While the primary purpose of incentives – increase motivation for staff to boost sales for the company – will always stay the same, trends in incentive programs are constantly shifting as the technology used in sales changes. Companies may want to pay more attention to big data and step up their incentive programs to include greater data access and collection, according to a survey by The Incentive Research Foundation. Firms that are considering upgrading their current sales performance management platform may want to find software that includes features for effective incentive compensation because the IRF said the game is changing for incentive and employee recognition programs. Since the world of big data is vast and the potential for growth using data analytics is huge, companies will have to overcome challenges that come with data collection and harness the information available to improve their sales. Here are three big-data-related challenges companies will have to prepare for: 1. Sorting through data to gain meaningful insight Since it’s not enough for companies to merely collect data on employee incentives and recognition, firms will have to figure out how they can sort through data and determine what the most important aspects of their programs are, such as meeting sales targets and business objectives. IRF advises companies to implement quick discovery methods to narrow down data and find out what the data is telling them faster. Forbes also listed the difficulty of gaining insight, rather than just collecting data, as one of the main challenges of big data. 2. Increasing data points in relation to business resources When companies try to find new ways to focus on the performance of their sales team, they may want to see how they could increase their data points to enhance their incentive programs to make better decisions. They should also consider how they can collect data and see how they relate to their existing resources. “Companies and providers alike need to be prepared to expand their data access points to match the sources available to them (e.g. not only sales or program data, but social media metrics, mobile platform metrics, individual participant preference and demographic data),” according to IRF. 3. Seeing how big data contributes to future growth Although companies may be tempted to use big data to see how they can use their employees’ talents to expand into existing markets, they may be wasting a valuable opportunity to enter into new ones and increase growth for their firms, according to Forbes. Companies may want to use sales performance management software to align employee strengths to new territories.
