Every piece of technology and software that your sales organization invests in needs to earn its keep, right? To rely on any system that is inaccurate, cumbersome, and untrustworthy is a false economy. You know this is especially pertinent when it comes to your business’ SPM solution. Partnering with sales software that is consistently inaccurate, often lacking in transparency is not just a recipe for frustration and resentment among the sales team but will quickly lead to opaqueness around reporting and figures, more shadow accounting and as a result – more time and effort for auditors attempting to balance the numbers.
So that’s possibly the gloomiest of forecasts, but that should never be the outcome when your software is a reliable, accessible tool designed to keep the auditing and compliance team calm and your bottom line buoyant. In this blog, we’ll look at the main issues of expensive and endless auditing and of course, what you can do to overcome it.
What’s the Problem?
One of the main things to attract the unwanted skills and attention of auditors is if the information and data they’re receiving are from multiple sources and systems. To look at a “before and after” situation of siloed, unreliable processes versus a universal SPM solution, Varicent commissioned a Forrester study to report on the economic impact of making this significant upgrade. One of the significant findings was that legacy systems were indeed falling short of both internal and external auditing requirements.¹ More specifically, there were major concerns over the errors in manually inputting into spreadsheets across siloed systems, generating real concerns not just around the accuracy of incentive compensation payments, but security risks as the system wasn’t seen to be watertight which increased the real possibility of hacking and files being accessed and overwritten.
For the auditors trying to make sense out of chaos, this added many more days and weeks to the job – and that cost the business lots of money. For those that had been using the legacy systems, such as the sales executives, it meant many hours spent shadow accounting and knocking on the door of the finance team as they disputed the final figures on their wage slip.
One SPM Solution, One Single Source of Truth
The answer to these ongoing woes came in the form of a one-stop-shop SPM software solution, such as the solutions and tools offered by Varicent. While investing in something new may seem like a leap of faith, the benefits have proven to be more than enough to pacify most of those working in auditing and compliance.
Benefits of a robust SPM solution include:
- Automated, streamlined processes: By significantly reducing user inputting error, the output can easily be analyzed by anyone auditing. Rather than trying to just comprehend the information, they can get straight to the focus of auditing. For example, Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) software provides a shared and accurate account and calculation of where every individual and team sits in real-time, what they’re achieving, and how much should be paid out. This element alone could give your business back 80 percent of the time spent previously on auditing and compliance.
- Effective and improved operations: From ensuring a fair incentive compensation plan is being carried out to reducing the number of disputes and queries that can arise over this and the often complex allocation of quotas and territories, this type of software platform keeps everything and everyone moving in the right direction. When a territory is under-resourced it stretches the team working on it beyond reasonable capacity, making sales targets almost impossible. By using a software tool to moderate this and call out where there is a disparity, the problem can be easily solved which is yet another problem to remove from the auditors’ checklist.
- Motivation, trust, and focus: With a solid, straightforward, and transparent SPM solution in place, sales professionals’ level of trust is built, so they feel motivated, secure in their role, and confident in their ability to perform. Nor are they distracted by the need to perform shadow accounting when checking their ICM status, which according to those participating in the Forrester study added up to an impressive 60% of time saved².
- Quantifiable hours recouped: Whether you’re working with an internal or external auditor, the number of hours and weeks spent on accounting can be a worry. As can the forensic investigations of both the books and grilling of staff. Any reduction to billable hours is money that can be reinvested into other streams of revenue. And if your employees are not being questioned (because the SPM software platform makes sense), they can also be using their time for more lucrative tasks.
There are of course many reasons and advantages for using an SPM software platform, but by homing in on the monetary benefits and how it works to meet the terms of auditors, you’ve got a business case already.
Find out more on how the Varicent SPM solution proved to be a worthy match for auditors and discover all the other potential cost savings and benefits by downloading the Forrester Study today.
¹Page 7-8: The Total Economic Impact of Varicent™ Sales Performance Management
²Page 18: The Total Economic Impact of Varicent™ Sales Performance Management
