The Incentive Problem No One Talks About and Why the Future Belongs to Intelligent Systems

Incentives, Costs or Strategy?

For most businesses, incentives are seen as a necessary cost and not a strategic lever.

Salespeople expect them. Admins calculate them. Leaders approve them. And then everyone moves on.

But somewhere along the way, the core question gets lost:
Are incentives actually working?

This isn’t a theoretical problem. It’s one felt every month, every quarter, in every review room, where numbers don’t add up, performance stagnates, and no one has clear answers.

What Every CXO, Admin, and BU Head Is Quietly Struggling With.

Incentives were designed to drive behaviour. But the systems managing them haven’t evolved fast enough.

CXO: As a CXO, you’re constantly questioning:
- Are we spending the right amount to get the results we want?
- Do our plans truly align with business priorities?

Sales Admin: As a Sales Admin,
- You live in a world of back-and-forth Excel files, endless validations, last-minute plan changes, and opaque approvals. You’re the glue that holds the incentive engine together, but you rarely get the tools that help you do it smarter.

BU head: As a BU Head,
- You see the results, but you don’t always understand the ‘why’. Why did this team outperform? Why did this region underdeliver despite higher incentives? Where should you double down?

These aren’t edge cases. They are symptoms of a deeper issue:

The way we design, execute, and measure incentives is outdated.

The Outdated Systems Are Costing More Than You Think

Across industries, we’ve seen the same issues play out:

• Incentive plans are rigid and one-size-fits-all
• Target setting is manual and lacks traceability
• Scheme changes happen in silos, with little testing or foresight
• Performance data sits in reports & not in insights
• Admins are overwhelmed with operational firefighting
• No one truly knows what’s working and what isn’t

All of this leads to wasted effort, frustrated teams, and missed opportunities.

The scary part? 

Most organizations don't realize how much they’re losing in productivity, morale, and ROI, until it’s too late.

What If Incentives Were Intelligent by Design?

At Kennect, we’re building something different.

Not just an automation platform, but an intelligent incentive ecosystem, one that’s data-first, insight-rich, and ready for the scale of modern business.

We asked ourselves: 

1. What if incentive planning could be predictive?
2. What if Admins could shift from calculators to strategists?
3. What if CXOs could get real-time views of ROI, efficiency, and driver-level insights, without asking for a special report?

And what if all of this could happen without adding more to anyone’s plate?

That’s what we’ve built and continue to evolve.

The Intelligent Incentive Stack (With some AI Powered features too)

We started by solving the basics: automating plan management, cascading targets, and streamlining approvals. But that was just the foundation.

What we’re truly excited about is what comes next.

Our AI-powered layer enables:

Incentive Efficiency Analysis

Uncover how incentive schemes are performing across roles, tenures, and geographies. Understand where you’re overspending and where you should invest more.

Hidden Performance Driver Discovery

Surface non-obvious behaviors or metrics that correlate with high performance. Go beyond top-line outcomes and understand what’s really moving the needle.

Smart Scheme Simulations

Design what-if scenarios and forecast the impact of plan changes before you roll them out. Reduce risk and make confident decisions.

Predictive Target Distribution

Move away from guesswork when setting targets. Rationally cascade them across hierarchies based on data, not bias.

Insight-led Nudging

Equip managers and reps with real-time coaching prompts that nudge the right behaviours’ at the right time.

This is not just about AI.

It’s about giving your teams the clarity, control, and confidence they’ve never had in incentive management.

The Impact We’re Seeing

In organizations using Kennect, we’re seeing a clear shift:

• Admin teams have reduced manual effort by roughly over 60 percent
• CXOs now track incentive ROI in real time
• Scheme design has gone from reactive to experimental with faster iteration cycles
• BU Heads can drill down into region-wise and role-wise performance without asking for ad-hoc reports
• Most importantly, employees finally understand how they’re being rewarded and what they need to do to win

This is not just transformation. It’s liberation from outdated processes, blind decisions, and effort-heavy systems.

So, Where Do You Stand?

Are your incentive programs truly working for you — or are they just running in the background?

Because the future of incentives is no longer just about paying for performance.

It’s about engineering performance intelligently.

At Kennect, we believe incentive management should be a competitive advantage not a cost center.

The question is:
Are you ready to stop guessing and start optimizing?

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