The problem

Why did Lonza's sales teams not know what they would earn until payout?

Lonza calculated life sciences sales incentives in spreadsheets, once, at payout time. Reps could not see their targets or earnings during the cycle, or what to focus on to earn more. Senior management had no easy view of payout analytics either.

Everything else ran over email. A target adjustment for a supply shortage needed approval from several managers and then an incentive committee, all on mail trails. Incentive queries were answered by email too, so the team had to pull up queries from past months at year end.

Why spreadsheets broke

What made sales crediting across roles and regions hard to run in spreadsheets?

The structure of the sales team. A deal at Lonza can involve sales reps, business development officers, account executives, customer success teams and service engineers. Each role has its own KPIs. Its share of a deal depends on gross margin, order value, brand category and whether the business is new or a renewal.

Add multiple geographies, and incentives calculated and paid in different currencies. The KPIs behind them sat in different systems, so admins chased several owners for data, and payees checked several portals to track their own numbers.

The buying concern

What did Lonza need from one incentive platform before switching?

Lonza wanted every part of the process in one place: data, crediting, calculation, exceptions and queries. A tool that fixed calculation but left exceptions and queries on email would not close the gap.

Lonza also looked for a partner that understood how its business works. Custom workflows, the simulator and nudges weighed in the decision.

How Kennect solved it

How does Kennect handle sales crediting and incentives across currencies on one platform?

The principle Kennect built around: one source for anything related to incentives, from the KPI data to the last query.

• We bring KPI data from Lonza's separate systems into one source, so admins and payees stop chasing it across portals.
• We configure every role's KPIs and crediting rules in the calculation engine, across geographies, hierarchies and currencies.
• We keep a data collection of every deviation and exception, such as target adjustments, for audit traceability and incentive calculation.
• We give payees a query module to flag a KPI or a transaction, which routes to the right admin to resolve in Kennect.

Incentive leakage has stopped, and overpayment of about 3.5% has come down to zero. Payees check their latest incentive data and payout amounts on a real-time dashboard, and shadow accounting has fallen sharply. HR and Finance now work from the same incentive payout data, including forecasts and plan fairness scores.

Edge cases handled

How are mid-cycle target adjustments recorded at Lonza?

When supply runs short, a rep may ask for a target adjustment. That request needs approval from several managers and then the incentive committee. Kennect holds each deviation case in a dedicated data collection, so the adjusted target and its effect on the payout stay traceable for audit-ready incentive payouts.

Across roles:

• Sales reps see their latest incentive data and payout on a real-time dashboard, and get personalised nudges on which KPIs to focus on.
• Incentive admins resolve queries flagged against a KPI or transaction in one module, and keep every deviation case on record.
• HR and Finance use incentive payout data, forecasts and plan fairness scores from the same platform.
• Management sees analytics on incentive payouts without waiting for the end of the cycle.