When Applause was looking to scale their commission and incentive processes, they turned to ZINKT to help make it happen.
Applause is the worldwide leader in enabling digital quality, helping the world’s greatest brands launch exceptional digital experiences that their end users will love. Through its Product Excellence Platform, Applause combines world-class software products, an enterprise-grade SaaS testing infrastructure, a wide range of digital testing solutions and access to the world’s largest community of digital experts to provide a harmonized approach to digital quality.
As the company’s compensation management requirements started to grow, they decided to upgrade their sales commission and incentive systems to Xactly Incent. But they faced other challenges. “We only had about 40% of the sales team being paid through Xactly.” explained Kelly Potvin, Vice-President, Corporate Strategy. “A large majority of the team was still being paid out of manual spreadsheet calculations.”
To make matters more complicated, many of those employees were also on different compensation plans, making auditing and compensation transparency even more challenging. “There were a lot of places where things could get out of sync really quickly. So, we wanted to reconcile those plans and handle all the compensation activity in one place: Salesforce.”
“ZINKT is a really powerful solution that I think is pretty critical for teams that live in Salesforce.” Kelly Potvin, Vice-President, Corporate Strategy
Getting started
After evaluating their options, putting priority on functionality, ease-of- implementation, driving Salesforce adoption and time to value, the team selected ZINKT as their partner. “ZINKT was going to save us money, about 50% over traditional methods to implement. We were going to get all the functionality we needed and ZINKT was going to collaborate with us to help get things done. They checked all the boxes.” In the eyes of the Applause leadership team, engaging with ZINKT was a win-win in their goal to ensure an exceptional employee experience for both their sellers and their finance staff. It was the Salesforce solution that would keep everyone working in Salesforce and they had the incredible processing power of Xactly Incent. They got all the functionality and flexibility they hoped for, at a cost that was surprisingly affordable.
“The ZINKT proposal was going to save us money … we were going to get all the functionality we needed … ZINKT was going to collaborate with us to get things done. They checked all the boxes.” Kelly Potvin
Collaboration, first and foremost
Bringing ZINKT into Applause was a collaborative process. The two teams worked hand-in-hand to manage implementation. “We were always brainstorming together, working together, tackling problems together.” said Kerri McCarthy, Controller, North America.
ZINKT managed the project very well and kept everyone on track. “The level of detail the ZINKT team went to during the discovery process was very thorough.” said McCarthy. “And not only was the team effective, but the way they managed the process, the kind of resources and tools that they used to run the project, were really helpful, as well.”
Pulling it all together in Salesforce
From the outset, the implementation was going to be complex. While ZINKT was bringing data streams from Salesforce and Xactly Incent together in the app, the Applause team was also working hard simplifying their compensation plans, automating previously manual processes, and running tests and audits to validate the data.
“We needed to make sure we weren’t missing deals, that we weren’t missing plan updates, managing MBOs, bonuses, ramping bonus, claw backs. We need to ensure data integrity across the board.” said Kelly Potvin.
ZINKT made a lot of this complexity easier by bringing the data and functionality into Salesforce. ZINKT leverages all the functionality and flexibility of Salesforce while adding new layers of data analytics and data visibility in the process. ZINKT users can use Salesforce functionality they are familiar with, like process builder, workflows, approvals, email alerts, views, reporting, and dashboards.
“If you want to live in Salesforce – ZINKT is critical to your incentive process.” said Kerri McCarthy.
Set up for success
With ZINKT now fully installed at Applause, the implementation team has started to see the benefits of their efforts. The team is using Salesforce much more than before because of the functionality ZINKT has brought to the platform. The longer-term hope is that ZINKT helps increase Salesforce adoption across the organization. “I’m using Salesforce more to manage everything.” said McCarthy.
But one of the biggest benefits for Applause is seeing how the ZINKT implementation has reduced some of the complexity from their sales, commission, and incentive management; especially important is they no longer rely on manual processes. “It was a complex implementation, because our plans are complex.” explained Potvin. “But ZINKT did a really great job of trying to make it as simple as possible for us, for the administrators, and super simple for our end users (sales).”
“I love the new system. I love what we’ve created. I know it’s going be here with us for the long haul. I know we set ourselves up for success.”
ZINKT makes things better
- One Stop Shop: All your sales, commission, and incentive datapoints available in the Salesforce platform
- Quick, easy-to-implement, easy-to-use: A powerful, customizable interface and dashboard drives Salesforce adoption
- Powerful revenue management tools: Gated approvals processes, audit tracking and data discrepancy analytics, improved revenue operations management
ZINKT helped the Applause team achieve their goals, saving time and money. They implemented an innovative and scalable solution that calculates and tracks commissions for all sales employees worldwide and improved the availability and accuracy of sales and commission data points. Just as importantly, they created a supportive and collaborative implementation process that made a challenging implementation, simpler.
“It’s a really powerful solution that I think is pretty critical for teams that live in Salesforce.” said Kelly Potvin.
