grainger Uses iconixx sales for Modeling and forecasting

“Each day we distribute over 100,000 products across multiple channels to customers throughout the world. We needed a solution to manage multiple compensation plans for a large number of employees, products and orders. Iconixx Sales took away our complex and cumbersome manual processes and replaced them with an automated, accurate and timely solution.”

Grainger supplies its customers nearly 100,000 times each day through multiple channels, including its branch locations, catalogue and website.

Grainger was analyzing potential compensation plans to help drive sales in these channels while expanding into new markets. Grainger needed a solution that would provide modeling capabilities for these compensation plans. They also needed a better and faster way to distribute compensation statements to its employees.

However, compensation plans were traditionally managed manually on Excel spreadsheets. Sales teams often had more than 500 payees, and Grainger had thousands of products and hundreds of thousands of transactions. As a result, the legacy spreadsheet system was painfully complex and manual calculations were time-consuming, inflexible and error-prone.

Grainger adopted Iconixx as an on-demand application to administer its prototype compensation plans. Iconixx designed and configured five compensation plans that pay Grainger sales force monthly and quarterly and was then able to forecast the impact of those plans relative to business goals and interests.

Client Profile

Grainger is a US-based industrial supply company that distributes maintenance, repair and operating supplies for facilities across the globe.

Grainger supports every sector, including government, manufacturing and retail organizations, providing them with almost every type of product including electrical, plumbing, janitorial, vehicle and safety supplies.

Grainger has more than 20,000 employees and generated $8.1 billion in revenue in 2011. Challenge

solution

Since implementing Iconixx Sales, Grainger has realized the following benefits.

Increased accuracy – Grainger no longer needs to calculate compensation one payee at a time, and the frequency of human errors has decreased.

Total accessibility – With the manual spreadsheet system, the data was only available to the spreadsheet owner. Data had to be requested, and the calculations took time. With Iconixx Sales, the system is “on demand” – available to users and Grainger’s administrators on a 24/7 basis.

Increased quality and speed – The system also improved the quality and speed of compensation statements as the administration time went from a few days to hours.

Grainger has realized a considerable savings in both time and resources by transforming its Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) system from a manual spreadsheet-based process to Iconixx Sales.

The time savings was immediate, as Iconixx Sales has empowered Grainger to upload bulk transaction data from spreadsheets, immediately calculate payments, and send out the compensation statements via email.

The cost savings has been realized as a result of the reduction in human errors that led to overpayment, as well as the time and energy required to detect and correct these errors.

The Iconixx Difference

MEASURABLE ROI

GOALS

AFTER ICONIXX

• Reduced calculation errors • Increased ability to model

compensation plans • Incorporate transaction data

across multiple channels

• 24/7 on-demand data access

• Improved accuracy • Faster payouts with

statements via emai

BEFORE ICONIXX• Manual calculations• Data accessibility was

limited• Compensation statements

took several days to complete

SECTOR

INDUSTRY

SOLUTION

Distribution

Industrial Supplies

Iconixx Sales 3420 Executive Center DriveSTE 250Austin, TX 78731877-ICONIXXwww.iconixx.com