Quota and Commissions Reseach | gbemiogunbiyi.com

Quota and Commissions Research

ROLE

UX Researcher

OVERVIEW

Indeed was revising and transforming it's systems and processes by moving out of it's legacy system- Ad Central

TOOLS/METHODOLOGIES

In-depth Moderated Interviews, Show me sessions, Miro, Reduct

TIMELINE

Sep 2021- Dec 2021

In this discovery research, I identified the workflows used in the sales compensation process, the pain points experienced by power users- the sales ops teams and account reps and provided recommendations to improve the system and process.

BACKGROUND

The Challenge

As Indeed embarks on a program to deprecate its legacy system, there is a need to understand what is being used today and how, to avoid doing a "lift and shift" and ultimately improve employee experience. Sales compensation system is very important at Indeed, as the Sales Operations team uses it to assign and manage quota, set commission rates, apply credits and bonuses; and also for reps to track their performance and revenue generated every quarter.

The sales operations team uses a number of tools in Ad Central to manage the sales compensation process. But in order to enable the deprecation of Ad Central, we need to gain an understanding of the current workflows around Quota and Commissions and the pain points in the existing system to ensure user needs are met as we move to a new platform.

METHOD

The Approach

RECRUITMENT

Working closely with the Research Ops teams, I identified and recruited participants for the study, which included 15 participants from the Sales Operations team- Senior Directors, Sales Ops Analysts and Data Analysts. Since these were internal participants, I reached out to them on Slack to make them aware of the study before scheduling sessions with them. No incentives were given.

RESEARCH METHOD

For the study, I conducted 10 1 hour long 1:1 moderated interviews, with show me sessions for participants to take me through each stage and workflow of the sales compensation process for Quota and Commissions. I did a deep dive into how quota and commissions are processed today - who are involved, what tools are being used, and what pain points are these users experiencing in the current workflow

SYNTHESIS

I spent hours going over the session recordings, notes, screenshots from the show me sessions to look for patterns and themes. I synthesized the findings into how the system works today, what tools are being used and which are not, the workflows and most importantly the pain points in the process and my recommendations on how to make it better as we move out of Ad Central

REFLECTIONS

Impacts and Thoughts

This project was my first at Indeed and so it came with it's challenges of having to understand a lot of concepts in the early days specifically around sales and revenue generation. Deprecating a legacy system was a big problem space with a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty, involving a large cross functional team (Product, Engineering, UX, Sales, Data). I leveraged reading up existing research that had been done regarding the subject matter to have a better understanding of how I need to bridge the gap between user needs and business goals.

I presented my research findings in a research read out session of about 120 attendees. The insights from the research:

Dispelled the ambiguity regarding this project, stakeholders were able to get a better understanding of the direction to take

Informed the prioritization of the features currently in Adcentral that is needed to be moved out to the new system for a better user experience

Gave the larger team and senior leadership the confidence to proceed with implementation and testing