Overview
The calculation of commissions is a very complex problem, yet the majority of companies use highly manual processes to do the work. With the QCommission for HubSpot application, that is no longer a problem.
For sales people, nothing is more important than the commission check they get on a regular basis. Sales people work hard to close their sales and expect to get their sales commissions correctly and on a timely basis. They expect the calculations to be accurate based upon the agreed upon compensation plans. They need clear and detailed statements that explain the basis of every calculation.
The majority of sales people would agree they do not get a clear and correct commission statement. Compensation plans are by their nature complex. The data needed to calculate the plans is not always available, the plans change on a regular basis and there are exceptions to the exceptions. Sales people get their sales commissions typically weeks after the period is over. Frequently the crediting and calculations are incorrect. As a result, the commission statements are not clear and obvious. They have no idea how they are getting paid, or waste time trying to figure out what they should get paid.
With the advent of CRM systems, companies are attempting to automate the sales process and customer interactions. More and more sales people access CRM systems to get their job done. But there have been challenges in CRM adoption as sales people resist the solutions. If salespeople have to access the CRM system to get access to their commission statements, they are more likely to use the CRM system for its intended purpose. If a salesperson knows they can help get paid accurately, they will make sure to keep the systems accurate and thus help keep the system up to date.
A commission solution that can accurately establish and calculate commissions and can seamlessly provide the commission statements for viewing by sales people can be a great advantage to firms. In addition to reducing commission errors, reducing time taken to administer and increasing sales people productivity, the solution can increase HubSpot adoption.
QCommission is a powerful, flexible sales commission software tool. It calculates sales people’s compensation, accurately, quickly and professionally. QCommission is integrated with HubSpot CRM systems as well as accounting systems such as Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains, Microsoft Dynamics AX, and QuickBooks.
HubSpot CRM offers a visual dashboard with a real-time view of the entire sales funnel. Using the CRM system, businesses can track customer interactions automatically through email, social media, live chat or phone calls and every interaction is stored in a timeline organized by lead. The HubSpot CRM marketing tool offers lead generation and email marketing automation features to help businesses create and manage email templates and track how well those emails are performing.
The HubSpot CRM sales tools help sales reps to manage contacts, track deals, manage their sales pipeline and more. The platform integrates with other HubSpot tools such as HubSpot Marketing Hub and HubSpot Sales Hub, as well as third party platforms including Zoho CRM, Salesforce, SugarCRM and more.
HubSpot CRM's free plan is free forever and includes access to all HubSpot sales, marketing, customer service and contact management tools for unlimited users.
Technology
HubSpot, supplies hubspot.com, a services platform for building applications and integrating with HubSpot’s offerings. The hubspot.com platform allows you to customize standard objects and build custom objects, tabs, and s-controls. All HubSpot APIs are built using REST conventions and designed to have a predictable URL structure. They use many standard HTTP features, including methods (POST, GET, PUT, DELETE) and error response codes. All HubSpot API calls are made under https://api.hubapi.com and all responses return standard JSON. Use of the hubspot.com tools make sure that the integration works well with the various versions and models of HubSpot. The platform also ensures that the third-party product is properly authenticated prior to getting access to the HubSpot data. All access to HubSpot data is through the hubspot.com platform.
QCommission utilizes a technology called QXchange to integrate to other applications including hubspot.com. Specific data access plug-ins (DAP) for different systems can be added to QXchange to integrate with various data sources. A special DAP for HubSpot allows QCommission to exchange data with hubspot.com. A unique ability of QXchange is that QCommission can access any data object in Hubspot.com including custom objects. This allows very flexible integrations.
Architecture
QCommission is a fully web-based SaaS application with the ability to be implemented as a public or private cloud application.
Data Objects
- Contacts
- Companies
- Deals
- Tickets
- Products
Reporting Objects
In addition to objects storing the commissions results data, the presentation module also provides some standard screen tabs, dashboards and reports. This allows the sales person to be able to easily and clearly review their calculated results.
The sales person’s commissions results are presented in a detailed and comprehensive manner.
The list of reports and dashboards present information unique to each sales rep. Sales rep can also create their own reports, dashboards and views into the data.
Access
Sales people are already familiar with hubspot.com user interface. We leverage that knowledge, so they do not have to learn a new tool. Sales people already have access privileges to the HubSpot system, authenticated by the base hubspot.com system. QCommission utilizes the same access to allow access to its functionality.
The QCommission presentation module fully conforms to the standards of hubspot.com objects such that the HubSpot administrator can set access privileges to QCommission using the same functionality used in the underlying hubspot.com system. But there are two options of access. QCommission can also be accessed directly from within HubSpot using Single Sign-on (SSO). This passes through access and still appears seamless. A key value to this method is that QCommission compensation data can be secured by QCommission security which tends to be more secure than HubSpot configuration (in many companies CRM data is shared by sales people and administrators but compensation data should not be shared).
QCommission works with all editions of HubSpot with the exception of Group edition. It specifically can work with the Professional edition.
Conclusion
QCommission does a tremendous job calculating individual commissions for the sales person. It brings that calculated data to the salesperson directly within the HubSpot system or passes through to display more securely. With this integration it ties the two systems in such a manner that the complexity to the customer is reduced to a minimal level.
