How FarEye’s Finance & RevOps teams simplified sales commissions management while aligning to a complex, dynamic business

With the business evolving constantly, sales compensation policies at FarEye needed to align to these changing needs, which was inefficient to track using spreadsheets. FarEye shifted to Visdum three years ago to turn things around. With Visdum, FarEye adopted an efficient and accurate sales compensation system, empowering their Finance, RevOps, and Sales teams.

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About FarEye

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HQ: Chicago, Illinois

Employees: 800+

Using Visdum Since: November 2020

Business Category:  Logistics Last Mile Delivery Software

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FarEye is a low-code, Intelligent Delivery Management Platform designed for a better delivery experience for everyone. FarEye’s Delivery Management platform turns deliveries into a competitive advantage. Retail, e-commerce and third-party logistics companies use FarEye’s unique combination of orchestration, real-time visibility, and branded customer experiences to simplify complex last-mile delivery logistics.

Started in 2013 with 35 employees and 10 customers, FarEye, today, is a global leader in last-mile delivery backed by $150 million of funding, serving 150+ customers across 30+ countries.

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The Challenges: Mid-year policy revisions leading up to inaccurate calculations and lack of clarity for sales reps

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A consequence of a rapidly scaling sales organization and constantly changing business needs, FarEye found it challenging to track sales commissions on excel spreadsheets, leading to operational inefficiencies and lack of clarity for sales reps.

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1. Sales Organization Expansion

With rapid expansion across the company and more specifically within the sales organization, the company saw the sales team branching out into multiple teams such as sales, pre-sales, partner, inside sales, and resellers, making sales compensation all the more complex.

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2. Mid-year policy changes and deferred commission structures

Add to the growing woes of the Finance and Revenue Operations teams that manually handled the sales compensation process on excel spreadsheets, FarEye’s sales commission plans had to undergo changes mid-year so they could align with their evolving businesses' needs. These changes were reflective of mid-year quota, variable revisions, and deferred incentive structures, leading to frequent miscalculations and incorrect payouts.

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3. Operational inefficiencies led to clashes between Finance & Sales team

FarEye’s Finance & RevOps teams found it extremely challenging to update spreadsheets to accommodate the mid-year sales commissions policy changes. Due to mid-year kickers, spiffs, or in cases of exceptions or overrides, the operations teams often found themselves in the blind, therefore proving spreadsheets completely ineffective for sales compensation. To add to this, the RevOps team struggled with maintaining data hygiene as AEs and BDRs seldom updated the CRM accurately.

The Finance team also couldn’t distribute detailed incentive statements to the sales reps because of limitations associated with excel spreadsheets, thereby not being able to provide reps with visibility into their payouts. This break in communication was starting to lead towards a relationship of mistrust between the Finance and sales teams.

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4. Lack of clarity into commissions calculations and payouts for sales reps

FarEye’s sales reps were starting to become frustrated because of lack of clarity into their earnings. While each rep would receive incentive statements at the end of each quarter, they would still end up wasting hours spent on shadow accounting to ensure the accuracy of their payouts. Additionally, spreadsheets would seldom account for the mid-year adjustments such as kickers or spiffs, or track deferred payments, making it harder for reps to stay on top of what they were truly earning or track future payments.

Sales reps also had little to no visibility into how the Finance team arrived at these calculations. This was mainly because spreadsheets lacked the flexibility to capture detailed incentive break-downs or commission rates calculation.

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The Solution: Choosing a winning sales compensation software

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In 2020, FarEye shifted to Visdum to automate their sales compensation process, eliminating the tedious spreadsheets, empowering Finance and RevOps teams to efficiently manage and track sales commissions, and enabling Sales reps to track their earnings in real-time.

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Why did FarEye choose Visdum over others for Sales Compensation?

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When FarEye started evaluating different tools for Sales Compensation, they wanted a software that could easily and efficiently handle their complex sales commission policies. During the evaluation process, Fareye was able to see their data and plans in action and validate the accuracy of their payouts in Visdum. This gave them confidence because they could straight up see the value of the platform.

In Visdum, FarEye saw a reliable system that could mold itself to adjust to their unique SaaS needs and bring harmony amidst the three teams - Finance, Revenue Operations, and Sales.

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Results: An efficient system for handling complex sales commission structure & empowered teams

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FarEye has simplified its sales compensation process to cater to their dynamic business needs, ensuring accurate payouts and more visibility for reps, thereby reducing operational inefficiencies and driving up productivity across the board.

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FarEye today runs 8 commission plans for 70+ commissioned sellers across their entire sales organization - Sales, Pre-sales, Partner, Inside Sales, and two variations each for individual contributors and managers.

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The Impact

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• Ability to modify commission policies anytime: Mid-year policy changes such as spiffs, kickers, or deferring payouts are now easier to track for FarEye’s Finance teams, thanks to Visdum’s flexible incentive plan designer.
• Faster enquiry resolution time: Previously, FarEye’s Finance team had to handle a substantial number of enquiries from sales reps about clarity regarding their commission payouts. Having adopted Visdum, the number of enquiries has seen a significant decline and enquiry resolution time has dropped from weeks to 48 hours, owing to the transparent communication between Finance and sales teams.
• Reduced friction to log-in: It’s not easy for multiple teams to adapt to a new software. With Visdum’s Onelogin integration for single sign-on, FarEye’s Finance, RevOps, and Sales teams experience little to no friction while logging in, making their experience with the platform a breeze, while ensuring that their data stays secure.
• Improved CRM Hygiene: FarEye’s sales team is more motivated to keep their Salesforce data updated now that their compensation is tied to it. The operations teams' job becomes tenfold easier with their CRM hygiene being taken care of.
• More visibility for reps leading to higher productivity: FarEye’s sales reps now have their commission rates and plan-breakdown right at their fingertips. Near real-time updates help reps forecast their pipeline more accurately, keeping them constantly motivated to hit their goals. Mid-year policy changes are also easier to keep track of for reps, eliminating any need for shadow accounting or confusions regarding payouts, enabling reps to focus on what they do best - sell.