Alkem Laboratories invests in success with tailored compensation plans

Thousands of dedicated professionals at Alkem Laboratories help maintain the company’s leading market position in the pharmaceuticals sector. Ten thousand field agents and more than 500 sales managers in India—the people who promote Alkem products, find new customers, and secure contracts—are rewarded for their efforts using a variety of focused incentive compensation plans.

“We run more than 200 comp plans for our employees, and each is tied to about 50 parameters such as meeting personal targets or hitting product-specific key performance indicators,” explains Vijay Yelwatkar, AVP, IT at Alkem. “We want to maximize the positive impact that compensation has on morale and productivity. In order to do that, the underlying processes must be completely clear to employees, and rewards must be calculated and delivered in a timely manner.”

For more than three decades, Alkem relied on spreadsheets and an on-premises solution to calculate, process, and deliver incentive compensation management (ICM). The ICM system was complex to operate, difficult to audit, and slow to deliver reports and calculations. Creating new compensation plans and adjusting existing ones required re-coding, which could take up to 15 days. Growing data volumes created processing delays, hindering the work of accounting and finance teams.

Modernizing compensation management

Alkem wanted to improve the employee experience, calculate compensation faster, and align compensation with market conditions and company growth objectives. Impressed with a detailed proof of concept, Alkem chose Anaplan for the task. “Anaplan met all of our key criteria and more,” says Rajesh Dubey, CFO at Alkem. “Anaplan was by far the most powerful, flexible, and auditable platform we looked at.” The Alkem team was pleased with the intuitive Anaplan User Experience, and appreciated the breadth and depth of compensation and bonus plan models they could adapt and customize using Anaplan.

Alkem migrated the data and calculation logic from its legacy system to Anaplan, with the help of VeeAR Analytics (formerly known as ACG India). “VeeAR provided excellent support and guidance, and the transition was satisfyingly smooth,” says Yelwatkar. “The team is always on hand to check any customizations done by the Alkem team to ensure that the solution is always running optimally.”

Establishing ultra-efficient, streamlined processes

Alkem can now quickly complete its bonus and compensation calculations and provide real-time insights to finance and accounting teams directly in Anaplan. “With our legacy system, some ICM calculations took a long time to complete,” comments Anuj Agarwal, General Manager, IT at Alkem. “With Anaplan, we can do those calculations at a very fast pace and deliver ICM reports to finance and business teams without delay. Plus, the calculations have greater transparency and visibility for auditing purposes.”

By moving from an on-premises ICM solution to Anaplan, Alkem reduced IT Infrastructure costs, gained transparency, and increased business confidence in the system. And when data volumes grow, Anaplan enables Alkem to scale up on the fly, quickly and effectively.

Alkem has not only cut costs with Anaplan—it has also boosted productivity and morale. “Anaplan empowers us to transform our ICM processes with efficient workflows and increased application performance,” concludes Agarwal.  “Developing new compensation plans and editing existing calculations is quick and easy with Anaplan, so our teams can focus on supporting and incentivizing our workforce. Our employees are happy too because they have clear insight into their compensation and always receive timely payments. Everyone comes out ahead.”