Kick the Excel Habit - Your Best New Year’s Resolution Yet

We all know that using Excel to calculate Incentive Compensation is a manual, often error riddled and clunky process, but the use cases for Excel are seemingly endless. 

With a tendency to grow unmanageable and with too many examples of user input error, Excel was never the most reliable way of calculating incentives, tracking territory performance, or reporting on quota attainment. That’s why organizations are rapidly adopting automated Sales Performance Management  tools that increase efficiency and generate significant cost savings by informing, planning, optimizing and rewarding seller performance.

When looking at implementing any new technologies, return on investment is typically the main consideration companies look at. However, as we look to the New Year, it might be worthwhile to consider the personal benefits of adopting a Sales Performance Management solution.

Thinking about our individual New Year’s resolutions we can fully see the win/win benefits of these technologies. Let’s consider how Sales Performance Management can help us kick the Excel habit by looking across these three common New Year’s resolution categories:

• Time: Most people value their personal time more than their work time. So much so, that we often pay for services to maximize our personal time; from having the house cleaned and lawn serviced, to delivery of dry cleaning and groceries. The same can be done in the working world. Instead of spending late nights correcting incentive errors or responding to yet another irate sales commission inquiry, why not invest in an SPM solution that assures accurate and timely incentive payouts?
• Health: In 2021 survey of mental health, 57% of North American workers reported feeling stressed on a daily basis. Like most modern corporate roles, the world of sales compensation features no shortage of stressors. Sales incentive professionals are constantly balancing tight payroll cycles, high-stakes data quality reviews, explaining complex payments to driven sales personalities and providing insight to stakeholders like the CFO and CHRO. Imagine spinning these plates all in Excel. Now imagine paradise – an automated SPM solution that can handle all of the above, and more.
• Enrichment: Is 2022 going to be the year where you earn that promotion, win the trust of your sales team, and provide insights to your corporate partners? Or is it going to be another year of squashing bugs in Excel, hoping that next year’s sales compensation plans will get simpler, instead of more complex? By moving from Excel and onto an SPM platform, compensation professionals spend less time figuring out how to stretch Excel’s limits and more time offering strategic insight into how the sales team can exceed expectations. These higher value job functions are not only more interesting, but they also provide a basis for increased personal compensation and promotion.

Thinking about ditching Excel for a solution that works for you? We’d love to help you become more organized, gain back time back and feel less stressed by having software automation work for you and your goals. Consider talking to us  about how an SPM solution could benefit both your organization and your personal life. We’d be happy to set up a 30-minute call to review your SPM needs and goals.

Wishing you a safe and Happy New Year!