Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Harnessing the Power of Incentive Compensation Management

Before joining my current company, I was a consultant at Accenture. Accenture is a large "global manaegment consulting, technology services and outsourcing company". I was in their Business Intelligence practice, where I first got involved with ICM projects.

I recently came across a 3 page article about Accenture's view and approach to incentive compensation management, and I thought it might be interesting to others.

The paper first gives a quick run-down of what effective incentive compensation can do. The main points are:

• Give companies the fl exibility to respond to rapidly changing
market demands and to quickly implement new sales
strategies and plans.
• Enhance the productivity of the sales force productivity
by increasing their confi dence in the incentive program.
• Support the most effective selling behaviors with leadingedge
technologies and tools.

They claim that their research suggests that a $1 billion business unit could boost their pre-tax profit by $13 million by using better motivational tools and incentives to increase performance of its sales people. That sounds impressive, but that's really only a 1.3% return - not bad, but very conservative compared to other estimates.

What I like most about the article is its framework to implementing an incentive compensation plan. However, this "framework" is not discussed at all, it is just a picture used as a space filler. The illustrated steps are:
  • Sales Force Design and Objectives Setting
  • Compensation Plan Design
  • Compensation Process Re-engineering
  • Compensation Organization Model Design
  • Compensation Plan and Hierarchies Setup
  • Compensation System Design, Build and Run
  • Enterprise Data and Systems Integration
  • Business Change Management

I'm not sure I understand how Data and Systems Integration can come before the "Run" phase, but it's a pretty graphic and it gives a good holistic view of building an incentive management system.

No comments:

Blog Search

Subscribe

Blog Directories

Sales Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Add to Technorati Favorites

Companies Linking to Me







Tags

About Me

My photo
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Julien Dionne is a well-rounded consultant with global business management experience and outstanding technical, business and leadership skills. He earned a Bachelor of Applied Science in Software Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, and he is a member of the Canadian Professional Sales Association. The views posted within this blog do not reflect the views of Julien’s current or previous employers and clients. Julien can be reached at julien.dionne@gmail.com
View Julien Dionne's profile on LinkedIn