ACME Healthcare* uses Everstage to build a culture of trust with their payees, and empower sales leaders to focus on strategic planning

The Challenge

ACME Healthcare was facing multiple issues using spreadsheets for sales commission management which made monitoring progress towards incentive goals impossible. As a result, the payees were less efficient and morale across the board was declining.

ACME Healthcare’s Admissions department is led by Associate Vice President, John Smith. He manages a team of 150 employees, of which over 80 are payees on commission-based incentives. They are tasked to handle tens of thousands of calls a month from families in need of urgent care, and the goal is to ensure excellent customer service and a seamless admission process. 

The commission plans were intricate, focusing on key metrics such as department answer rates, quality control goals, and average time to admission. Due to the complex nature of the components of the sales commissions plan, leaders like John prepared the reports every month. Managing these incentives was a labor-intensive and time-consuming process, taking up a significant amount of their time—time that could have been better spent on more strategic initiatives.

ACME relied on a massive Excel document to calculate these commissions, often leading to errors. This led to dissatisfaction among both payees and executives.

“We had a wild amount of formulas on our spreadsheet that we created to make it easier for us. Sometimes they could be off, and as a result someone could be underpaid and someone could be overpaid. We couldn't really find that out until well into the next month and it probably took a collective 10 to 15 hours every month to get that sorted out. The morale goes down and it was never fun when we ran into those issues.”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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The Solution

John and his team evaluated 5 ICM tools but chose Everstage because of its ability to flawlessly pull in data from different sources, analyze historical data and provide a better experience to the payees - while also providing transparency across all areas of the business. 

Native integration with Salesforce

Everstage seamlessly integrated with ACME’s existing systems, including Salesforce, to automate data collection and eliminate manual entry. This integration ensured accuracy in commission calculations and provided real-time data access.

"The integration with Salesforce has been great. It allows us to connect metrics that weren’t feasible to track before because pulling that data manually every month would have been too daunting. Everstage has made it easier to include all these key performance indicators in our incentive plans.”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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Approval workflow management simplified

Everstage streamlined the approval process for commission payouts by enabling multiple stakeholders to review and approve data within the platform. This reduced the need for manual email exchanges and ensures a more efficient workflow.

“Previously, I would put together an Excel document, send it to our VP of Admissions, who would then add his input, include data on his direct reportees, and forward it to our CEO. From there, it went to payroll for final approval. With Everstage, my VP of Admissions now has direct access to view his compensation and his direct reportees, allowing us to handle approvals more efficiently. It has significantly simplified our process, eliminating the need for multiple emails and manual steps.”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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Robust plan modeling with Time Machine

The Time Machine feature enabled ACME Healthcare to simulate different incentive scenarios and assess their financial impact before implementation. This capability allowed for strategic planning and informed decision-making.

"The Time Machine feature has been remarkable! Our process before Everstage used to be extremely time-consuming when we were trying to look at a new incentive plan. Now the team is able to build out potential plans that we're looking at and run the data on Everstage. We compare the outcomes with previous months and I can easily pitch the new plans to our executives on why I want to change the plans and how it's going to help the organization.”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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Visibility for the payees

Everstage introduced user-friendly dashboards that allowed payees to track their performance and incentives in real-time. This transparency empowered them to take charge of their performance and motivated them to reach their goals.

"Our agents have loved the system. It’s very user-friendly.We did a single training session, and they picked up on it quickly. Now they can see exactly where they stand in meeting their incentives, which has been a big motivator. This visibility has also been great for our managers, who no longer have to answer questions about progress throughout the month, as it’s all there in real-time.”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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In-house implementation, strategic partnership & ongoing support

The implementation and go-live for ACME took less than 12 weeks. The professional services team at Everstage made sure that the platform was configured to the language used internally at ACME, as their plans and terminologies could easily get lost in translation. 

The Customer Success team at Everstage was also quick to adapt to the different ways of incentivizing at ACME, offering support and feedback on the plans as a strategic partner. They oversaw overall strategic outcomes and all partnership workstreams, working closely with John & his team to ensure deadlines were not only met, but exceeded. This was a key differentiator compared to other third party vendors. 

“The support and onboarding was incredible. Everstage’s in-house professional services team were able to pick up on things really quick, we don't get that all the time working with third-party vendors! They were able to take in our way of incentivizing, something they’re probably unfamiliar with, and immediately started giving really meaningful feedback and suggestions. And still to this day, if I reach out with a question, I get a response the same day!”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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The Results

John and his team are now able to focus on more forward-thinking strategic planning initiatives since they save 10-15 hours of manual work every month with Everstage.

Increased accuracy of payouts

Switching to Everstage eliminated the errors in commission calculations. This resulted in ACME experiencing a notable decrease in both overpayments and underpayments.

“Before Everstage, if someone was underpaid, they didn’t trust the system or the tracking. They questioned whether they’d actually get what they earned. Overpayments made executives unhappy, while underpayments eroded payee trust. With Everstage, these errors have been mitigated, and we no longer have to deal with those morale and trust issues.”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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Improved payee trust, morale and performance

With real-time access to performance metrics, the payees felt more confident in the system and their ability to achieve goals. The transparency restored trust and improved morale across the department.

"If they know where they're at, they know they might be close to their goals. It's all right there in live time, which also helps them be more incentivized to move and push forward.That's been a really great experience for them. With live dashboards that’s connected from our source of truth (Salesforce), the trust in the system has been restored. Our employees feel valued and motivated, knowing they are rewarded fairly for their efforts."

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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Strategic focus and future planning

By automating commission processes, Everstage freed up valuable time for John and his team to focus on strategic initiatives, such as refining incentive plans and aligning them with organizational goals.

"When I was stuck doing data entry, double and triple-checking numbers, and updating formulas, I didn’t have the bandwidth for forward-thinking or strategic planning. Now, Everstage has significantly relieved my workload and allowed me to focus on big-picture and future-facing initiatives.”

John Smith

Vice President of Admissions

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*The case study has been anonymized based on the request of the customer. If you’d like to know more or speak to the customer directly, please reach out to marketing@everstage.com.

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