Motivator’s High-Level Graphical View Lets Planners See
Companies’ Overall Sales Comp Strategy and Control Outcomes
LEXINGTON, Massachusetts–May 7, 2007–Makana Solutions, innovative developer of on-demand software for sales compensation design, today announced the availability of Makana[SM] Motivator[SM], subscription software that helps the people responsible for designing sales incentive programs design, model, and produce the final documents for plan participants.
Targeted to small and mid-sized companies and priced at $495 a quarter, Makana Motivator is the first solution with robust modeling capabilities available for use without a full implementation of a production administration system.
Importance of Incentive Compensation
Sales incentive compensation is an important vehicle for attracting and retaining key employees and for motivating groups to work together to achieve corporate goals. More and more organizations are using incentive pay to reward individuals in all customer-facing roles, not just sales. With as many as 40 percent of employees qualifying for some degree of incentive pay, managing outcomes has become increasingly important–and failures increasingly expensive. Next to salaries, incentive pay is the second-largest line item for many companies, on average accounting for 10 percent of total revenue.
“I’ve met with many executives and compensation planners during the 15 years I’ve worked in this field,” said Elizabeth Cobb, president and CEO of Makana Solutions. “I’ve seen first-hand that most companies lack good tools for planning, instead relying on spreadsheet-based systems to develop, model, and test incentive pay plans. The stark lack of an effective solution is what inspired me to found Makana Solutions and to build and deliver Makana Motivator.”
Spreadsheets Don’t Solve the Problem
Because most companies rely on spreadsheets or other homegrown systems for sales compensation management, designing, documenting, and implementing plans are time-consuming and error-prone activities. Moreover, it is often difficult for compensation designers to visualize the big picture and to predict the total costs associated with the plan.
The difficulty stems from the way plans evolve. Plans for different roles may be designed by different individuals, documented in Word documents or spreadsheets, then reviewed by numerous people. By the time the finishing comments are completed, no one person has a view of the whole. So no one knows how plans will–or won’t–work together and what they are likely to end up actually costing the company.
Using the technology that has been available up to now, planners spend one to five months building sales incentive plans, with no guarantee that they are effective or even pay out as planned.
Makana Motivator: Powerful, Accessible, Affordable
Makana Motivator is a stand-alone design and modeling solution that is available over the web and is easy enough for customers to implement themselves. While straightforward to use, Makana Motivator is flexible enough to support sophisticated calculation structures.
Makana Motivator empowers designers to create more effective sales compensation plans by offering an intuitive workflow that leads them through the process of plan design and modeling. Best practices are built right into the design process, and graphical feedback is available every step of the way.
Makana Motivator’s modeling capabilities provide easy-to-interpret graphs that illustrate whether proposed plans will actually support the company’s business and sales objectives. Designers can see whether the plans will motivate individuals to work together to achieve company goals, and can ensure that plans stay within the budget for incentive compensation. Designers may also view comparisons to historical performance data.
When the design phase is complete, Makana Motivator automatically produces plan documents that show critical items such as personalized goals and earnings curve, and the breakout of incentive payout by component. They clearly define policies and procedures for administrative purposes.
Since users access Makana Motivator via the Internet, all data is maintained at a secure off-site facility. The on-demand software model enables Makana Solutions to offer a powerful product at a reasonable cost, and it enables customers to implement top-notch sales planning and design without intensive vendor support or IT involvement.
About Makana Solutions
Makana Solutions’ on-demand software helps companies design, model, and communicate sales compensation. When properly designed and paid, incentive plans communicate company goals and tell teams how to pull together to achieve them. For more information, see www.makanasolutions.com.
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Editorial Contacts:
Frances Y J Wheeler
Wheeler PR & Marketing
[email protected]
978-475-7970
or
Mary Schwartz
Makana Solutions
[email protected]
781-652-7020
