Client

Nortel Networks is a global internet and communications leader with capabilities spanning Optical Internet, Wireless Internet, Local Internet, eBusiness, and Personal Internet.

 

Business Case

Nortel Networks was unable to handle constantly changing, complex sales compensation plans.  As a result, sales productivity was off by over 25% and the organization was experiencing a high level of account manager turnover.  Executive management had attempted to resolve these issues for over three years, and with the acquisition of Bay Networks, the problem had compounded.  Because of the material impact to Nortel’s ability to meet revenue and profitability targets, sales commissions became a top executive management priority.  They identified a strategic initiative to improve the accuracy and timeliness of their sales compensation capabilities, deploying a phased roll-out starting with their second-largest business unit, Enterprise Solutions, followed by a global rollout.  Specific objectives for this sales compensation initiative included the following:

·          Improve sales credit assignment accuracy

·          Provide better sales compensation calculation accuracy

·          Increase sales productivity

·          Decrease account manager turnover

·          Reduce or eliminate “surprise” sales compensation GL accrual

·          Optimize sales credit assignments in a highly matrixed and complex sales organizational structure

 

Why Quovera?

Quovera’s prior internetworking industry background and experience in CRM applications that provide sales territory definition and sales hierarchy capabilities were the primary factors in Nortel’s selection decision.  Quovera’s successful track record for managing, architecting, designing, and implementing global solutions assured Nortel that they would succeed in this strategic endeavor.

 

The Quovera Solution

Quovera helped Nortel develop the key metrics for the SFA initiative, and managed, architected, designed, and implemented the solution.  The Quovera team defined a flexible and data-driven application architecture that enabled Nortel to easily adapt to changing sales compensation plans, and accurately and quickly identify sales compensation for their entire Enterprise Solutions organization.  One year after the successful global rollout across Enterprise SOlutions, Nortel has begun a worldwide rollout of the Quovera system across all of its business units.

 

Business Benefits

·          Better account manager retention rates

·          Increased sales productivity and trust

·          Eliminated $30M “surprise” GL accrual

·          Reached an unheard-of 99% accuracy rate in commission calculations

·          Able to define sales territories and automate sales credit assignments at the postal code level

 

Technologies and Solutions

·          Oracle 7.x, 8.x, 8i databases

·          Sun Solaris

·          Oracle PL/SQL

·          Oracle Developer 6.x for web and client-server interface

·          Oracle application server (IAS version 4.0.8)

·          Forms web server version 6

·          Oracle WebDB version 2

·          Proprietary event notification engine, issue tracking mechanism, error handler, application security features, and other reusable components