Amadan Technologies

Performance Objectives

In 2006 we built a performance objectives management system for a pharmaceutical company's sales force. Since then our customer has come back to us repeatedly over the years and asked us to add many new features.

The system allows head office staff to define sales targets for each of their products in each sales territory. Every month the administrator loads actual sales results and the system automatically calculates a score based on the sales-versus-target percentage and the product's importance.

Head office defines global performance objectives that apply to everyone, and a manager can tweak these or add individual objectives for each representative. At the end of the sales cycle the manager assesses how each representative performed against their objectives, and assigns a score.

The system collates the sales-versus-target scores and the performance objective scores and produces an overall score for each representative. This score is the principal factor used for determining the representative's performance bonus payment.

The system is used by about 400 representatives and their managers in the field. Each person has client software installed on their laptop, and periodically synchronizes with a central server in head office. Data updates are automatically distributed to the appropriate people - for example, when a representative writes a comment on his objectives, his manager sees that comment but other representatives do not. If two people update the same data item simultaneously, the system accepts one update but rejects the other. The person whose update was rejected is automatically notified and can either accept the other person's update or assert his own.

The administrator has a more complex client application that supports back-office operations such as defining sales targets, managing territories, and running reports.