Incentive Compensation Management for Financial Services
Motivate employees and satisfy regulators with best-in-class sales performance management
Gain greater control of your sales compensation program.
The future of sales for the financial services industry has shifted dramatically over the past few years. With new technologies and processes available to streamline growth, organizations are entering a new era. This creates a world of opportunity for compensation executives to evaluate their sales team performance and adjust plans strategically. Yet, 62% of companies continue to leverage manual processes and Excel. How can they take on the daunting task of effecting change without the proper tool in place?
One of the top five largest banks in the United States had over 20,000 employees on a compensation plan using manual entry and spreadsheets. They saw the need to streamline this process to give employees visibility into their performance to increase motivation and a chance to ensure compliance. They succeeded by reducing the number of people involved in the manual calculation process which freed up other employees to focus their attention on more strategic responsibilities. The automation and centralization of data increased employee motivation and reduced risk through enhanced reporting and analytics.
Unique Complexities of the Financial Services Industry
Collect
- Multiple unique transactions sources (Loans, Deposits)
- Disparate and one-off source systems
- Flexibility to add/expand with M&A activity
Credit
- Crediting across products & LOBs (Retail, Commercial, WM)
- Managing manual Excel files and systems to credit
- Exception requests and processing credit override
Calculate
- Management of large populations and plan metrics
- Linked incentives (referrals, multiple products)
- Plan governance and additions of new LOBs
Compensate
- Standard logic across LOBs
- Scorecard input and management
- Management of external and manual processes
- Prior period adjustment
Communicate
- Dated reporting and user experience
- Aggregate performance summaries (branch, region)
- Lack of field self-service capability
- Feeding external stakeholders
How Do We Help
Foundational models are tailored based on client specific requirements, and increase the ability to realize
strategics differentiators and best-practices.
| DESIGN CATEGORIES | COLLECT | CREDIT | CALCULATE/COMPENSATE | COMMUNICATE |
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| Strategic differentiators |
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| Foundation |
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Clients From Around the Globe
“Sunrun maximized the value of our incentive compensation system, and we were able to increase overall sales volume of solar panels and batteries. We’re now able to better serve both our employees and our customers. The efficiencies generated from this new ICM system have led to an increase in deployment of solar across the United States.”
ROBERT YEAGER
Director of Compensation, Sunrun
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry rose to the challenge of creating a roadmap for an efficient, centralized ICM system for us. We started off with over 100 incentive plans throughout the bank in different lines of business, meaning the incentive administration was decentralized. With the help of OpenSymmetry, we have improved efficiencies by streamlining our incentive compensation administration to a single system.”
Kimberly Hinrichsen
VP & Sr. Director of Incentive Admin, U.S. Bank
Clients From Around the Globe
“After working [with OpenSymmetry], my whole world changed. From working with a huge, onerous spreadsheet system, it’s gotten simpler. It’s changed the game for everyone in the company. We have improved timelines for making information available for reps. It shifted my perspective to dig deeper into the data.”
Courtney Aubin,
Senior Sales Commissions Analyst, Blackbaud
Clients From Around the Globe
“Working with OpenSymmetry, we experienced openness, flexibility, and total commitment to our success from UK team. I was surprised that instead of coming up with solutions to fix our problems only, they were always looking for ways to simplify, streamline, and improve our processes in the same time. Due to that kind of commitment, we went from having over 100 configuration rules to just 27.”
Petra Maurova
Sales Rewards, SITA
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry helped us to evaluate our ICM program in a new light. Their technical and business expertise allowed us to understand the details of how changes would impact our system and processes. This enabled us to implement changes that would have the biggest impact on our business.”
Sales Operations Manager
Wacker Neuson
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry’s culture was a really good fit with T-Mobile. They were very open-minded and spent as much time listening and collaborating with us as they did telling us what needed to be done. That type of humility with such solid knowledge and capability was a perfect match for us.”
Clayton Tredway
Director Customer Care, T-Mobile
Clients From Around the Globe
“OpenSymmetry helped automate our data feeds and update our configuration of Xactly Incent, and these improvements helped us save approximately 7,200 hours per year by eliminating manual calculations, minimizing adjustments, and building trust in the data to reduce shadow accounting. When we got this working right, we reduced what took days to 3.5 hours. Time savings have been so key for us.”
Justin Ritchie
Senior Director of Sales Operations, Manheim (subsidiary of Cox Enterprises)
Clients From Around the Globe
“Working with OpenSymmetry, we have implemented a formal, auditable, trackable sign-off process for the payouts. It’s made a huge improvement. No more paper. Information is at associates’ fingertips 24/7. Managers can view sales results and compensation results for their teams, which leads to more effective and efficient management. The availability of information has made a huge difference.”
Jennifer Wooster
Vice President – Group Actuarial and Compensation Officer, Ameritas
Resources for Financial Services
Financial Services Incentive Compensation Professionals
LinkedIn Peer Group
Join our incentive compensation group exclusively for the Financial Services industry. Network with your peers, exchange ideas, and discover new tools and techniques that can help you grow.
Incentive Compensation Management
Infographic
In this infographic, the focus is on five key strategic and analytics challenges — and how Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) tools address these challenges.
SPM Challenges & Technology for Financial Services | Part I
Whitepaper
In this paper, we’ll address five strategic and analytical-related challenges, along with the accompanying considerations for securing a substantial return on an ICM solution investment.
SPM Challenges & Technology for Financial Services | Part II
Whitepaper
In addition to the 5 factors presented in part 1, there are also operational and administration challenges that are equally important when evaluating ICM solutions.
Sales Performance Management in Financial Services
Webinar
This webcast focuses on how common issues and risks related to sales compensation management and how high performing firms address these challenges.
About Us
OpenSymmetry enables clients to achieve greater operational efficiency and get better sales results. We are a global consulting company specializing in the planning, implementation, and optimization of industry leading technology suppliers of sales performance management solutions.