Every year brings new challenges and changes to a company’s existing compensation plan. New divisions and acquisitions, as well as additional locations are all factors that can cause a company to revise their current compensation plans. Existing groups tend to make small tweaks to their plans as well. With all of these constant changes, once you implement a new compensation management system, what happens in years two, three, four, and five of the contract?
Prospects looking for a new compensation management system almost always have similar issues with their existing vendors. The two most common reasons we hear from prospects is their inability to configure the system themselves, and because the cost the vendor charges to re-configure the system each year after go-live is too expensive. Keep in mind, even if the product has self-service capabilities, your team still has to have the ability to configure the system appropriately. If your organization decides to create a new short-term incentive plan, will your system administrators have the training and capabilities to configure that plan yourself or will you need help from the vendor? If you need help from the vendor, will they charge you each time? It is rare for a client to keep the exact same plans year over year; plan calculations and percentages change as the organization evolves from year to year.
When researching vendors make sure the organization has a plan in place for how their team will configure the compensation management system after go-live. The initial system setup with the vendor will be the easy part, what happens in the subsequent years will dictate whether your new vendor is a good long-term fit.