"Beyond Requirements" Case Study: Commission System

Oct 13, 2015

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The Possible Solution(s)

Once the team had a good understanding of what they were trying to accomplish, they decided they needed to identify options for realizing those objectives, starting with reducing the time required for commission payments. They used impact mapping (Chapter 14) to help them identify options. Several options came up, including simplifying the commission rules and consolidating the multiple commission systems into one. The team also identified multiple options for dealing with the existing systems:

Build something in-house.
Revise the existing conglomerate.
Purchase something.
Outsource all commissions activity.
Do nothing.

The team decided that the best route was to start with simplifying the rules for commissions in one of the acquired companies to see if there was any impact on sales. At the same time, they started the search for software to replace all of the existing commission systems. Table 8.1 lists the characteristics that served as criteria for the search.

Table 8.1 Desired Characteristics of New Commission Software

Characteristic	Required/Optional
Accept inputs from multiple policy systems to determine commissions.	Required
Create unique commission rules for each individual agent.	Required
Support multiple hierarchies: some sales channels are organized based on product, others are based on geography, some are based on both product and geography.	Required
Allow for adjustments to occur in the calculated commission rules.	Required
Allow for manual determination of commission payments.	Required
Create unique commission rules based on free-form attributes and specific values of those attributes.	Optional
Support multiple commission rules unique to the individual, unique to the policy.	Optional

The team included the optional characteristics as a way of seeing if any commonly used applications used complex rule logic, in case they found data to support the need for unique commission rules.

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