Overview

About Ahead

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Chicago, AHEAD is a leading IT services and consulting company specializing in cloud platforms, data and analytics, enterprise automation, and integrated security. With nearly 3,000 employees across nearly 40 global locations, AHEAD partners with organizations to accelerate their digital transformation and to do so in a way that creates significant and sustainable business impact.

Challenge

After successfully completing their first merit cycle using Pequity, the Pequity team proactively reached out to AHEAD to showcase new feature releases and explore additional ways to support their compensation processes. During these discussions, it became clear that AHEAD’s quarterly bonus cycle had become increasingly challenging to manage.

• Scaling Bonus Plans: As AHEAD grew, made a strategic acquisition, and adopted a more focused approach to incentive management, the number of bonus plans increased meaningfully. Combined with increased headcount following the latest acquisition, this created an administrative challenge for the payroll and commissions team.
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• Manual Spreadsheet Management: The process of creating, customizing, and distributing approximately 250 spreadsheets per bonus cycle took about four full days of work. This manual method was not only time-consuming but also inhibited involvement from multiple stakeholders.
  
  
• Inefficient Approval Workflow: Bonus plan payments required high-level approvals but also needed front-line reality checks. The team had to generate customized spreadsheets for many managerial levels, significantly adding to the workload, and yet even more levels of review were desired but simply not practical.
  

Solution

To address AHEAD’s challenges, Pequity implemented a streamlined approach to bonus management using the core Pequity platform, designed to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and manager engagement.

• Seamless Transition: Pequity collaborated with AHEAD to configure the platform based on their existing spreadsheet structure, ensuring a smooth transition from manual processes to a centralized platform within a week.
  
  
• Customized Configuration: Tailored the platform to accommodate AHEAD’s specific needs, including bonus plan structure and approval workflows, resulting in a solution that matched their organizational complexity.
  
  
• Data Accuracy and Usability: Rigorously tested and refined the setup to ensure that the transition did not introduce errors.
  
  
• Responsive Support: The support team remained highly responsive, particularly during late-night requests, delivering quick turnarounds during the initial setup.
  

“Customer support has been fantastic. In particular, whoever y’all have working late night/overnight is doing a phenomenal job. E.g., we needed some quick turns with our recent quarterly bonus cycle addition. Once we hit late afternoon, stuff started getting done! We’d get an email back, I’d jump on and test, shoot a note back with a question or tweak needed, and maybe 30 minutes or less later, boom! Fixed/done, go take another look!"

Chris Young
Senior Director of Compensation and People Analytics, Ahead

Results

• Eliminated 250 Spreadsheets: Pequity completely replaced the need for creating and managing 250 individual spreadsheets, dramatically reducing administrative work.
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• Saved 16 FTE Days per Year: The payroll and commissions team saved approximately 4 FTE days per cycle, allowing more focus on planning and analysis.
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• Improved Accuracy: Enhanced visibility and engagement led to quicker error identification and correction, resulting in a more efficient bonus cycle.
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• Higher Manager Engagement: Improved transparency and accessibility encouraged active participation from managers, leading to faster issue resolution and a more streamlined approval process.
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• Centralized Approval Management: Consolidated all US approval flows into a single platform, enabling the payroll and commissions team to manage approvals efficiently without maintaining hundreds of separate documents.
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• Flexible Access: Managers could directly access the necessary data, reducing manual sharing and accelerating the approval process.
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• Rapid Implementation: The system was fully operational within a week, ready for the next bonus cycle.

Summary

By leveraging Pequity, AHEAD transformed their quarterly bonus management from a manual, spreadsheet-heavy process into a streamlined, centralized workflow. The transition eliminated the need for 250 individual spreadsheets per cycle, saving 16 FTE days per year while significantly improving accuracy and manager engagement. The centralized platform also provided real-time visibility and a smoother approval process, allowing managers to stay actively involved. With a rapid implementation and ongoing responsive support, Pequity enabled AHEAD to simplify their bonus cycle management, saving time and increasing operational efficiency.