The client is a South Asian media organization owning one of the largest regional newspapers in India and various other publications.

The client wanted a custom-developed circulation sales incentive management system (SAP IS-MSD extension) to calculate incentives and pay-outs for their field staff and seniors in the management chain responsible for the circulation of copies. The field staff must get targets assigned based on their location and publication/product. The system should also help compare the sales figure achieved versus the target.

Incentives are dependent on the bill amount recovery as well. For instance, if the field staff achieves their sales target but the dues of the agents/camps assigned to them spill over the tolerance limit, then the field staff will not be eligible for incentives that quarter. The system also had to accommodate the following unique requirements: –

The client’s sales team hierarchies needed to be defined in the system. Given that the reporting took products also into account, this was a complex requirement. For example, a salesperson may be the Reporting Officer for a product, and for another product, they may have to report to someone else.

Customers should be tagged to sales staff responsible for sales improvement and payment management. Customers are created and deleted often, and hence the tagging system should be easily manageable.

The sales head from various units must prepare monthly sales reports for every product. The total business target of each product depends on the sales staff hierarchy, with respective tolerance factors/targets added at each level.

The overall ranking/performance of the field staff will depend on the number of sales and the weight of products. Also, the product-wise rank would differ based on sales regions.

Data must be sourced from multiple business units like Finance, HR, Circulation, Subscription, etc.

CCS Engineers developed a system integrated with SAP Sales and Distribution, Finance, and BIW modules that allowed the media client’s customers to be grouped into “camps” based on delivery locations. The sales staff reporting to respective field staff can also be assigned subgroups based on delivery points.

The system took the staff’s official hierarchy into consideration and is integrated with the HR module to collect grade and median salary details in real-time.

Equipped the client to assign targets at various levels of the circulation division; field staffs can be assigned targets by uploading those or carrying forward previous targets. The sales head and coordinator can modify target thresholds.

The system will pull sales achievements from the sales and distribution module.

A process was put in place to pull the staff’s bill/arrear collection details every quarter by integrating with the finance module.

The system also assesses if the sales staff is eligible for quarterly incentives; factors contributing to incentives include grade, salary, and performance ranking. The incentive will reflect in the SAP payroll module so that the appropriate amount is credited along with the salary.

The system promotes transparency by keeping the Reporting Managers informed of the staff’s targets, achievements, incentives, etc.