Today, an increasing number of companies are migrating to automated systems to make their business processes like sales, finance, and others more streamlined and secure. When they do, their employees are more productive, and they’re able to make their business processes more efficient.
5 Benefits AstraZeneca Received by Transforming Their Manual Sales Commission Process
Considering that manual commission calculations can be a laborious task, it’s easy to see why you would want to automate your compensation management. And that’s precisely what AstraZeneca did.
About two years ago, it did a full review of its manual incentive system, which resulted in the company implementing changes and system improvements with Performio. The result is that Performio’s incentive compensation management software now allows it to automate its commission calculations. In turn, it’s able to calculate sales reps’ commissions accurately and efficiently.
In this post, we’ll look at the 5 major benefits AstraZeneca received by transforming their manual sales commission process.
Reduction in Manual Processes Resulting in Cost Savings
At this stage, with 300 salespeople, Performio is the backbone of AstraZeneca’s incentive commissions process. The first thing the software allowed it to do, was to create a more efficient and streamlined workflow and approvals system. In doing so, the company was able to reduce its incentive analysts’ time spent managing commissions by 50%.
Before introducing the system, the company also struggled with, what it calls, shadow accounting, and its approval workflows which affects all its primary and secondary sales managers. Now, after the implementation of Performio, they’ve solved this issue.
The accuracy of the commission payments and transparency of the process have increased significantly, which is of greater value for the company because the software enables it to reduce its administrative burden substantially.
Ultimately, this allows the company to not only save money but time as well, which can then be channeled into other priorities.
Improved Analytics, Reporting, and Workflows
Another significant benefit AstraZeneca received when they eliminated manual processes by using Performio, is better analytics and reporting. This is because Performio has extensive analytics tools built into the platform.
These tools give them better insights into its commission cost per sale, which sales reps exceed their on-target commission (OTC), which sales reach their targets, and which don’t.
In addition to these analytics capabilities, Performio also offers extensive reporting and gives AstraZeneca, and any other company for that matter, the flexibility to create custom reports based on its specific needs and requirements. This includes everything from sales rep leaderboards, ranking reports, static reports, as well as aggregate reporting.
Alignment Between Incentives and Sales Performance
Apart from the cost savings mentioned above, automating its compensation management allowed AstraZeneca to achieve greater accuracy in their commission calculations.
And this is a massive problem, especially considering that, on average, manual calculations result in about 3 to 7% incorrect payments. Depending on the number of sales reps, this could add up to a significant amount. So, a tool that can reduce these overpayments brings about cost savings in itself.
But accurate calculations go further than just cost savings. It also enables sales reps to know that they’ll be paid the correct amounts. This, in turn, eliminates them turning to spreadsheets to determine what they were paid and what they should’ve been paid. As a result, they are more efficient and productive.
Apart from this, Performio also provides transparency over the compensation management system. This is a vital part of any incentive system, as it gives sales managers access to the approval workflows, which makes them, and sales reps, accountable sooner. For example, they’re able to identify issues or poor performance much earlier and, as a result, take corrective action.
Better end-user engagement and experience
Because AstraZeneca now uses Performio, sales managers have access to the data and they’re able to see exactly what they’re approving. Previously, for example, with spreadsheets, they could not always easily review each sale and the commission payout.
As a result, they’re also able to assess sales reps’ performance easier, which, in turn, simplifies the process of managing their team. So, ultimately, AstraZeneca now has better end-user engagement and an improved user experience in the incentive management process.
Audit trail and escalation pathway
Last, but certainly not least, Performio creates a full audit trail of the approval process. This allows AstraZeneca to see exactly what compensation plan a sales rep is paid on, the result they achieved, how much they were paid, and if a sales manager rejected a payment.
In turn, this functionality makes it easier for the company’s incentive administrators to measure commission results against the company’s policy or for HR to determine the issue when a sales rep disputes their payment. This also allows sales reps to know, with a fair amount of certainty, that they’ll be paid the right amounts.
In Closing
When you’re able to shift from using manual calculations to calculating sales commissions automatically by using an automated compensation management platform like Performio, you’ll enjoy several benefits.
Hopefully, this post, on why AstraZeneca invested in switching to Performio illustrated some of these benefits in more detail. To find out more about Performio and how it can help you make your compensation management processes more streamlined and efficient, visit our website for more details or request a demo.