Table of contents
About IXOS
IXOS is a leading wholesaler for professional plumbing, heating, and air conditioning installers, with over 40 years of history. Committed to supporting installers throughout their professional journey, IXOS provides top products, tools, and support both through direct B2B specialized sales teams and a network of +25 professional retail shops.
Industry: Wholesale building materials
Company Size: Enterprise (200+ employees)
Location: Spain
Main Improvement Areas:
- Error-free incentive automation
- Real-time incentive visibility for teams
- Increase warehouse stock rotation for certain products
- Increase gross margins
- Administrative time and cost savings
The Challenge
IXOS embarked on a journey to enhance their incentive management process, aiming to boost motivation and streamline operations. They recognized the need for transitioning from their obsolete and limited way of managing commissions, to a modern solution to manage their sales incentives effectively, especially considering the +160 members of the sales teams are distributed across the country within the different retail shops and delegations.
…doing manual calculations caused errors and discrepancies, resulting in high administrative costs and too much time dedicated to auditing those mistakes. On top of that, not having real-time visibility made it hard for us to keep the team motivated and accountable for their targets”
Consol Lopez (IXOS COO)
Consol Lopez, COO at Ixos, explains the situation they were facing: “As we transitioned into a sales-focused organization, we encountered several challenges with our sales commissions management process. Doing manual calculations caused errors and discrepancies, resulting in high administrative costs and too much time dedicated to auditing those mistakes. On top of that, not having real-time visibility made it hard for us to keep the team motivated and accountable for their targets.”
Before Using Remuner
Before Remuner, IXOS bonus model was based on triannual calculations in Excel, which lacked visibility and made it hard for the teams to understand how they were being compensated.
In addition, the variable compensation was based on net revenue results for each shop, but they were not able to design and manually calculate in excel specific commissions to incentivize the sale of certain products they wanted to promote. As a consequence, they were losing control over their stock and gross margins.
As a consequence, it had always been a challenge for them to find a way to align individual and company goals.
Thanks to Remuner, IXOS has successfully transitioned to a more efficient compensation process that has helped the company to improve in all those areas.
- Old Compensation Plan scheme
- Triannual bonus model calculated in Excel
- Targets based on net revenue per shop
- Issues IXOS was facing
- No visibility until end of the period and difficult to understand
- Inability to design and calculate incentives for specific products, resulting in lack of control over their stock and gross margins
- Individual and company goals were not aligned
After Using Remuner
“The integration with Remuner was faster than we expected -says Consol. The onboarding team led us through the integration process and gave us the flexibility we required, making things really easy for us.”
“With the new incentives, we could finally align the company goals to the individual employee goals and increase the impact on some areas of the business, such as warehouse stock rotation and gross margin”
In a short period of time, everything was up and running for more than 160 employees.
Once integration was completed with their existing compensation plans at the time, IXOS started designing new customized compensation plans with a monthly scheme and based on a particular set of products per month: “With the new incentives, we finally could align the company goals to the individual employee goals and increase the impact on some areas of the business, such as warehouse stock rotation and gross margin.” Not only did they do that, but they also started to see steady and consistent performance improvements among sales teams.
IXOS complemented their old triannual bonus plans with flexible monthly compensation plans completely aligned with the company goals at every moment while combining them with specific incentive campaigns and challenges to boost motivation and performance. This would have been unimaginable and impossible to execute without the support of Remuner and its platform that completely automates the management of such campaigns.
Another big win for the company came from the efficiency side:
“It’s not only that we reduced 95% of administrative costs and time, it is the confidence that comes with an error-free process that automates all the incentives calculation end to end. It is quite nice to see how all calculations are always up to date and without errors, while we put 100% of our attention in strategic matters.”
New Compensation Plan scheme
- Monthly plans based on specific product sales focused on incentivizing sales teams to push the product items that are most aligned with company priorities for every period.
Key improvements
- Implemented Remuner to 160+ sales reps in a few weeks.
- Automated error-free calculations of the entire incentives calculation process.
- 95% of administrative cost and time saved.
- Increase alignment of company goals and sales teams incentives, particularly around specific product lines.
“Partnering up with Remuner proved to be a game-changer for us. Their advanced platform really tackled our incentive management challenges head-on. By automating incentive calculations and giving real-time visibility to our teams, we have finally aligned the company goals to the individual employee goals. . It didn’t just make things smoother for us; it also pumped up motivation and accountability all around the organization”, says Consol.
Overall results in the first months
Automation and Efficiency
With Remuner, IXOS experienced a significant reduction in manual effort and errors associated with incentive calculations. This freed up around 95% of the time they were previously dedicating to calculate variable commissions, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives to regain control over their stock and consequently improve margins.
Enhanced Team Motivation
The diverse incentive schemes offered by Remuner, from bonus payouts to product-based campaigns, had a profound impact on boosting motivation and driving performance among company sales teams.
Real-time Visibility
One of the most significant benefits of partnering with Remuner was the real-time visibility into incentive performance. Commercial teams and managers could access up-to-date information on individual and team performance, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and course corrections as needed. In fact, the IXOS team members are accessing Remuner more than 2 times every day on average to monitor their performance.
Strategic Alignment
Remuner’s platform allowed them to align their incentive schemes with the business objectives effectively. They could design incentive plans tailored to specific goals, whether it be boosting sales of particular products or driving overall revenue growth. This strategic alignment ensured that every incentive dollar spent contributed directly to the company bottom line.
In conclusion, the partnership with Remuner has been instrumental in transforming the incentive management process at IXOS. Their innovative platform has not only streamlined their operations but also boosted motivation, accountability, and performance across the organization. “We are excited to continue leveraging Remuner’s solutions to drive even greater success and achieve our business objectives effectively”, concludes Consol.
“We are excited to continue leveraging Remuner’s solutions to drive even greater success and achieve our business objectives effectively”
