Surveys Find 84% of Sales Compensation Management Systems Are Homegrown

BURLINGTON, MA – A series of on-line, “blind” surveys developed by Centive, the leader in on-demand sales compensation management, found that 91 percent of organizations polled believe that sales compensation systems should be a strategic tool used to affect behavior and drive sales performance. However, 84 percent rely on “homegrown” systems to automate this key function and 67 percent believe those systems did little to drive sales performance due to lack of real-time performance analysis and perceived accuracy issues. Fifty-six percent believed their existing solutions do not allow for accurate and on-time commission payments.

“The Sales force is the engine that drives every company’s revenues, yet the way in which their pay is calculated is the least automated function in most mid-sized companies,” said Michael Torto, president and CEO of Centive. “This survey validates previous analyses that show most organizations continue to rely on Excel, a desktop application, to manage sales compensation. These homegrown systems provide no centralized system for modeling, managing and reporting sales compensation and provide no strategic value in terms of optimizing sales performance. In addition, they require a great deal of manual intervention, introducing risk in terms of accuracy and security.”

Survey respondents identified the top “pain points” in their sales compensation management systems as:

• Lack of visibility into real-time sales rep performance metrics
• Time it takes to roll-out new plans or modify existing plans
• Lack of automation/too many manual processes
• Lost sales focus/too much time dealing with sales reps complaining about commission payment errors
• Accuracy in commission payments (26%)
• Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues/manual process, no audit tracking, etc. (5%)

The Centive-developed surveys were distributed in late July and early August. Respondents included vice presidents and managers of Sales, Compensation/Benefits and Sales Operation functions; CFOs and financial controllers; Human Resources staff; and general corporate management.

“Affordability, security, auditability and ease-of-use were the top four respective attributes these respondents identified as most important to them when it comes to sales compensation management,” continued Torto. “Centive Compel™ proactively addresses each of these issues. As an affordable, on-demand sales compensation management system, it is clearly an ideal solution for companies struggling with homegrown systems.”

Centive Compel automates all sales compensation in one centralized system that provides the accuracy, security, audit tracking and process controls lacking in home-grown and Excel-based sales compensation systems. With Compel, businesses gain full control over a critical business process, including a complete audit trail of all changes made to plans and data, a single solution for managing commissions, bonuses and SPIFs, and a system that provides the security and process controls needed to support Sarbanes-Oxley compliance initiatives.

Centive has partnered with leading consulting, implementation, platform and software partners to deliver the benefits of Centive Compel to companies with 50-500 sales reps.