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About The Hotels Network
The Hotels Network is an innovative technology company working with over 20,000 hotels around the globe. Boasting an international team of specialists with deep expertise in hospitality, product design and consumer marketing, the company offers clients a full-stack growth platform to power their direct channel. By leveraging a series of integrated tools and analytics, hotel brands can attract, engage and convert guests throughout the user journey.
In addition to price comparison, reviews summary and a full suite of personalization options, THN’s Predictive Personalization product harnesses machine learning techniques to predict user behaviour and then automatically personalizes both the message and the offer for each user. The company’s benchmarking product, BenchDirect, is the first of its kind for the direct channel, providing hotels with never-before-seen competitive data.
THN is proud to have been recognized for the company’s product innovations, rapid growth, and unique workplace culture for the second year in a row, most recently named the Best Direct Booking Tool for 2024 in the prestigious HotelTechAwards.
Industry: Hospitality
Company Size: Mid-sized (51-200 employees)
Location: +100 countries
Main Improvement Areas:
- Error-free incentive automation
- Administrative time and cost savings
- Enhancing team visibility and motivation
- Implementing a gamified incentive system
The Challenge
In the last few years, The Hotels Network has registered consistent and rapid growth, expanding the business to several countries and markets across the globe. This fast pace of expansion required a shift from their rigid commission management approach to a modern and flexible solution in order to effectively handle their sales incentives.
Initially, THN relied on a proprietary tool for managing sales commissions and incentives. This tool required coding for every adjustment to the original compensation plan, making it increasingly complex and difficult to manage. Each adjustment to the compensation models, such as removing products from the commissionable list, required updating the script in their internal solution, leading to delays to have the updated plans live. This need for manual adjustments of the internal system consumed time and resources and introduced inconsistencies.
Another point the company wanted to improve was sales teams visibility, as sales reps found it challenging to understand and track their compensation accurately. The gap between the request for an update in the compensation plan and its eventual implementation in the internal solution created a “blind” period during which sales teams had no visibility into the status of their commission achievements.
This process limited THN’s ability to respond fast to changes in their business needs and was starting to impact the sales team’s motivation. THN needed a more flexible, automated solution to streamline their incentive management process, reduce administrative burden, and enhance overall team motivation and performance.
Before using Remuner
The previous compensation plan scheme was based on a quarterly bonus model with targets tied to New Business and Expansion metrics, offering accelerators and additional commissions upon hitting specific thresholds.
The challenges faced by The Hotels Network included dealing with complexity due to frequent modifications required in commissionable products, which in turn demanded coding adjustments within the internal solution.
This constant need for modifications led to time-consuming tasks for the Data Department, as they had to script changes whenever the Sales Ops manager updated compensation plans. Consequently, this process resulted in unnecessary friction and delays during implementation.
“Some adjustments took us up to 3 months to implement, setting us back from the pace the business required.” – explains Fabien Gouttebaron, VP Sales at THN.
Moreover, a lack of real-time visibility into incentive performance for the sales teams posed issues, affecting their ability to make informed decisions promptly.
Old Compensation Plan scheme
- Quarterly bonus model
- Targets based on New Business and Expansion metrics
- Accelerators and additional commissions when specific thresholds are reached.
Issues THN was facing
- Complexity: Frequent modifications to commissionable products demanded coding adjustments in the internal solution.
- Time Consumption: The Data Department had to script changes every time the Sales Ops manager updated compensation plans.
- Friction: The process created unnecessary friction and delays in implementation.
- Visibility Issues: Sales teams lacked real-time visibility into their incentive performance, hindering their ability to make informed decisions.
After using Remuner
After implementing Remuner, The Hotels Network (THN) experienced a significant transformation in their sales incentive management process. The shift to a more flexible and automated solution resolved the challenges faced due to the manual adjustments required in their previous system. With Remuner in place, THN successfully streamlined their sales commission process, reducing administrative burden and enhancing team motivation and overall performance.
One key improvement was the elimination of the “blind” period experienced by sales teams during compensation plan updates. With real-time visibility into their commission achievements, sales reps could now accurately track their progress, leading to improved motivation and a better understanding of their compensation structure.
Additionally, the automation provided by Remuner significantly reduced the time and resources previously consumed by manual adjustments, allowing THN to respond swiftly to changes in business needs and ensuring a more efficient and effective sales operations environment.
The collaboration with Remuner yielded impressive outcomes:
- 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
- Automated error-free calculations of the entire incentives calculation process.
- 95% of administrative cost and time saved.
- Real time visibility for sales teams, with the consequent positive impact in their engagement and performance.
- Increase alignment of company goals and sales teams incentives.
“Remuner has revolutionized our sales commission process. The automation and real-time visibility have empowered our teams, and the strategic alignment of incentives has significantly improved our performance.“ — explains Fabien, VP Sales at The Hotels Network
Overall results in the first months
Alignment with Business Goals: The new commission model aligns employee rewards with the company’s strategic goals, ensuring all team members work toward the same objectives.
Greater Motivation and Transparency: Introducing Remuner into daily operations has boosted the sales team’s motivation. Real-time transparency in compensation allows them to see their performance and better understand their goals by connecting to the tool to monitor their progress.
Operational Efficiency: The company has optimized the variable compensation process with automated calculations, eliminating errors from manual calculations. Consolidating data from various systems into a single source of truth has improved transparency and eliminated discrepancies.
Enhanced Team Motivation and Accountability: The diverse incentive schemes offered by Remuner, including rankings and leaderboards, have significantly increased team motivation and accountability, leading to improved sales and customer success performance.
Great Adoption by Sales Teams: Remuner stands out as an incredibly user-friendly solution, making the transition exceptionally smooth for THN. Despite the typical reluctance of sales teams to adopt new tools, the adoption of Remuner was seamless right from the start.
“Our sales teams embraced Remuner effortlessly, its user-friendly design made the transition seamless for us.. Even with the usual resistance to new tools, they started using Remuner from day one.” – highlights Fabien.
