At the very least, commission administrators equip themselves with comfy chairs for the long hours of calculation and reporting ahead of them. But other tools may prove effective in managing and processing commissions too. In fact, a few of the commission management tools we’ve found can minimize the time spent in that chair.
For those commission administrators still using spreadsheets as their primary tool, commission processing requires a heavy workload. They’re forecasting by hand, adjusting for commission exceptions one by one, and creating reports from scratch. Even if it’s hard to break away from the way commissions have always been done, there are a few tools that could supplement that process and make it a little easier. Adopt them all and it immediately cuts the workload by 30% to 50%.
For all those commission administrators sinking into their comfy chairs this pay cycle: we can help lighten that load.
“What are those tools,” you ask leaning forward in your chair …
5 Tools Every Commission Administrator Needs:
- A Report Builder: Something that allows a commission administrator to easily create a report can ease the need for long hours of report building on their own. Drag and drop tools that slide different metrics into place for easy consumption mean that the administrator is hunched over a computer trying to reconfigure a graph on Excel. It also means that all of the reports are saved in one place. Each cycle, the reports will automatically update with the new information. Even individualized reports for each payee are assembled with the click of a button. On top of everything else, they’re easily searchable if a question about rates or incentives comes up later. That’s one less thing they need to search for amid an ever-growing collection of spreadsheets. As luck would have it, Core offers a Rapid Report Builder with all of their packages, including Core Reporter.
- A Sandbox: We don’t mean the one your 2-year-old is digging in right now. A sandbox is a tool that simulates different incentive and commission scenarios without impacting existing rules. If a manager or executive comes to the commission administrator and asks them to provide insights into how a new commission rule affects revenue or costs, the administrator can use a sandbox to answer that question immediately rather than spending time adding up columns and measuring potential results. The Core What-If Sandbox is also included in most Core Commissions programs.
- Dispute Management Utility: Whenever a payee has a question or concern about their commission pay, they contact the commission administrator. That means the administrator takes time away from their existing projects to investigate analytics, reports, emails, and maybe even sticky notes to find the answer. And if the answer doesn’t come quickly, the payee is forced to continue to bug the administrator for a resolution. But if there’s a clear path for the payee to submit a dispute and have it reviewed, that pulls a lot of the responsibility off the administrator. With Core, our dispute management capabilities not only provide that path but it updates the payee regularly as to who is handling their question or concern and when they’ll get a response. The feature comes with our Enterprise and Managed Services programs.
- Exception Management Tools: Organizations rarely pay all of their employees the same exact way. We’ve found that around 10% to 20% of the time, at least one commission rule is handled differently. It could be an employee who was grandfathered in with a specific commission rate or a new product line that generates a different incentive than the rest of the merchandise. But those exceptions mean additional calculations for an administrator to determine. An exception management tool can be easily programmed to recognize these differences in commission rates or pay. And it’s also something that can be used through Core’s Incentive Building Tools.
- Analytics Tools: Both sales management and executives like to have easy access to numbers. Maybe the CFO is looking for a comprehensive sales report before the end of the day. That means spreadsheets, spreadsheets, and more spreadsheets. Unless the administrator has access to a tool that can easily generate that report for them. The analytics engine available through Core offers drag and drop options and can provide dynamic trending and drill down of metrics that are already in the system (since you’ve been using it to build all those reports). It can take five to ten minutes to produce what would normally take hours. And it can also be used to audit details like how many people got paid commission from a single invoice.
So for all those commission administrators sinking into their comfy chairs this pay cycle: we can help lighten that load. Contact us to get more information about what Core Commissions can do for you.