With CaptivateIQ, the Gong commissions team streamlined and automated their operations which saved them time on monthly calculations while improving the accuracy of monthly payout calculations. Additionally, the Salesforce integration helps tie key data sources together to ensure seamless real-time calculations.

The Hero

Michael Duncan, Director of Revenue Operations, oversees and manages Gong’s compensation program. Gong is a Revenue Intelligence Platform™ that captures and delivers insights on every customer interaction with the goal of empowering revenue teams to make decisions based on data instead of opinions. Gong supports over 2,000 customers including PayPal, Hubspot, LinkedIn, and Slack.

I love CaptivateIQ. I have been very impressed with the product road map and enhancements. We can make changes ourselves with ease. Our small but mighty team also has been able to cut down significantly on compensation errors.

The Challenge: A high-growth sales organization puts major strain on homegrown commission operations. 

Gong has been on an incredible trajectory since 2015, scaling rapidly and earning many accolades including being named one of the fastest-growing North American companies in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list.

Gong’s reputation as one of the fastest-growing companies in high technology was both a blessing — and a strain. Albert Wong, former Business Operations Manager, had built out a sophisticated spreadsheet but there was a problem: Gong was tripling the size of its sales organization, and he knew the homegrown solution wasn’t scalable.

[QUOTE 
| quote: Determining payouts involved a lot of manual data entry and customizing reports for individual reps. This meant hard-pasting entire Excel pages into Google Sheets and then manually making adjustments one sheet at a time. The more we scaled, the more of a nightmare it was going to become to manage the process in such a complex way.
| name: Albert Wong
| title: Former Business Operations Manager
|]

[QUOTE 
| quote: We needed a solution that was agile, and could be owned by finance professionals that were very comfortable in spreadsheets. We’re a small but mighty team that manages comp for 200+ sellers.
| name: Michael
|]

Adding new users was a major drag on the team’s time, again involving rebuilding individual Google Sheets one by one. All of this was eating up large chunks of expensive operations resources while taking the team away from a growing list of business-critical tasks.

There were other challenges, too. For example, so much manual input left plans and payouts open to errors. This was a big concern for the team, as any compensation inaccuracies put Gong at risk of higher rep turnover. The team was also concerned about a lack of transparency with the current system, which had the potential to affect the overall morale and motivation.

As the business continued to see high growth, and thus plans were changing often, the burden on the commission team’s time and resources would only grow. It was unmanageable. The team urgently needed a robust and flexible solution that could also scale with ease.

[QUOTE 
| quote: I wanted a solution that could scale with our organization. One that would allow us to make the changes on our own without leveraging professional services. The solution also needs to be easy for end-users to leverage and see transparency in their commission calculations.
| name: Michael
|]

The Solution: A flexible and easy to use commission solution with robust data integrations.

Gong was excited to partner with a scalable and flexible solution that would enable them to make comp plan changes on their own with ease, while helping cut down significantly on compensation errors.

After ruling out several commissions solutions because of their clunky interfaces and steep learning curves, the team chose CaptivateIQ because of the spreadsheet-like syntax and powerful integrations.

[QUOTE 
| quote: I had just gone through a commissions implementation (prior to Gong) so was well aware of the ‘why’ behind moving to a comp tool. Once I got to Gong, I needed to conduct a plan refresh, and this was SOOOO much easier than any tool I have used before. Especially since I love Excel.
| name: Michael
|]

The full onboarding process was a straightforward process for the Gong team. CaptivateIQ’s product solutions team helped configure every one of Gong’s commission plans within the software and further tested calculations against the previous model to ensure 100% confidence in the tool’s capabilities.

Since implementing CaptivateIQ, the Gong team gets:

• Flexibility to layer on different commission rules to ensure accurate payouts for everyone  
• Ease to add new users through an intuitive interface to help scale the growing team
• Automation to calculate and run monthly payments in minutes
• Transparency with detailed statements in the commission reports that are sent to every member of the sales team
• Seamless integration with Salesforce for real-time calculations
  

[QUOTE 
| quote: Because it’s designed in a similar style to the spreadsheets we’re all so familiar with, it was very clear to use. Of all the tools I’ve ever used, it has one of the lowest learning curves I’ve encountered.
| name: Albert
|]

[QUOTE 
| quote: I am a CaptivateIQ convert. If you are comfortable in spreadsheets and want an affordable total cost of ownership tool, CaptivateIQ is a no brainer.
| name: Michael
|]

The Results: Fully automated commission operations that save time and protect against costly resources.

Gong decreased the time it takes to run monthly commission calculations while increasing the accuracy to over 98%.

[QUOTE 
| quote: We track accrual to payout accuracy and are now within 2% since switching to CaptivateIQ. The remaining deltas are mainly unknowns in the business at the first of each month.
| name: Michael
|]

The time savings from CaptivateIQ have been immediate. With the previous system, calculating and running monthly payouts for hundreds of reps would have taken the team at least five hours. But now it can be done in just five minutes. The calculations and transformations are 10x easier now that the team has the ability to eliminate duplicitous worksheet tabs for the next year’s plans which significantly reduces horizontal scroll fatigue. As the sales team continues to grow, adding new team members and building new plans is simplified with CaptivateIQ so the team is  saving valuable hours each month.

With the support of the CaptivateIQ product solution experts, the team were able to get comfortable using the platform and are fully capable of building out any comp plan they need without relying on professional services. 

[QUOTE 
| quote: I plan to integrate CaptivateIQ into our sales capacity/planning tool down the line, so we can do end to end scenario testing. I also have plans to integrate our HRIS due to employee changes/new hires becoming high in volume as we scale.
| name: Michael
|]

About CaptivateIQ

CaptivateIQ is on a mission to bring transparency and joy to commissions management. We believe that getting paid should be fun and that work should be a breeze for compensation plan administrators. Yet, most companies still rely on spreadsheets or legacy software providers to manage what is often the largest and most influential line item in a sales budget. That’s why we’ve created a scalable, flexible, no-code solution that enables finance and operations teams to model, automate, and optimize performance incentives. Twenty of the Forbes’ Cloud 100 including leading brands like Amplitude, Gong, and Hopin use CaptivateIQ to power their incentive compensation programs.