours each week, has now been reduced to a couple of hours. In addition, the commission calculations are much more accurate because human error can always occur with an Excel-based process. Another major benefit was that sales managers and sales reps now trust the results and no longer waste time calculating their own commissions. This means the reps can spend more time selling.

“The implementation was great,” says Bass. “When we started down the path with Performio we did not have everything defined ahead of time. The professional services team did an amazing job reviewing our requirements and comp plans and getting the product implemented on time and working perfectly. It is an order of magnitude better than what we had before. Previously, when people needed changes made they were not shy about asking for them, but with Performio there are no requests for changes and the reps are happy with the solution.”

“Performio is a great product,” says Bass. “It is working for us and our needs are absolutely being met by Performio. It’s transparent and cost effective. We have never had a problem with our commission plan since we adopted Performio and our users love it.”