Cloud-based storage applications are a powerful tool for collaborative teams. In fact, we work with sales organizations of all kinds that use them for a variety of tasks. It’s a handy way to exchange commission data and manage commissions overall.
Recently a client of ours in the IT industry came to us with a request. The company wanted to use data stored in Dropbox, a cloud-based file-sharing application, to calculate commissions. Since we already integrated with a number of business applications, we were confident it could be done.
Integrations with cloud-based applications like Dropbox allow sales organizations to effectively collaborate on commission management.
Read a little about how we developed an integration with Dropbox.
What Dropbox Does
The popular file-sharing application offers not only storage but a way for teams to share information and collaborate on a variety of projects. Many companies use the tool as a way to provide access to documents, spreadsheets, and data to a wide range of team members. Anyone with a login can access shared files and much more.
Sales teams use Dropbox to save a variety of sales data necessary for downstream calculations. Through the application, everyone who needs access can update or review as needed. After updates are completed, our client loads the data in these shared documents into spreadsheets to calculate commissions. That’s when they further manipulate the information into individual reports to be emailed to sales staff. In addition to security issues with so many people having access to shared files, the manual process of calculating commissions and sending reports was time-consuming.
What The Integration Required
Our client gave us access to the Dropbox file that housed its commission data. As we do with all Core Commissions integrations, we customized an automated ETL routine to access that file. ETL stands for extract, transform, and load so this gave us the ability to pull any information we needed from the file, transform it into a format that is easily imported, and then load that data into the Core application.
Next, we created automated tasks that pulled any excel sheets from the file once a month. The data gets imported into the client’s commissions calculations for the previous period. The task also recognizes the names of each spreadsheet and matches them with the reports that need to be run through Core, pulling from the correct rows. Then commissions are calculated. All of this happens automatically every month.
How The Integration Is Used
Now that our client has their Dropbox connected to Core, they run monthly reports with a click of a button. It automatically generates reports, such as agent reports, agent usage reports, and a variety of other commission reports. All of this happens without anyone having to manually pull data from one place and type it into another. It’s saved time and resources for our client and provided them with an effortless method of commission management.
We’d be happy to help you connect your commission management with all of your business systems. Contact us for more information or schedule a free demo today. We can’t wait to build your custom integration.