Transforming Global Compensation: A Q&A with Trinity Hoang of Drata
In this Q&A, Trinity Hoang, Director of Variable Compensation at Drata, shares her firsthand experience in overcoming the complex challenges of managing commission plans for a rapidly growing global company. She discusses the transition from cumbersome manual processes involving spreadsheets and one-off documents to a streamlined, automated system with Xactly.
Read on to learn how her team leveraged Xactly for CRM to eliminate shadow accounting, improve sales team trust, and achieve significant ROI by solving complex international payroll and currency conversion issues.
Q: What challenges did you face prior to using Xactly?
Hoang explains that before Xactly, the company's variable compensation process was entirely manual and inefficient. It relied on a combination of Excel spreadsheets, Google Docs for adjustments, and DocuSign for distribution, with each compensation plan being emailed one by one. This process was particularly burdensome during mid-year territory and quota changes. As a rapidly growing company, they lacked the ability to efficiently close periods or maintain a clear audit trail for the frequent adjustments.
Q: What stuck out to you about Xactly for CRM when you were evaluating solutions?
Hoang was immediately drawn to the concept of Xactly for CRM acting as a separate layer on top of Salesforce. This feature allows her to make adjustments to data without altering the core integrity of the information in Salesforce. She emphasizes that this was a huge benefit because it creates a clear audit trail, where she can add notes and reasons for any changes, such as reassigning credit between sales representatives.
Q: How has Xactly for CRM impacted the day-to-day productivity of the sales team?
Hoang states that Xactly for CRM has eliminated a significant amount of "shadow accounting" for both the compensation team and the sales team. Sales reps can now trust the data they see—from credits to commission rates—which allows them to focus on selling instead of calculating their own pay. For Hoang, it has centralized all adjustments and analyses into one platform, allowing her to easily view data from both Salesforce and Xactly in a single, consolidated location.
Q: What do you enjoy most about working with Xactly?
Hoang enjoys working with the people at Xactly. She describes her Account Executive as being highly professional and effective at providing all the information she needed to make an informed decision.
Q: What has been the biggest ROI since implementing Xactly for CRM?
According to Hoang, the most significant ROI has come from implementing the entire Xactly platform. The company expanded its use from just the sales team to managing variable compensation for every employee with a variable pay component, including customer success and business development.
A major benefit has been leveraging the foreign exchange (FX) rate functionality. Previously, paying international employees in USD created accounting discrepancies and reconciliation headaches due to fluctuating conversion rates. By using Xactly to set a consistent, company-wide FX rate and pay employees in their local currency, the company has saved significant time and energy, eliminating a major pain point for the accounting team.