On Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 1:00pm EST, Centive will host an exclusive webinar featuring a panel of prominent thought leaders in the areas of sales, CRM and business management. You will learn about strategic sales compensation management and gain a unique perspective on driving sales performance while gaining process efficiencies and reducing operating costs. The panel includes the following experts:

JIM DICKIE, a leader in sales effectiveness
Jim is a partner with CSO Insights, a research firm specializing in benchmarking how companies are leveraging people, process and technology to optimize the way they market to, sell to and service customers.

JEFF KAPLAN, expert in deploying strategic business solutions
Jeff is a managing director of THINKstrategies, a leading strategic consulting firm that helps IT enterprise decision-makers with their sourcing strategies.

DENIS POMBRIANT, leader in CRM and related sales technologies
Denis is a founder and managing principal of Beagle Research Group, specializing in emerging front office technologies. As a CRM analyst, Denis has tracked the evolution of the on-demand market from its inception.

Most companies today take a very tactical approach to managing sales compensation due to their reliance on spreadsheet-based compensation systems. These systems have a limited capacity to monitor plan effectiveness and adjust compensation plans as needed to control costs or to keep their sales teams aligned with company goals. Limited by spreadsheet-based systems, companies operate at a distinct disadvantage to those organizations that leverage automated sales compensation management systems strategically to drive sales performance.

To measure the level of strategic incentive management in your organization, simply check all statements that are true:

• We model various compensation plan scenarios and analyze projected revenues and costs associated with each model.
• We only deploy plans that fit within revenue and cost-of-sales parameters.
  
• We communicate plan details to align our sales representatives with corporate sales goals.
  
• We monitor and measure plan effectiveness on an ongoing basis.
  
• We integrate sales compensation with our CRM/SFA system to link pipeline activity to commission earnings.
  
• We provide sales representatives with up-to-date visibility into actual and potential commission earnings to keep them focused and motivated.
  
• We provide real-time performance data for sales managers and executives to enable them to measure and coach their sales teams.
• We adjust plan components as needed to ensure achievement of quota and revenue targets.

Results: if you checked 6 or more boxes, you manage sales incentive programs strategically, with exceptional savvy and efficiency. However, if you are like the other 80% of small and mid-size companies, you have probably checked fewer than 5 boxes. In that case, we invite you to learn more about strategic sales compensation and explore what impact on revenue and cost that would have in your organization.

You can start by taking a look at Compel^TM from Centive, a pioneer in the field of strategic on-demand sales compensation management. To learn more, register for the upcoming webinar on strategic incentive management, or take a product tour of Compel.

A recently published research paper examines the serious risks that companies using spreadsheets for financial reporting, including sales incentive management, run. The paper, published by the Association for Information Systems, is called ‘Spreadsheets and Sarbanes–Oxley: Regulations, Risks, and Control Frameworks’ by Raymond R. Panko, University of Hawaii.

Abstract:
The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) forced corporations to examine their spreadsheet use in financial reporting. Corporations do not like what they are seeing. Surveys conducted in response to SOX show that spreadsheets are used widely in corporate financial reporting. Spreadsheet error research, in turn, shows that nearly all large spreadsheets contain multiple errors and that errors of material size are quite common. The first round of Sarbanes-Oxley assessments confirmed concerns about spreadsheet accuracy. Another concern is spreadsheet fraud, which also exists in practice and is easy to perpetrate. Unfortunately, few organizations maintain effective controls to deal with either errors or fraud. This paper examines spreadsheet risks for Sarbanes-Oxley (and other regulations) and discusses how general and IT-specific control frameworks can be used to address the control risks created by spreadsheets.

You can obtain a full copy of the research paper for a small fee directly from CAIS by emailing the publisher (see below link).

As an automated, secure system, Centive CompelTM makes SOX compliance in sales compensation attainable and affordable by providing the required accuracy, audit tracking, process controls, and reporting capabilities. Delivered under the Software as a Service model, Compel runs in a carrier-class, SAS 70 Type II certified facility with uncompromised security, redundancy and disaster recovery. Compel keeps a complete audit trail of all changes made to plans and data, and provides standard audit reports. To learn more about how Compel can support your SOX compliance initiatives in sales incentive management, follow the link below and read Compelís financial compliance paper.