Working closely with our American colleagues, certain phrases and terminology have started to slip into my daily vocabulary - I have found myself "reaching out" and asking for the "conference bridge" to raised eyebrows from our more conservative English customers! So I thought it would be only fitting in my debut blog to give an ‘elevator' pitch - another American colloquialism I've picked up - for ICM software.
Incentive Compensation Management or ICM as it's abbreviated, sounds complex, however the premise is very simple. Consider a single repository for all variable pay data against which employee and channel partner performance vs. target can be measured, monitored and remunerated. Add into the mix a suite of easy to use tools for modelling and maintaining pay plans, workflow and authorisation controls, pay statements, and performance bulletins, and you have a powerful vehicle for driving and tracking sales performance. And the icing on the cake is, ICM will make money for your organisation and deliver a rapid ROI.
The concept is not new but an awareness that advanced software exists to aid companies in expediting a successful sales compensation strategy is amazingly low. The majority prefer to think that their processes and pay plans are unique in their complexities and that no single software application could possibly handle their requirements! Indeed, many organisations in Europe and in the US still rely on spreadsheets to calculate commission and bonus pay, staying wedded to their one-size-fits-all pay plans, and/or creating multiple databases, administered by numerous administrators to squeeze in new measures that can't be accommodated by the legacy database.
Executives cannot logically hide behind this security blanket any longer - getting incentive pay right can mean the difference between profit and loss, retaining and losing top sales talent, or leading and trailing the competition, etc. Advanced ICM applications offer a platform for tailoring pay plans to individual roles to communicate goals and targets. Setting achievement statements against individual goals, and delivering payments in a timely manner means sellers gain trust in the plans and the results - the organization can start to drive and truly pay for performance!
One of our customers, Cable & Wireless, took the leap of faith and saw its operating costs decrease by 37% after implementing our ICM solution, Merced Incentive Management. Likewise, STA Travel used Merced Incentive Management to push sales of higher margin travel products such as insurance and accommodation - as a result sales increased by 21% and 14% respectively in a 12 month period, with overall productivity up by 11%.
ICM solutions offer companies the ability to test new incentives in advance of being launched using an intuitive plan builder for modelling and maintaining business rules. In this way managers can be assured of accurate forecasting, that an incentive will actually work, and that the commission budget won't be blown - modelling or tweaking can be undertaken until the incentive is spot on. More importantly, all this can happen rapidly, so if a competitor launches a promotion one day, you can counter their efforts within hours.
Bloor Research has written a white paper on what to consider when looking for an ICM system. Check out a complimentary copy here: http://www.practique.co.uk/knowledge/whitepapers_bloor.htm
Well, my elevator pitch may have been a bit long, but we do have very tall buildings here in the UK and I do speak fast!