How a Global Flooring Leader Boosted Revenue by Switching to Varicent

A leading global flooring manufacturer was managing sales planning and compensation across four disconnected systems. This made it hard for sales reps to understand their targets, and hard for the business to catch payout issues before they hit payroll. Today, with one connected platform, the company has rebuilt trust in the process, reduced payment errors, and achieved an 8% revenue lift in one business unit through more accurate, rep-driven planning.

What Happens When Sales Planning Is Split Across Four Systems 

This manufacturing leader had long dominated its industry. But as its product portfolio expanded to include globally sourced materials, new challenges emerged. Tariff swings, tighter margins, and competition from independent distributors eroded pricing power and control. 

The company relied on four disconnected systems to manage incentives, territories, compensation rules, and forecasting logic. Each lived on a separate team. None were built to work together.

It became harder to audit performance, adjust quotas, or trace a single rep’s earnings from goal to payout. When the market shifted due to tariffs, global sourcing challenges, or changes in product mix, the planning model couldn’t keep up . Reps were handed targets without context, and leadership lacked visibility into whether those goals were grounded in field reality.

“We were using four different systems for incentive management and sales planning,” said the Corporate Compensation Manager. “I just knew there had to be something better.”

From Manual Workarounds to One Connected Platform

The team needed more than just integration. They needed one system where planning, compensation, and analytics could operate together, with real-time visibility and fewer manual touchpoints.

With Varicent's Sales Planning and Incentives solutions, the company connected territory structures, compensation rules, and quota logic in one environment. 

Now, when a rep’s territory shifts, the associated quota updates automatically. There are no version control issues, no broken spreadsheet formulas, and no ambiguity in how performance is tracked. 

“If we moved an account, the goals move with them,” said the Director of Process Improvement. “It’s very explainable. We don’t have to wait until next year.” 

To strengthen accuracy and reduce risk, the team also implemented Varicent’s ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) functionality to bring together payment data from multiple sources and validate it. Each pay cycle, the team runs automated outlier detection by comparing payout patterns across current and historical data. If something looks unusual, it’s flagged for investigation before it reaches payroll.

A New Approach: Bottoms-Up Planning from the Field

With a unified system in place, the company saw an opportunity to rethink how quotas were set. In one business unit, they piloted a bottoms-up planning model, inviting reps to forecast their own performance using three years of account history and in-flight trends within Salesforce.

Managers reviewed the rep entries and aligned them to broader business goals. Leadership expected reps to come in lower than the top-down plan, but what came back was 8% higher than originally projected. 

“We had expected our business plan to actually reduce the first year we did it,” said the Director. “But they all came in several percentage points higher than what our business plan was.”

Rather than revert to the original plan, leadership adopted the rep forecasts as the new baseline. They reinforced accountability through performance-based incentives and aligned execution around the numbers the field believed in. s the field stood behind.

The result was an 8% revenue increase for the business unit that piloted the approach. It was a clear signal that rep-led planning, supported by clear incentive structures and a unified system, can produce more accurate forecasts, stronger performance, and higher revenue than traditional top-down models.

A Platform That Can Adapt to Tariff Pressure and Market Change

Before Varicent, tariff swings and supply chain changes forced the team to wait for a new fiscal year to adjust plans. They relied on manual spreadsheets and post-hoc explanations to keep up. 

Now, with territory logic, compensation rules, and forecasting models fully connected, adjustments happen in real time. ELT flags payout anomalies early. Quotas shift with territory moves. Audit prep is faster, cleaner, and fully traceable. 

“We’re providing the capabilities that we were unable to do before,” said the Senior Sales Planning Manager. “It definitely fills a gap.”

This wasn’t just about fixing inefficiencies. It was about building a scalable platform that reps trust, sales ops can manage with confidence, and leadership relies on to drive revenue with clarity. Visibility improved, errors decreased, and sales ops gained more control over a process that had previously been held together by manual effort. With the flexibility to adjust quotas mid-cycle and realign goals in real time, the company now plans with clarity and adapts when it matters most.