“I love it when a plan comes together,” I can still see George Peppard (playing the role of Hannibal) lighting up his cigar at the end of each episode as he delivered his signature line in the infamous 80s TV action series, “The A-Team.” Yes, it was rebooted and put on the big screen in 2010, but we’ll just leave that one there.
But what’s in a plan, if it doesn’t come together? Unfortunately, ICM professionals have been hung out to dry for far too long. Overly-rigid applications that can’t adapt to your needs or overly-flexible ones that are impossible to maintain over time. Performio has just released Plan Builder, a revolutionary way to manage incentive comp plans.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Performio A-Team. Unlike the original A-Team, we’re not hard to find.
A solution to the plan management challenge in ICM
Introducing Performio’s Plan Builder— the most intuitive way to build and manage incentive compensation plans in the industry. The component-based Plan Builder makes managing incentive compensation intuitive and efficient for compensation professionals. We’ll break down the three ways this makes building and updating plans a game-changer for any organization.
1. Performio’s Plan Builder is component based (no rules…no formulas)
Historically there have been two different approaches to managing incentive compensation, formula -based solutions and rule-based solutions. Each of these approaches has their advantages and drawbacks and depending on the size and complexity of any organization’s incentive compensation plan, one of these may fit just fine…until it doesn’t.
Most organizations thrive on growth—growing teams, growing product offerings, growing services, and growing revenue. Especially when it comes to the complexity of sales compensation management (ICM), most organizations want to get ahead of changing needs and as any organization grows, there are key considerations to be made in order for them to scale. With both formula- and rule-based solutions there’s a doomsday clock of sorts where these simple ways of calculating sales commissions will eventually run out.
Over time, using these legacy systems become overly complicated, cumbersome, and very difficult to maintain. What we call the inevitable “rat’s nest” of logic leads to inaccuracies, inefficiencies, and eventual system breakdowns. This causes a lack of predictability and transparency across the business, sales comp admins are left holding the bag, sales professionals lose trust in the accuracy of their commissions, and executives don’t have access to the data to help them make smart business and management decisions.
This is where the third different approach to managing incentive compensation comes in and one that Performio pioneered, component-based solutions. Performio offers the only true component-based solution in the ICM market today.
Components are a big differentiator and Performio’s unique approach to achieving the best of both other ICM options: the flexibility of formulas and the ease of use of rules. With Performio’s component-based solution, you get a graphical user interface in Plan Builder that packages pre-built logic embedded in formulas and rules, which users can configure without any coding skills.
Component-based logic is designed to be intuitive and easy to use—without sacrificing any level of functionality, while being flexible and scalable for complexity and change, whether it’s big changes to your organization or your compensation plans. We provide prebuilt and reusable components for straightforward plug-and-play operation, but you can also build and customize components yourself by choosing from connected drop downs and leveraging guided workflows, all contained within a simple and intuitive user interface.
The other big benefit to components is that the pre-built logic behind them calculates a lot of values for you out of the box. For example Performio’s target-based incentive component calculates hundreds of values (achievement quarter-to-date, achievement year-to-date, achievement month-to-date, etc.). So, organizations get the benefit of hundreds of formulas in one component.
“So what,” you say? Why does this matter? Well, it's all about reporting and visibility - you're going to want to report on a lot of those values. So, rather than go back in and write another formula each time you think of a new value you want or need to report on - chances are it already exists and you just need to include it in the report. I don’t know if that warrants a mic drop, but, what the heck…Mic drop!
Our click-to-configure components achieve the same end result as formulas without you ever having to type a line of code. (Though should you ever want to, the actual formulas are accessible for you to edit directly as well.)
And unlike the limitations of rule-based systems, our components will never be the bottleneck holding you back. Performio’s ICM platform can handle the most complex ICM use cases and scenarios, no matter how many different compensation plans your organization may have or how complicated those plan structures may become.
Most importantly, component-based logic allows our platform to scale with your organization regardless of how large your business grows or how many sales reps you support. When you need to adjust a sales comp plan, components allow you to make the change once, and all other references to the altered component will update automatically. No more digging through dozens of formulas or hundreds of rules every time you make a change!
In fact we wrote an ebook that goes in depth into why components are so powerful, please download “ICM Under the Hood: A Guide to Formulas, Rules, and Components.
2. Performio’s Plan Builder is truly self-manageable
“Easy to Use” is a term thrown around alot in the ICM space and even wider in the overall SaaS industry. Every software claims to be the solution to end all of your worries and woes only to discover once you “look under the hood” so to speak, said software actually adds complexity and hassle to an already overburdened task. Let’s all level set, ICM is full of complexity and will never have an “easy” button solution, but at Performio, we truly have looked at sales comp differently than anyone else, and truly have a purpose-built solution that is best in class software for ICM.
Many ICM solutions claim to be the answer to all your evolving challenges in managing incentive comp. But at the end of the day, most end up either being an expensive version of spreadsheets or an overly rigid application that ends up dictating what kind of comp plan changes you can make to your incentive plans. Then in order to make plan changes, organizations end up having to use expensive professional services to accomplish this.
Plan Builder finally offers a true self-management experience. With Plan Builder you configure components using dropdowns & filters through a guided workflow. Again, no more getting lost in the complications and inevitable errors that come up when writing formulas or building rules.
When it’s time to modify your plans, there is no need to comb through a long list of confusing logic—simply modify a component or add a new one. Performio’s Plan Builder is fully loaded with structured, configurable and reusable plan components that let you manage incentive programs with these predefined components for fast changes and reliable payouts. There are three main components that enable this self-manageable functionality, plan components, crediting components, and payout rules components.
3. Performio’s Plan Builder is made for even the most complex plans
Throughout our over 20-years of expertise in building next gen software to help organizations manage their incentive compensation programs, we’ve heard it all. One of the most consistent comments we get from potential customers during the discovery phase is, “You haven’t seen a plan this complex, nobody can handle this level of complexity.” Because our platform is built on components, this actually simplifies those complexities.
Here’s an example. Let’s say one of your sales reps gets incentivised based on the new ARR and expansions and has to meet a specific tiered quota. This rep can also be encouraged to sell multi-year deals, and because of the complexities of the product itself, the rep has to go through the product training every year and get re-certified. That’s fairly complex… but you can always add a bonus if the entire sales team meets a specific goal too.
Well no one sells alone right? Let’s talk about crediting. As we mentioned before, we have components for that. These can handle direct, team, territory crediting but also roll-downs (used for company bonuses for employees), roll-ups and splits that are not as complicated as one may think. So your rep will need to split credit with an SE or SEs that helped to close the deal. There’s going to be a credit for team achievement in this scenario and some direct crediting to the renewals. So let’s sum this up…
Plan Components:
- The new ARR and Expansions are simple Target Based Incentive Components,
- Multi year Kicker would be handled by Component for commission per credit,
- The product certification is also Component for commission per credit
Crediting components:
- ARR closed with SEs we can handle by Direct Crediting Components with Splits enabled
- Expansions are simple to handle with Direct Crediting
- Entire sales team meeting goals can be personalized with Roll-downs or Team Components
What’s the magic here? This complex and complicated scenario can be handled by components. Because components have our ICM expertise embedded, our sleek, intuitive interface will lead you through setting up or optimizing these components. Usually, it’s about 3 steps to personalize your plan components:
- You name and set up effective dates, maybe decide if there is anything specific in this component that you want to report on later
- You then configure your performance measure but choose who will be paid for what achievement and on what conditions. Don’t worry you will not have to have to write any formulas. You’ll leverage data (labels) from tables, input boxes, and filters to decide on these specific.
- You’ll then define payable & rates and decide on weighting, achievement and payout frequency, how to handle adjustments and more. You don’t need to know all these details. The system will guide you and, with product tips, explain each field.
Supercharge your incentive compensation with Performio
Avoiding errors is just the icing on the cake of everything Performio has to offer. Because you don’t just need any ICM platform—you need the best.
Performio’s ICM solution gives you powerful tools for creating new sales comp plans, tracking performance of individuals and the team as a whole, calculating commissions, generating reports, and seamlessly communicating within the team.
Our software tracks everything for you, providing sales-comp admins with all the data they need to keep teams on course toward meeting their goals, and giving sales reps a real-time window into how they’re doing and what they can expect to earn.
And now with Performio’s new Plan Builder, there’s even more exciting things to share that will revolutionize incentive compensation management.
Ready to see what Performio can do for your organization? Request a demo today!