HealthTech Cures Compensation Management Woes with Xactly Express

Testimonials & Case Studies / HealthTech Holdings

Download the PDF

 

“One of the big benefits of Xactly Express is that now, when we want to make a change or do something different with compensation, we're not having to figure out how we're going to compute it. With Xactly, we can focus on really designing a plan that makes sense. Why waste time managing via spreadsheets when there is a system like this to do it for you?”

- Luke Lamphron, Corporate Controller

 

About HealthTech Holdings
Headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., HealthTech is a health information technology company that owns Healthcare Management Systems (HMS), MEDHOST and Sentry Healthcare Services. HMS is an enterprise-wide technology platform servicing the full needs of growing community hospitals. MEDHOST is a provider of leading healthcare throughput and emergency department software; and Sentry Healthcare Services, Inc. is a financial and operational service provider to hospitals.

Challenge
HealthTech owns technology companies focused on the creation of value for the healthcare industry. With the rapid digitization of healthcare, demand for HealthTech’s broad portfolio of products and services was booming. To sustain this rapid growth, HealthTech needed to look at new ways to maximize its sales performance, rapidly onboard new sales personnel and get the most value from its sales commission spend. But first, a significant roadblock to productivity needed to be removed: a widespread reliance on spreadsheets for managing sales compensation across its operations.

“Multiple people worked each month calculating commissions in spreadsheets,” explains Luke Lamphron, Corporate Controller. “Yet despite all the effort, sales remained in the dark due to the plan complexities and lack of easy-to-comprehend visual reports. This made it very difficult to be strategic with compensation.”

By early 2010, limited management visibility into commissions and the time that had to be spent each month administering compensation plans and calculating payouts had escalated into major pain point. Consequently, as HealthTech moved forward continuing to implement Salesforce CRM, it decided to automate its sales compensation management in parallel.

Benefits at a Glance

• Real-Time Visibility into Commissions
• Increased Sales Performance
• Faster, More Efficient Commissions Processing
• Dynamic Alignment of Plans with Goals
• Faster, Easier Sales Rep On-Boarding

The Solution
HealthTech was first introduced to Xactly at Dreamforce 2010. After evaluating Xactly Express, the HealthTech team determined it had all the right functionality – including real-time visibility and fast, accurate commissions processing – necessary to make sales compensation a truly strategic revenue and profit driver for the company. The cloud solution was rolled out in a matter of weeks to more than 55 sales reps across HealthTech’s Healthcare Management Systems (HMS) and Sentry companies.

“It was a very rapid and smooth implementation, and there was not a whole lot of training required as Xactly Express is so easy to learn and use,” claims Lamphron. “A short email outlining the key points got the majority of people using it successfully, followed by individual training with various departments. It really was that simple and the reps are very happy with the new system.”

Real-Time Visibility
In replacing spreadsheets with Xactly Express, HealthTech immediately achieved the real-time visibility into sales compensation that it previously lacked. Sales reps are now able to clearly see how they are being paid and where they stand compared to their compensation plan, anytime from anywhere, as opposed to waiting to see monthly spreadsheet-based statements that were confusing and hard to read. Finance no longer has to hold time-intensive, commission follow-up meetings each month to explain how payouts where calculated.

Sales management has also benefited greatly from the new visibility. “In a meeting with sales management to go over the new system, the manager told me this is the simplest way he has ever been able to view some rather complex compensation plans,” says Lamphron. “Now he can go into Xactly Express directly, look at specific deals, and make sure everything lines up – it’s a huge change.”

Increased Sales Performance
HealthTech’s real-time visibility into sales compensation is also resulting in increased sales performance, just as the company had intended. Competitive by nature, sales reps are driven by results, and Xactly Express enables them to see their results when it matters – when they can still alter their behavior to improve results, and not just after the fact. “Sales reps now have easily accessible dashboards showing their quota attainment to date,” claims Lamphron. “Since we rolled out Xactly, I’ve had several reps specifically tell me ‘according to the system, I’m right here, this far from quota, and here are the three or four deals that will put me over the top.’ Knowing where they stand on quota at any point is definitely giving them that extra drive to excel.”

Faster, More Efficient Commissions Processing
Another beneficiary has been finance, which used to have to pull multiple people away from other more strategic tasks so they could help process commissions each month. Now, instead of a team working for multiple days, one person handles the task in just a couple of hours. “Our billing and collections people used to be tasked to help with sales comp on a regular basis,” explains Lamphron. “Xactly Express has enabled us to apply these people back to billing and collections, full time.  Consequently, even while we’ve increased our billings significantly this past year, we haven’t had to add any new staff to handle the additional volume.”

In tandem, HealthTech also has gained through Xactly Express a well-documented history of commissions and of compensation decisions for financial audit and compliance purposes.

Onboarding new sales reps has become a more streamlined process. According to Lamphron, “adding a new  rep doesn’t add any complexity to what we’re doing, nor does it demand any extra time from us – now that we’re automated, it’s just one more person who comes out on the list, as opposed to a whole new spreadsheet.”

Dynamic Alignment of Plans with Goals
Enhanced business agility has been another benefit for HealthTech, specifically the ability to make changes and better align sales and sales compensation plans with corporate goals. With Express, management can quickly pull reports see at a glance which sales teams and divisions are performing and to compare them all against each other. “Xactly Express is giving us additional insights into performance that we wouldn’t have otherwise,” says Lamphron. “It is helping us see which departments are doing well and which need additional attention, so we can intelligently apply more resources or simply shift our focus away from chasing a certain type of tough-to-capture business.” 

Moving forward
As HealthTech continues to grow, so do its plans for using Xactly. Xactly Express will soon be rolled out to yet another subsidiary, MEDHOST.  The company is also continuing to ramp up its use of Xactly Express’ out-of-the-box reporting capabilities to help drive informed executive and compensation committee decisions around commissions.

Concludes Lamphron, “One of the big benefits of Xactly Express is that now, when we want to make a change or do something different with compensation, we’re not having to figure out how we’re going to compute it. With Xactly, we can focus on really designing a plan that makes sense. Why waste time managing via spreadsheets when there is a system like this to do it for you?”