Effective Dissemination Of Sales Incentives

New Delhi-based Team Computers' offer of the rewards and recognition Sales Tracker System fit best with the client's requirements.

The sales group at PepsiCo India was growing in numbers and it was getting
increasingly difficult to manage such a huge team - especially calculating
incentives. The need of the hour was a solution to aid easy capturing of details
of sales performance of the team and calculate incentives in an integrated
manner.

To implement a harmonious solution, PepsiCo approached New Delhi-based Team
Computers, which took up the project and designed the Rewards and Recognition
(R&R) Sales Tracker System. The R&R system as it is called, aids easy
capturing of details of sales performances of the company's sales team across
the country. It allows calculation of incentives in an integrated manner.

Ranjan Chopra  A solution was needed to capture details of incentives for sales team and calculate it in an integrated manner

Incentives are calculated at different hierarchical levels and divided into
three sub-systems according to the schemes implemented by Pepsi - Dare2Win,
Challenge of Champions and Ring of Honor.

The sales performance data of various levels needs to be uploaded by
respective superiors into the system. It has a provision for the next higher
level to approve that data. Based on this information, the sales score and
ensuing rewards are calculated.

Standardized incentive management

The key benefits of the R&R system include a standardized sales
performance capture template, speedy consolidation with least manual
intervention, productivity gains by automatic publishing of reports at various
levels of aggregation including HR and a centralized system available at all
locations across the country with quick disbursal of incentives. Over 400 users
in the organization currently use this system for calculating the monthly
incentives of all the field sales people and distribute the incentives as soon
as possible.

PepsiCo gave Team an earlier project to develop a Corporate Planning Software
from ground-up, which it completed successfully. Based on that success, the
solutions provider developed complaint management software for the Quality
Personnel of Pepsi.

Success in these two projects and a few other smaller assignments helped gain
confidence among the users of Pepsi. Due to the commitment and quality of work
Team had done for Pepsi, it was given the chance to work on this Sales R&R
Tracker System as well. This Delhi-based company is now a preferred software
partner of PepsiCo India.

Constant fine-tuning

The requirement in any software development project is that it should match
expectations of the client. In case of Pepsi, as their incentive scheme details
were being improvised even after commencing the project, it was very difficult
for the development team to design and visualize the system. Fine-tuning and
developing a system even as the scheme was unfolding was biggest challenge.

Another challenge was visualizing the ecosystem change that the new
application was bringing about. The need was also to define the modified process
flow around the new system, and enable users across the country to change over
to the new process flow. Team Computers took this as an important part of the
custom development process rather than focus merely on development and delivery
of the software system alone.

Another critical area was ensuring that the old data from the manual system
and other sales data consolidation systems were migrated into this new system.
This is generally a formidable task, consuming more time than the development
itself, especially to ensure that the data is transformed and imported into the
new system.

After many brainstorming sessions among a senior technology consultant, a
project manager, three developers and one documentation resource/trainer from
Team, the project was executed in three phases as per the incentives schemes
implemented by Pepsi. The total time taken for the completion and rollout of the
project was four calendar months.

Success brings business

Following the successful rollout of the solution for Along with this
project, Team bagged another project for Sales Incentive Management system from
Apollo Tyres, named as the Molon Lave- The Apollo Performance Points Tracker.

This system was to provide an electronic interface for the use and management
of the Molon Lave scheme. The incentive scheme covers the whole country and all
the sales persons at all levels of the five-tier hierarchy are monitored for
their performance against their targets. On the basis of performance achieved,
incentive points are calculated based on the rules of the scheme.

The need was to provide a system that allows the sales force all over the
country to be able to track their incentive points accumulated. It provides a
facility to the users to make their redemption requests online. Time taken for
the development and implementation of Molon Lave is three calendar months with
six man months effort.

Since its formation, from March to September 2005, Team Information Services
(TIS) has developed and deployed about five software systems for Pepsi and one
for Apollo Tyres. TIS has also completed three TOSS—Team Open Source software
implementation projects, providing Linux-based Internet/ Intranet infrastructure
for unlimited users, without any

user-based licensing and charging only for implementation services. This is to
uphold the spirit of open source community and bring in maximum benefits to the
customers.

With almost 100 members as part of the software group, Team Computers is all
set to offer software and implementation services primarily to their large
existing customer base, providing end-to-end solutions for them, including
consulting at affordable prices. Already operationally breaking-even in the
first six months of inception, TIS is aspiring to be a software force to be
reckoned in the domestic and international markets.

SUBBALAKSHMI BM