Autodesk is changing how the world is designed and made. Their technology spans architecture, engineering, construction, product design, manufacturing, media, and entertainment, empowering innovators everywhere to solve challenges big and small. From greener buildings to smarter products to more mesmerizing blockbusters, Autodesk software helps customers make a better world for all.

After decades of steady growth, Autodesk's compensation program was mature and intricate. The organization tracked several thousand compensation components to support a significant sales force of 2,500+ salespeople and 1,900 channel partners.  

No one knows the complexity of directing the outcomes of sales teams this size better than Dr. Robert Bieshaar, the company's Senior Director for Worldwide Sales Compensation and Acquisitions. He recognized the existing patchwork of systems—two classic SPMs and a home-grown solution—had created a highly complex environment. Managing sales crediting and incentive compensation required extensive resources, with over 25 full-time employees dedicated to the process.  

While the existing ICM solution effectively calculated and processed sales payments, there were tradeoffs in several critical areas:

• Lack of flexibility: Autodesk needed agility to support an complex and ever-evolving sales environment, but their current, delicate solution couldn't accommodate modern sales processes and there was a lead time of six months for even minor plan changes.

• A lack of unified data and limited insights: The compensation team's inability to access in-depth analytics or perform predictive modelling with desired what-if scenarios hindered the enterprise’s ability to anticipate or act on relevant data. The system was too fragmented.

• Manual, time-consuming processes: Despite the ICM solution in place, compensation analysts were bogged down with manual tasks related to calculating payouts in point solutions. Inefficient workflows constrained the ability to focus on strategic activities.  

Autodesk needed a centralized, scalable platform to simplify operations, support their unique complexities and large data volumes, and the ability to forecast scenarios with connected data (everything from territories, quotas, through to ICM).  

Robert and his team wanted advanced strategic planning, without the administrative burden.

As he shares:

"We needed an analytics environment that uses ICM data to be able to predict what is going to happen in our sales organization and what we should be focused on."

Adopting a unified, holistic source of truth for sales performance management

After an extensive evaluation, Autodesk chose Forma.ai as its full-stack SPM solution.

Robert cites several key reasons for the decision to implement Forma:

Unmatched flexibility & scalability

Unlike traditional ICM solutions where compensation plans or rules are built and configured from scratch for every change required, in Forma.ai, the design and administration of plans is fundamentally different (and much faster) thanks to the unique way the platform standardizes SPM data.  

During implementation, Forma.ai's customer operations team supported Autodesk with data transformation directly, ensuring all data was mapped to our proprietary model.

Now, Autodesk achieves rapid, and accurate SPM outcomes by simply outlining the parameters they need—wherein they can define, configure, and customize any plan type for rollout in just days. There's no longer a tradeoff between speed to value and sophistication.

Robert's team sees the benefit of the Forma platform's open-ended configuration capabilities for creating any comp structure imaginable:  

Optimized strategic decision-making  

Once Autodesk created a comprehensive source-of-truth with their sales performance data with Forma.ai, they could model different compensation scenarios, forecast outcomes, and optimize for profitability in an unconstrained environment.

With real-time analytics and predictive modeling running on interconnected data (everything involved in territories, quotas, and incentives), Autodesk now has the insights needed to make informed SPM decisions fast.

Their leaders can forecast sales outcomes, identify savings, adjust incentive structures, and drive revenue growth more effectively:

Increased efficiency & productivity

The automation features provided by Forma.ai have significantly reduced the manual aspects of the work involved in managing the compensation processes. The team has rapidly streamlined comp design and testing processes, freeing up Autodesk’s compensation analysts, such that the job profile for twenty of the thirty full-time employees could be refocused on higher-value tasks, such as providing data insights and strategic counsel to sales managers and leaders. This has elevated the role of compensation analysts from process managers to strategic advisors.

What's more, upon Forma’s launch, plans were rolled out at fiscal start (as opposed to Q2) for the first time in several years.  

Improved sales team engagement & performance coaching capabilities

Thanks to the evolution of the comp analyst role, Robert's team can now have directional performance discussions with sales on key trends.  
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“Our comp team is now adding far more value to the sales team than just providing a payout calculation.
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They’re working with sales to identify trends, help compare performance relative to the organization overall, and suggesting opportunities and actions to focus on based on what they see working.”

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Salespeople at Autodesk now have access to enhanced, data-rich dashboards providing real-time insights into their performance. Sellers can see pipeline views, highlighting where they need to focus and what actions can maximize earnings and revenue. They can see progress to team-based incentives, and each rep's view is dynamically generated based on their comp plan.

The enhanced transparency has empowered Autodesk's sales force to make informed adjustments to sales strategy based on incentive structures, resulting in improved cross-functional alignment.

A trusted enterprise partner

Overall, since adopting Forma.ai, Autodesk has seen a significant transformation in sales performance and compensation.  

Forma.ai has become an integral part of the company's SPM strategy, delivering accuracy and reliability as an active partner in their success. On the precision and dependability of Forma.ai, Robert shares the team's satisfaction:

"Having the trust and confidence that it's actually working and working better than we had ever dreamed of, and more accurate than ever before, is truly something we take pride in....With Forma.ai you have more control over your sales compensation process than you’ve ever had before"