Compensation Management Continues to Be a Struggle for Companies with Large Sales Forces, According to Mark Coleman, Sales Compensation Expert

MINNEAPOLIS, April 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Paying commissions accurately and on time can be a big challenge for fast-growing or recently merged companies with large sales forces. Faced with these challenges, companies often turn to technology for answers. However, many are finding that even after making significant investments in technology, they still have significant issues. A new report entitled the Top 10 Reasons Sales Compensation Implementations Can Struggle to Deliver Value has identified the failure to streamline processes and simplify complex business policies to be the number one reason these projects fail to deliver value.

"The first step when looking to improve sales compensation processing is a thorough review of the current operation -- to make sure you really understand the root causes underlying the problems," says Mark Coleman, Managing Director with Compensation Analytics.

If GM were planning to put new robots on its assembly line, then they would certainly take a good look at their end-to-end manufacturing processes. The same goes for compensation processing, because more often than not, compensation issues have multiple root causes -- including technology.

Understanding the root causes is a crucial step in designing new solutions and is also required to guide technology selection and to facilitate a meaningful user acceptance.

"We help clients by conducting Operational Assessments which benchmark core processes and sort out symptoms from structural problems. It is a quick and comprehensive review and looks at the entire compensation ecosystem -- from plan design and administration to skill coverage and the use of current technology.

"By doing so we can pinpoint hot spots, evaluate and prioritize both short- and long-term solutions, and then recommend initiatives that make a big impact with the field," says Coleman.

As Bill Gates once famously said -- "Automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency, automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."

Far too frequently projects become obsessed with the technology and these critical areas go unaddressed. The result -- a huge missed opportunity or an expensive technology solution that has added yet another layer of complexity.

About Compensation Analytics, LLC

Compensation Analytics is a boutique consultancy that specializes in solving sales compensation processing problems for companies with large sales forces. For more information, visit http://www.compensationanalytics.com.

Contact: Ruthanne Reddy
Telephone: (952) 583-5647
Fax: (952) 314-8120
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Compensation Analytics, LLC