TELUS turns “sharks” into “dolphins” with revitalized sales incentives

Global telecommunications company transforms company culture by implementing a new incentives platform

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TELUS introduced a new, company-wide model for customer service that required a complete overhaul of its incentive compensation plan. The existing plan ran on ancient spreadsheets and databases, delivered sales data three weeks late, and couldn’t scale with increases in headcount. With Anaplan, TELUS completely overhauled its incentive compensation system, dramatically reducing errors and fostering a call-center culture that prioritized collaboration and team performance.
Anaplan is really one vision of the truth. You can look at it from all angles.
Alyson Lougheed, Manager of Sales Compensation

1%

margin of error on accruals, reduced from 15%

7000

agent's compensation overseen

35

million sales transactions per month

  • SOLUTIONS

    Sales & Marketing

  • INDUSTRIES

    Telco

A global communications leader, TELUS had difficulty adapting an aging incentive compensation system to evolving business goals. The system operated on spreadsheets and 16-year-old databases, and delivered sales data three weeks after a pay period had ended. Only business consultant Matthew Sturrock knew where all the data lived.

Against this backdrop, TELUS introduced a new customer service model, “Customer Service 2.0,” which aimed to have call centers approach customers as unified teams rather than lone-wolf agents. The company also increased the number of call center agents from 2,000 to 7,000 worldwide to help handle more than 35 million transactions a month. Sturrock and Alyson Lougheed, Manager of Sales Compensation, knew the incentive compensation system needed to support these changes.

Lougheed and Sturrock worked with Anaplan Gold Partner Voiant, who created a proof-of-concept model in a few hours using Anaplan. Convinced of the platform’s power, the group devised the business logic for the new compensation platform, designed the compensation model, and completed the build in five months.

Lougheed and Sturrock’s new incentive program rewards team performance and customer service, resulting in a sales culture that is far more collaborative. Weekly sales data gives leaders granular visibility into sales performance, and financial accruals’ monthly error rate has dropped from 15 percent to one percent. Sturrock now spends more time developing higher-level analytics. “To me, it’s the speed,” he says of Anaplan. “Calculations get done immediately.”

Other benefits include:

  • Real-time data and regularized reporting across the company
  • Automated claw-backs save time and minimize disputes
  • Flexible compensation plans adapt to changing business priorities

Lougheed and Sturrock plan to expand Anaplan use to cover forecasting and “what-if” scenario modeling. “Anaplan is really one vision of the truth,” Lougheed says. “You can look at from all angles.”

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