Jonathan Balkin 0:00:05.7:

All right. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our session on unlocking profitable revenue and intelligent sales incentives for financial services. I’m Jonathan Balkin. I’m one of the co-founders and executive directors of Lionpoint. I’ve been working in the financial services industry for about 20 years now. Really focused on business architecture, through technology, for operational efficiency and improvement. That’s a mouthful. So, I’m one of the founders of Lionpoint. We are a consulting firm focused on technology and operational improvement. We’ve been partnering with Anaplan for about seven years now. We’ve got a global team of about 200 consultants. Really focused on the financial services ecosystem. We actually just got acquired, just, about three years ago by a company called Alpha FMC. So, you might see in September, our name will be changing to Alpha. We are still the same Lionpoint Group team that we always have been. I’ll hand it over to Kushal to introduce himself.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:01:04.8:

Thanks, Jonathan. Hi, everybody. My name is Kushal Gulati. I’m an associate director in Lionpoint’s EPM practice. I lead our sales performance management and incentive compensation capabilities.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:01:15.0:

This is Steve Guerrera from Marsh McLennan, who’s been a close strategic partner of Lionpoint and will walk us through the recent success we’ve had on their engagement.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:01:22.6:

Thanks, Jonathan. Yes. Steve Guerrera, the VP of sales compensation for Marsh McLennan. I’ve got about 20-plus years’ experience in FP&A.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:01:34.7:

Excellent. So, for those not familiar with MMC, can you give an overview of MMC and some of the portfolio companies?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:01:43.4:

Yes, for sure. So Marsh McLennan companies is the leading global professional service firm in the area of risk strategy and people. We bring together our four businesses. Marsh, Mercer, Oliver Wyman, and Guy Carpenter, to make organizations more successful and societies more resilient.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:02:13.8:

Excellent. So, before we dive into the recent global expansion of Anaplan, can you provide a little bit of perspective and background on Marsh and Mercer’s retrospective Anaplan journey to date?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:02:25.0:

Yeah, absolutely. So, the journey really started before I started with Marsh McLennan. It started about a year – they started having conversations. The sales compensation lead at the time was retiring. They were trying to make the decision of whether they move forward with their current process, or the next step, make some investment and bring it more current. That’s when Anaplan was chosen as the vendor to move forward with. I was brought on to help project manage the rollout of the first Anaplan use case at Marsh McLennan. For Marsh, North America. From there, colleagues internally quickly took notice. We rolled out our second use case in client revenue analytics for North America. Then, our operational companies started taking notice, and we rolled out and leveraged our North America use case at Mercer.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:03:35.9:

Excellent. So, from then, 2023 was a big year for the expansion of Anaplan beyond North America. Can you speak to some of those developments and how that transpired?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:03:51.1:

Do you want to go first?

 

Kushal Gulati 0:03:51.9:

Sure. So, I think there were a few different things that changed in 2023 that were big for the long-term roadmap, as far as where MMC wanted to take their global vision. First off, the client revenue analytics use case that Steve mentioned took steps in that global expansion direction by working with Lionpoint to really expand their North America solution and roll that out to the UK. So, that was MMC’s first foray into international expansion and really a true international use case. That really allowed a global view of the client revenue analytics and forecasting that they were enjoying in North America for several years at the time. I think the other big development last year, and Steve can speak to this a little bit more, but I think last year saw an evolution, in terms of the maturity of where MMC was, in terms of its SPM roadmap. What I mean by that is, MMC had been very successful since 2020, with Marsh being on board for its incentive compensation calculations, and Mercer since 2022. In terms of ensuring the accuracy of those calculations.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:04:47.6:

I think we saw a step a little bit beyond that, in the more analytical direction last year. In that, last year, saw us introduced more around plan effectiveness, plan analytics, and really shift towards the thinking that we like to refer to as intelligent sales effectiveness or intelligent incentives.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:05:07.0:

Yes. It was a big year for us in that there was a transformation taking hold internally. More bringing the four businesses together and trying to leverage operational efficiencies where we could. One alignment, really, to one enterprise model. So, it was really the perfect time. We knew we wanted to expand globally. So, we really had to set ourselves up for future success. What that meant was, we were five years into Anaplan, three use cases now, one of them already global. So, we really needed a strategic thought partner like Lionpoint to help us think strategically and really get our vision on paper and present it to leadership. One of the main things that we pitched was a global center of excellence. In order to free up the capacity to think bigger and expand globally. So, really standing up centers of excellence around the architecture, around our current use cases, in terms of break, fix and enhancements and things of that nature.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:06:31.1:

Yes. I think you attest to the fact that having that additional capacity is what allowed us to think a little bit bigger, and seek out this longer-term roadmap.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:06:37.6:

Yes, absolutely. I mean, that’s what gave us the additional budget and freed up the people to be able to focus on what we’ll talk about in a little bit, our UK expansion.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:06:49.7:

Ultimately, this is what got the year of global leadership.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:06:52.3:

So, it’s always exciting to hear about transformation with technology within financial services, within sales performance management. I think SPM transformation is an abstract topic. I think our clients struggle to figure out how to get the attention of the global leadership team. To really focus, pay attention, and then, more importantly, invest in this journey. What were some of the strategies or the opportunities you took to really foster that relationship and partnership, to get the mandate to proceed?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:07:22.9:

Yes. For sure. I mean, it’s really what you see up here on the slide, right? Alignment to one enterprise. We’re an 85,000-person firm. It’s been around for over 150 years. No single global sales compensation process. So, I think, outside of the dollars and the efficiencies that came from the business case, it was really the right thing to do, right? To bring the process, unify the process, make it more self-service so that there is better interaction between sales colleagues and managers. You don’t have to wait 15 to 30 days to receive a sales compensation report. When it’s your quarterly review, and you’re reviewing things with your manager, you don’t have to dig through your email to find the report that was sent out 15 days ago. You can go to a dashboard and all be viewing the same information. So, that resonated. Along with, what Kushal was talking about briefly, which is the sales effectiveness metrics around the sales comp plan, right? Pre-Anaplan, we spent all of our time calculating the data. Sending the data out to the field, and really putting all the reports together.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:08:54.2:

Now, Anaplan does all of that for us. We’re able to really focus on being proactive instead of reactive. So, designing out additional effectiveness metrics that can be standardized across the firm globally. One of them being looking at revenue growth over sales compensation growth. Making sure that those are in line, and where they’re not, being able to pivot quickly is important.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:09:29.4:

Yes. Going back a little bit to that intelligent revenue effectiveness concept that I was talking about earlier. Really, what that comes down to is the profitability of your sales compensation plans. You raise a good point that often compensation design is a little bit of an afterthought in the FSI space. Sometimes that’s really due to nothing more than just how complex and daunting sales compensation plans in the FSI space can be. Those of you who are familiar with insurance brokerage, or asset wealth management incentive plans would be able to attest to the fact. When we stood up these original implementations, the amount of granularity that was involved. In terms of the volume of data inputs that it took to come up with all of these very, very complex and cumbersome payout scenarios, was, at the time, a major challenge with the manual process. Obviously, represented a challenge for the initial implementation. Five years down the roadmap, that’s what really enabled us to unlock a whole new host of capabilities that wasn’t attainable prior to Anaplan.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:10:19.8:

Now, that we had all this data sourced within Anaplan, and Anaplan truly was the source of truth for compensation results. All of those same pieces of granularity that we’re using for the data inputs that drove that initial complexity are now what are allowing us to derive really, really deep insights that we wouldn’t have had access to previously.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:10:38.0:

Now, how did you guys overcome or manage some of the risk and compliance issues? First, the old model that I guess essentially worked, versus moving to Anaplan, was that part of the equation, or the project overall, or were they stakeholders in the project?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:10:52.5:

They were. We partnered with our total rewards, our HR team, the tech team that was currently working on the access database process. We integrated a licensing check within Anaplan itself so that licensing data fed the system. Is one of the metrics that we look at as part of the payroll cycle.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:11:21.2:

Yes. In a nutshell, when we think about best-in-class plan design for your sales compensation plans, really, what we’re talking about is, how do you incentivize behaviors that result in the right person selling the right product to the right customer. Specifically, in the FSI space, we’re talking about taking that one step further. Where we’re also making sure that that right person is somebody who’s actually licensed to be behaving in that way and selling that product in a particular region. So, these types of multi-layered eligibility checks, multi-layered compliance rules, were definitely part of the original use case and part of the impetus for this global expansion as well.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:11:52.1:

Got you. So, with regards to the global expansion, the first global area was the UK. What specifically was going on in the UK, or what nuances there required the sense of urgency for UK to be the first global entry for expansion?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:12:11.1:

Interesting that you asked, yes, why UK? At first, I wanted to roll out globally, right? Quickly realized that, with putting our heads together, Kushal and I. We just realized that that was probably biting off a little more than we could chew. The UK just seemed like a natural next step. In that there weren’t a ton of language barriers, and it really reminded us a lot of what North America was in 2019. Poor pay experience, a very laborious end-to-end calculation process, and a very antiquated way to report that information to sales colleagues.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:13:00.4:

Tying back to your previous question around compliance, and how that factored into our scope and solutioning. I think that was a big part of the focus on the UK as well. Just from a cultural standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint. The UK has a much greater emphasis that they place on non-financial KPIs, in terms of how that factors into your comp calculations. So, the release of Anaplan workflow, actually, last year, allowed us to start to think a little bit bigger. As far as how we manage those compliance workflows, how we streamline some of those tasks, and the collection of all those different data inputs that used to reside in just emails, offline conversations. Now, we have a sequential, auditable way to track all of those conversations and make sure that there’s tasks being derived from it.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:13:42.3:

So, while the language barrier was easy, implementing technology software is easy. Was there any personality or cultural differences between North America, UK, that created challenges, getting this to be adopted?

 

Kushal Gulati 0:13:59.4:

That’s a good question. I wouldn’t say that there were necessarily any challenges, from a personality standpoint. I would say the biggest gap, though, was that cultural piece, from a regulatory standpoint, that I was referring to, right? The greater emphasis on making sure that all these different kinds of performance checks that HR has. That they’re holding internally, or that they’re managing internally, rather, as opposed to the North America use case. Which saw total rewards, actually oversee all of the compensation administration. I think that was the biggest difference. Beyond that, I think it was really just a matter of getting all the stakeholders from two different operating companies to really coordinate and standardize to one process with North America. Which was something that we were looking to drive with this case.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:14:38.9:

Yes, absolutely.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:14:40.0:

Was this generally a mandated approach for everyone to coalesce into a common one process?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:14:46.2:

No, not at all. We very much had to sell it. It took the better part of a year to get over the fence.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:14:53.0:

Got it. So, once you had that alignment on the vision, what was the approach that you did to get the next steps to get this to start?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:15:01.1:

Yes. We pulled Lionpoint in to be a strategic thought partner in what we’ll call the initial phase of getting, really, we needed to get approval for the business case. In order to do that, we needed to assess what the level of effort and what the cost was going to be to do that. So, we pulled Lionpoint in to run a discovery process within the UK. To assess how many plans we had, how much similarities there were between North America and the UK. What we could leverage, what we couldn’t, what would be a net new build on top of what we already had. Then, from there, we were able to put together and pitch that business case internally.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:15:49.7:

Yes, I think the vision here for the UK went a little bit beyond just making sure that we had a solution that could support their calculations. I think it was also very much about driving that one MMC approach. That single enterprise approach to how compensation was being managed, as several people in this room can probably attest, right? Anaplan implementation is an opportunity not only to transform your tech landscape, but it’s also an opportunity to revisit your business processes, to revisit your operating models, and see how you can drive those in a better direction. We took that opportunity with the way that we went about this road mapping phase that Steve was speaking to. Steve, would you maybe mind elaborating a little bit more on the silos that we were trying to eliminate?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:16:26.2:

Yes. I mean, frankly, we wouldn’t have got the business case approved without consolidating our Marsh and Mercer process. So, even though we made things more efficient with implementing Anaplan at Marsh and implementing it at Mercer. In order to expand into the UK, and make it more profitable, we had to merge those processes and move towards more of a centers of excellence and one process across Marsh and McLennan. Which is what you’ll see in the next slide here. If we could get it to pop up.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:17:12.4:

Okay. Well, to Steve’s point, we went through this process to drive these standardization. Ultimately, what we did was staff a global team of not only our Lionpoint EPM Anaplan experts here in North America. We also staffed a team of UK-based Alpha business experts, who were able to help quantify the investment case that we ultimately put in front of the Global Business Council. What ultimately got the buy in that we needed to move forward with the vision that we had. This is where the global CIO, global CFO, had already started to key into what Anaplan was capable of. Thanks to some of the profitability analytics and some of the data-driven insights we were deriving in North America. Until they actually saw the metrics and were able to use those metrics to justify the amount of investment that we were actually asking for, it was a really tough sell. So, it wasn’t until we actually went through this road mapping phase, where we not only optimized the Anaplan roadmap from a technical standpoint. We were able to drive this best-in-class process and operating model transformation as well.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:18:16.6:

I think that combination of things, along with, of course, our global resourcing that Alpha and Lionpoint were able to provide, really resulted in what you see on the screen. Which is a realization of that vision that we were looking to accomplish with this project.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:18:33.3:

Yes. To get a little more specific on what we did leverage. For example, I mean, there were best practices across both the Marsh implementation and the Mercer implementation. We had leadership reporting metrics that historically were done outside of Anaplan. They were done in Excel. That we brought into the Marsh process. Part of the business case was to leverage that for Mercer as well.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:19:09.6:

Yes, I was just going to say. The results are exactly what you see on the screen, right? In terms of the quantified benefits that we were able to derive from this proposed roadmap, it really comes down to the three figures that you see here, right? Three per cent to five per cent reduction in your annual compensation plan expense. A 60 per cent decrease in the amount of time that’s actually being spent towards the administration and compliance of these various compensation plans. Overall, 130 per cent ROI on the expansion investment that we were ultimately asking for is what we were able to prove out through this business case. Again, what ultimately got approved for our 2024 roadmap.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:19:42.4:

So, was this actuals, or was this from the business case?

 

Kushal Gulati 0:19:45.8:

This is from the business case, but based on our experience with North America, this is also indicative of realized benefits that we were able to see at both Marsh and Mercer.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:19:53.0:

Got it. So, when you guys built, some of the people are quite technical, and really struggle with thinking through how to deploy a model between different businesses, different geographies, do we have multiple models, and aggregate them up? Was that ever part of your thought process in really thinking about how to architect a global solution? One technology, but one solution?

 

Kushal Gulati 0:20:13.0:

Yes, it definitely was. I mean, I think the first place where we start with any cross-regional and plan expansion is, where are the data overlaps, right? Where are the synergies that we can take advantage of what’s already in the hub, that could allow one region to maybe scale a little bit more easily than the other, right? Taking advantage of those overlaps and synergies is obviously going to speak to a best-in-class architecture. Beyond that, as Steve was mentioning earlier, we did go through different iterations, as far as what this roadmap could potentially look like. We started with a global view initially, and then we started to take a look at maybe splitting this into just three regions globally. Basically have a three-phased approach to getting that global rollout achieved. Eventually, what we landed at is, again, what you see on the screen, which was a UK-focused roadmap that really focused on just achieving this operating model. So, going through that iterative approach and really quantifying what the benefits would have been for each of those scenarios, is what allowed us to land at what you’re seeing again, on the screen.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:21:10.5:

This was the path that was going to allow us to most optimally take advantage of the licensing budget that MMC had, as well. So, in terms of making those recommendations, I think it was really key.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:21:21.7:

Yes, I mean, it also helped with our pitch, in that on the Mercer side of the business, we had multiple people executing that process. It wasn’t centralized. So, there was an individual responsible for it, a portion of their time. So, consolidating it into one central team and sharing best practices was an easier sell there. We already had that structure at Marsh that was working well.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:21:52.4:

Playing with people’s compensation, the statements, the way they receive information, especially if they’ve been there for a while, and they’re very accustomed to a certain communication approach. Changing that can be very sensitive. What were some of the challenges or the pushbacks that you received from end users, stakeholders, as part of this transition?

 

Kushal Gulati 0:22:12.5:

Yes, I think you raise a good point because you’re exactly right. I mean, this is something that’s near and dear to every single person’s heart, right? Their compensation, how they’re actually going to be distributed, and how it’s calculated, right? The transparency and the accuracy of those results is obviously critical to any compensation plan succeeding. What we consistently heard from the end users in the UK, or the potential end users in the UK, the payees, was that there was this culture of needing to justify my own compensation. That was eating into their productivity as salespeople. They were forced to do back of the napkin math, to come up with what these numbers were supposed to be. So, they could justify them to the comp administrators, and really prove the paycheck that they actually deserve to get. When, obviously, in a perfect world, right, it would work the opposite. Where the comp results would be accurate to begin with, and then the payees would just be the consumers. So, from that standpoint, I think we had a leg up, just because their impression of the current state process was so poor.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:23:07.0:

So, there was a little bit of buy-in from that perspective. We certainly did partner with them to make sure that focus groups were engaged as part of this change management process. Making sure that their end-user feedback is incorporated into our UAT scripts. Making sure that the final result, in terms of look, feel, and all the functionality that we’re able to support, actually aligns with their needs. Again, I think just lesson learned from the North American implementation. There were certain cases where administrators drove the development of certain pieces of functionality. For the end users, for the payees themselves, it really just resulted in more clutter or more complexity that they could have done away with. So, finding that balance, I think, was really key for us.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:23:46.2:

Yes, I know, my discussions with Charlie Gottdiener. We talk about a lot of people in the asset management business are always keeping their own offline Excel schedules, reconciling it to other places. They’re always doing scenario modelling and sensitivity analysis to see what would influence their compensation more or less. People are driven by behavior. So, what you said, trying to find the right person for the right role, and trying to make sure that your incentive program is aligned to behaviors, really allows you to probably be a little bit more fluid. If you need to adjust those, you’ve got one place, one platform to adjust it with transparency to people understand the impact of the changes.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:24:22.4:

100 per cent. So, that’s scenario modelling you were speaking to, is something we can trickle down to the end user. So, there is no back-of-the-napkin math at all, right? Even for their what-if scenarios, directly in Anaplan, they’re able to model out what the impact would be on their compensation from closing a particular deal that’s in their pipeline. Or not closing a deal that maybe they were previously forecasted to, that type of thing. Understanding how that impacts them personally. In an ideal world, aligns with the profit outcomes for MMC as a whole. So, aligning those behaviors is really key to best-in-class sales compensation, I would say.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:24:53.3:

Yes, and some net new functionality that we’re still working on building out, but is part of the requirements for the UK rollout, is being able to model out plan transfers. What the impact to moving from one plan to the other will do to the overall comp expense? Not just the functionality, but putting that in managers’ hands to be able to do. Today, the way that it works is we’ve got an offline Excel calculator for plan transfers or plan changes, and we email back and forth for that, right? Putting that in the hands of the manager will be key to free up some additional time.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:25:40.3:

That sounds great. Well, we are really excited to be on this journey with you guys. It’s been a great project. As we wrap up, what are some of the successes that you would highlight, and where do you think MMC will be a year from now? Where do you go from here?

 

Steve Guerrera 0:25:58.4:

Yes, I think it’s key for net new rollouts to really leverage a strategic partner that brings industry expertise to the table, and not just something that you’re going to start to do internally by yourself. There’s only so much you know and can leverage as part of rolling out that new business case. There’s just a lot, in terms of metrics, right? You only really have access to what’s at your firm. You don’t have access to additional metrics that you may be able to leverage from a third party. I think around testing, we ran dual. I think that was one of the most successful parts of the North America rollout. Running the sales compensation metrics in the old process, but also running it in Anaplan, to test out that they were in line, or where they weren’t in line. You were able to easily explain it.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:27:15.1:

Yes, I think that parallel testing phase was definitely key, especially going back to the point from earlier around getting the buy-in from the end users. Really making sure that they had confidence and faith in the system, and that this truly was a better approach than the back of napkin approach that they were used to in the past. I think that was critical. I think the other big lesson learned that I would take away from this, is just how iterative a process and approach this was, over several years, right? We started with one use case in Marsh, North America in 2019. Which was just, how do I get my comp calculated correctly? These were multi-layered crediting rules that had a ton of complexity to them. So, actually solving for that core problem was difficult enough at the time. Once we had that piece knocked out, that’s what really unlocked the next piece of the journey, which was allowing us to expand that roadmap to Mercer. Then, from there, four years later, once Anaplan’s been the source of truth for compensation for several years, that’s when you have a years-long sample size to start looking at things like different attainment curves and distributions.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:28:08.6:

How those are affected by changes in seasonality? You have insights into different revenue mixes and channel mix data that you wouldn’t have access to with an offline process. Being able to source all of that into your profitability metrics, I think, ultimately, is the reason that we are on this roadmap now. Only because of those sequential steps that we took to get here, and the foundation that we laid. I think on the screen here, you can see some of the active benefits that MMC’s deriving from this journey now. So, I think as just a parting point here, for any financial services customers who may be in the room, who may be using Anaplan for other use cases but haven’t necessarily explored it for sales compensation. The numbers on the previous slide spoke for themselves, in terms of the potential for ROI, and returns that you could get on this type of investment. Here are some of the soft benefits that MMC is seeing as well. I don’t know if you want to elaborate on any of them, Steve, but overall, the process that we’re seeing today is a much, much more robust process that allows for standardization across our global operating companies.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:29:07.4:

That allows for faith in the system where it didn’t exist previously. Overall, we’ve got an incentive plan that aligns the behaviors of your producers in the field with the most profitable outcomes for the firm. Again, making sure the right people are selling the right products to the right customer. Thinking about where we can take that roadmap even one step further. To go back to your question around where we could be a year from now. So, the next year is going to see us continue down this path of implementing the UK, basically, sales compensation solution we’ve been talking about, and enabling some of those data-driven analytics. This really is only the beginning to where we think that we could take this, and where we’re already starting to have some early discussions around some of the transformative potential. We’ve had early discussions around, for example, predictive attainment analytics and correlational explainability. So, using things like PlanIQ and some of the natural language, querying that we saw demoed earlier.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:29:59.1:

To understand what exactly is driving each of these different kinds of scenarios that I’m seeing. What changes or levers that I have available to me to pull for a particular compensation plan, are actually going to drive the behavioral changes that I’m hoping to drive? From a profitability standpoint. All of those things, along with layering in AI and ML-driven capabilities, I think really just are just the tipping point, I think, for us, in terms of where we could take this.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:30:23.3:

Excellent. Well, thank you very much for your partnership. We’re really excited to be on this journey with you all. We do have a minute or two. If there’s any questions in the audience for Steve or Kushal. All right. Sure.

 

Audience 0:30:41.0:

[Unclear phrase 0:30:42.4]

 

Kushal Gulati 0:30:52.9:

Sure. Yes. So I think what you’re speaking to is really a business problem more than a technology problem. Or at least, that’s how we choose to look at it, right? You could use Anaplan to drive standardization in terms of those processes, and force a certain approach, so to speak, right? We took the approach of engaging total rewards and HR from the very starting point of this engagement and making sure that there was a global vision from a strategic standpoint. That way, they can drive what that global strategy looks like. There’s already alignment from a strategic element, now, rolling out the same technology to multiple regions doesn’t sound quite as foreboding.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:31:30.8:

So, the tail is not wagging the dog.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:31:32.2:

Exactly.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:31:32.7:

Business is driving standardization, and the technology will align to that, as opposed to building all these bespoke models by country and then expecting to have to maintain.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:31:42.9:

Yes. There are more similarities than there are differences. Yes, there are different metrics and different ways that you’re going to pay, depending on the region, right? Higher growth regions, you’re going to pay differently than mature markets. What’s really transformative is the platform itself. One of the examples is, we implemented the ticketing workflow process within Anaplan. So, what used to be sales colleagues sending emails to three or four different people to get resolution on their sales comp, is now all housed within Anaplan. Within their sales compensation dashboards. They could raise a ticket. They could say what the issue is, our team can pick that ticket up and review it, do what they need to do, and route it to whoever they need to route it, instead of digging through email. Then, putting all of that detail into an offline spreadsheet.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:32:46.9:

Awesome. Well, Kushal to you for being a really great partner to Steve, and helping them on their journey. I know it’s been a long and exciting and challenging one. Steve, again, thank you for your partnership.

 

Steve Guerrera 0:32:57.5:

Thank you guys. We got here together. So, appreciate it.

 

Jonathan Balkin 0:33:00.1:

Excellent. Well, thank you all.

 

Kushal Gulati 0:33:01.7:

Thank you everybody.