How Subex Automated Sales Compensation to Align with their Global Business Needs

Subex (LSE: SUBX) faced significant complexities in managing sales compensation across its sales teams. With representatives located in Europe, UAE, Americas, and LATAM regions, accurately calculating commissions in multiple currencies while adhering to unique attainment, revenue recognition, billing based payout structures became an operational nightmare.

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About Subex

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HQ: London, United Kingdom
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Employees: 900+
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Using Visdum Since: June 2022
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Business Category: Telecommunications AI
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Integrations: Salesforce, SAP

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Founded in 1994 and listed on the London Stock Exchange, Subex is a telecom AI solutions company that offers digital trust products to  Communications Service Providers (CSP) across the globe to create connected experiences for their customers. It also offers migration assurance, analytics, optimization, asset assurance, digital billing, roaming and origin-based routing products and services.

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With live installations across 100+ countries, Subex serves major telecom companies around the world such as Econet Global, Telia Company, Vodafone, and many others. They partner with big tech companies like KPMG, Deloitte, AWS, and Google Cloud to provide the best products and services.

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The Challenge: Complex Commission Structure & Manual Time-consuming Process

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Managing sales compensation for a global workforce of over 100 reps spread across Europe, UAE, Americas, and LATAM became increasingly challenging for Subex. Additionally, the complex payout structures necessitated the need for an intelligent sales compensation management system.

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The company needed a platform that would streamline the entire process by fetching sales data from their CRM and billing data from their invoicing platforms. Furthermore, they also wanted the platform to support an individual dashboard for their sales reps showing the granular details for their earnings in their respective currencies.

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1. Manual Calculations in Excel: Handling compensation calculations manually in Excel for a large distributed team was extremely tedious and error-prone. This was especially harder given the nature of the comp plans and the frequent updates to the sales commission policies at Subex underwent.
2. Tailored Quota Assignments: Each sales region followed customized quarterly quota targets and regional commission structures, adding layers of intricacy to commission computations.
3. Complex Payout Structures: Subex’s sales commissions structure presented a unique challenge due to the booking and  billing split. Rather than payouts based on total deal value, at Subex, sales commissions are divided into two components - one portion credited at the time of booking a deal, and the remaining portion credited upon successful billing.
4. Large, dispersed workforce, and the need for currency conversion: Subex's sales reps operated in various geographies, necessitating meticulous conversions from USD to local currencies to ensure fair compensation.
5. Dynamic Plan Changes: Subex's sales compensation policies were dynamic in nature. Due to a fast-growing business, their sales compensation policies underwent frequent exceptions mid-way through the year which made spreadsheet-based calculations cumbersome and error-prone.
6. Lack of Visibility: Sales personnel had limited insight into deal-level payouts, outstanding balances, and commission rates applied, breeding discontentment. A tiered commission structure meant that reps would get a fraction of their commissions initially and the rest over time, often leaving them wondering what their remaining commission amount looks like.
7. Operational Vulnerabilities: An over-reliance on select individuals for managing the intricate commission process posed a substantial operational risk.

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The Solution: Visdum's Automated Precision & Global Compliance

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In June 2022, Subex successfully implemented Visdum's sales compensation automation platform to streamline their global commission process for 100+ reps, addressing their unique challenges.

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Visdum's platform seamlessly converted multi-currency commissions, computed payouts based on Subex's customized quota models while tracking balances, and easily incorporated frequent policy changes. Sales reps gained transparency through personalized dashboards with deal-level payout breakdowns. Integrated with Salesforce and Microsoft SSO, the solution also provided an estimator for reps to forecast projected earnings, driving strategic deal pursuit.

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Why Subex Chose Visdum?

Subex selected Visdum's compensation management platform after a comprehensive evaluation of its capabilities to address their complex global requirements.

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Visdum's robust multi-currency support, coupled with the ability to model tailored quota structures for each region, stood out as a compelling proposition. Furthermore, the platform's seamless integration capabilities with Subex's Salesforce CRM and Microsoft SSO infrastructure ensured a cohesive technology ecosystem.

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The user-friendly representative dashboards, providing granular visibility into earnings and payouts, were a key factor in promoting transparency and trust among the sales force.

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The Impact: Efficient, Accurate, and Transparent Sales Commissions for a Motivated Global Sales Team

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With Visdum, Subex now effortlessly manages over 20 unique compensation plans across multiple currencies for their 100+ commissioned sellers globally. The automated processes have significantly reduced manual effort while providing unparalleled transparency to the sales team.

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1. Seamless integration with CRM and Billing Systems: Visdum’s native connectors made integration with CRM and Billing System straightforward and easy top setup. Using the data streams, Subex team could map and filter the data required.  
2. Tailored Quota Modeling: The ability to configure unique quotas with different periods for multiple compoanents including  for each region fostered a competitive, high-performance sales culture.
3. Handling Payout Splits: Visdum’s calculation rule engines handled Billing, RevRec and Booking Commission Plans with ease, accurately calculating splits based on contract and payment milestones.
4. Streamlined Multi-Currency Payouts: Visdum's automated currency conversion enabled accurate compensation payouts for Subex's distributed teams across 20+ locations without any manual effort.
5. Ease of editing comp Plans: Any plan changes made mid-way through the year or quarter were quickly accommodated without any hassle or manual data updates, making the Operations team’s job 10x easier.
6. Leveraging Commission Forecasting: Subex reps utilized Visdum's estimator to forecast potential earnings from their pipeline, motivating strategic deal pursuit. With real-time visibility into the potential commission earnings associated with each sales opportunity, the reps can make more informed decisions and prioritize their efforts effectively.
7. Individual Dashboards & Enhanced Rep Motivation: Personalized dashboards with deal-level visibility into payouts, accelerators, and balances boosted transparency and rep satisfaction. Every rep also has his/her own personal log-in and dashboards which helps them stay on top of their earnings.
8. Operational Resilience: Automated calculations and processes eliminated overreliance on individuals, mitigating operational risks.
9. Accelerated Commission Cycles: Integration with existing systems like Salesforce CRM enabled quicker computation and payout cycles.
10. Scalable Growth Engine: A future-proof platform equipped to handle Subex's expansion into new markets and products.

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Most crucially, the cutting-edge platform has fostered an environment of transparency and trust. With personal dashboards offering granular visibility into earnings and accelerators, representatives now feel valued and incentivized to achieve targets consistently.

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Subex's vision of an agile, high-performing global sales force has become a reality through Visdum's intelligent automation capabilities. As they continue expanding into new markets, the company remains poised to attract and nurture top sales talent worldwide.

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