Elements That Will Define SPM in 2018
The Sales Performance Management (SPM) market continued to evolve in 2017, as an increasing number of organizations looked to upgrade their incentive compensation processes. With large enterprises realizing the effectiveness of cloud-based technology, they look for scalable solutions, to meet their increasing demands for visibility across the entire compensation process. With that in mind, we sat down to think what elements will define SPM in 2018.
1. Data and Insights
In order to talk about compensation in sales, you have to first get a real understanding as to what it is that should be driving your compensation. You need to understand:
- What kind of insights can we get about how effective our plans are?
- What’s correlating back with real results for the business?
- How can we fine-tune things over time?
Creating in-depth reports, reducing plan management costs, and preparing yourself for regulatory requirements are just some of the ways to use your sophisticated insights by capitalizing on your sales data.
2. Timeliness and Accessibility
2018 will continue to see the mobility of applications and data across all devices. With the increasing adoption of mobile devices in Sales, timeliness becomes critical. The focus going forward has to be making incentive compensation information available on an ongoing basis. People should be able to check every morning how they are tracking against their goals, which of their opportunities they should be prioritizing, and ultimately what's going to impact their pay. Waiting a month to know what you are earning—how you are achieving compared to your goals—should be a thing of the past.
3. Availability and Integration
Focusing on availability allows you to harness the full potential of integrating with a broader platform. As a compliment to timeliness, each element works towards making SPM data available where people work every day. Software integrations are known to increase effectiveness—Incentive compensation solutions already integrate with HRIS and ERP systems—but in the world of SPM there is a great deal of interest in being able to integrate with CRM solutions.
If your sales teams are working in a CRM solution and they want to see how their pipeline is lining up with their quota, it generally relies on capabilities that only reside in an SPM solution. By being able to integrate with a CRM platform, you can start to answer the most pressing questions—how is my forecast for business not closed lining up against my quota? What am I likely to get paid?—directly in the CRM interface.
4. Collaboration and Total Compensation
In 2017, an increasing number of organizations realized that their sales, finance and HR teams need to collaborate when it comes to compensation and performance. This realization stems from the arrival of new industry regulations and has compelled most companies to improve security and compliance measures, develop risk mitigation strategies and prepare for audits. As forerunners of the Total Compensation approach, we’re more than familiar with security, compliance, and regulations. Establishing an environment of trust in the SPM solution is a key factor. It enables full transparency, auditability, and traceability, eliminating most disputes.
In 2018 we will continue to promote the adoption of an integrated method to ensure that sales, finance, and HR work together.
Hear what’s to come in 2018 from SPM Strategist, John Weeks.
