Udemy is the world’s largest online learning destination that helps students, businesses, and governments gain the skills they need to compete in today’s economy. Millions of students are mastering new skills from 57,000 expert instructors teaching over 150,000 online courses in over 65 languages.

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Challenge

Like many companies, Udemy was using spreadsheets to manage sales commissions, where the finance team had to build plans and then manually add the necessary calculations, rules, and data. Managing payouts was even more complex, with representatives from HR and sales needing to verify whether payments were accurate before reps could receive their commission. It felt siloed at times—and it was causing numerous issues, including miscalculations and potentially missing reps’ payout deadlines.

“Our manual process meant wasted time for the finance team and left us prone to potential errors,” said Giovanni Torres, Revenue Operations Manager at Udemy. “There was a lack of a system between when reps should be paid out—and little ownership of the entire process.”

As the company was rapidly scaling its B2B sales organization within Udemy for Business, the team was ready for an upgrade.

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Solution

Udemy shortlisted three potential software solutions, but one clearly stood out above the competition—CaptivateIQ.

CaptivateIQ provided a package of support and software that included:

• Regular meet-ups to monitor onboarding progress and maintain momentum towards Udemy’s deadline.
• Comprehensive product training and support for Giovanni and his team.
• Simplified, automated sales commission that create 100% trust in plans and payouts.
• Automated calculation of payouts, so reps get the right compensation, every time.
• Flexibility to set up new plans and adjust existing ones in just a few clicks. This allowed Udemy to add 100+ reps to the new system in mere days.
• Cross-department visibility of plans and payouts, so they can be signed, sealed and delivered faster.
• Intuitive statement designer allowing customized statements to be quickly created and sent to every rep.

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“CaptivateIQ was so simple to pick up, because it involves no coding and its functionality is very similar to how Excel or Google Sheets work,” said Giovanni. “It was invaluable that CaptivateIQ held our hand through the entire process and became the strategic partner we needed.”

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Results

Within just weeks of implementation, Udemy started saving an incredible amount of time running commissions. Previously, managing a cross-functional commissions process had involved five senior people meeting for 10, one-hour meetings every month. Now, with the extra visibility and functionality provided by CaptivateIQ, that time has been cut in half.

While it used to take the team 20 minutes to create new plans, it now takes them just two minutes. The data centralization and automated calculations have all-but eliminated Udemy’s vulnerability to errors.

The sales team has also become more motivated from the transparent commission statements they receive each month, providing visibility into their performance and future targets. The combined power of the team’s expertise and software platform has helped Giovanni keep up with commissions, while the company quickly scales.

“When you work with CaptivateIQ, you get a tool and a team that really cares about what your business is trying to achieve,” said Giovanni. “They’re on your side, acting as a strategic partner, always guiding and consulting, and drawing on the vast experience they have.”