Emburse Success Story

Summary

As Emburse, the global leader in spend optimization, was actively growing and evolving, they came to a crucial realization: their commission management process also needed to evolve. They were still using a spreadsheet to calculate commission for half of their organization and Xactly for the other half— a process that typically took ten days and was plagued by frequent errors, which diminished their sales reps’ trust in the accuracy of their commission statements. Spiff’s platform enabled them to earn substantial time savings and increase confidence in their calculations— while providing the flexibility they needed in the midst of major change.

Key Results

• Decreased commission processing times by 80%
• Increased confidence in their commission calculations by 100x
• Redirected time and resources to projects that added value to the business

The Challenge

A slow, error-prone commission process caused sales reps to distrust their statements and hindered Emburse’s growth.

Emburse was experiencing rapid growth and undergoing significant changes as an organization because of it. In order for the company to grow at a consistent pace, every department needed to become more agile, with streamlined processes that were built to adapt to constant change. Jolena Juers, Director of FP&A, knew this urgent priority wasn’t being met when it came to their commission management process.

They had been calculating sales commission using two separate workflows — utilizing Xactly for half of the organization and an Excel spreadsheet for the other half. This process was incredibly time-consuming, preventing Juers’ team from focusing on more valuable projects that would support the business during a critical growth period.

“It took four people — my entire team — ten days to calculate the commission statements for our organization,” Juers said.

The fractured nature of their commission process led to a number of errors and inaccuracies. Their sales reps — who had no visibility into the status of their commission until they received an Excel file on the day they were paid — were rapidly losing confidence in the finance team’s calculations.

The Solution

Emburse needed a highly flexible solution that could evolve and grow with the company — which made Spiff a perfect fit. After a smooth implementation process, Emburse was able to not only reduce commission calculation errors but also save valuable time and resources.

As she evaluated commission vendors, Juers recognized Spiff as the most well-equipped to solve her team’s two critical problems: a slow, overly complicated commission process and the lack of confidence due to frequent errors it created.

Spiff’s ability to automate calculations dramatically reduced the time Juers’ team spent processing commissions every month. And with accurate, real-time commission data, the finance team was finally able to gain the trust of the sales team.

Right away, Spiff provided a degree of familiarity, as its Excel-like formulas were easy for Juers’ team to quickly understand. More importantly, the platform offered the flexibility that Emburse’s evolving organization required. Their commission plans were constantly changing, so they needed a truly dynamic solution — and Spiff made it easy to update commission plans with a few simple clicks.

Spiff’s “spectacular” implementation team immediately made Juers’ team feel comfortable with the platform, laying the foundation for them to quickly build and iterate commission plans on their own. And, instead of going back to the implementation team when she had a question or needed to reimplement a change, Juers consulted Spiff University and quickly found the answers she was looking for.