Booking and billing splits. Four regions. Five currencies.

Subex faced significant complexities in managing sales compensation across its sales teams. With representatives in Europe, UAE, the Americas, and LATAM, calculating commissions accurately in multiple currencies while adhering to unique attainment, revenue recognition, and billing-based payout structures became an operational nightmare.

01 · The company

Subex, a telecom AI company selling across four regions

Founded in 1994 and listed on the London Stock Exchange, Subex is a telecom AI solutions company offering digital trust products to Communications Service Providers around the world, helping them create connected experiences for their customers. Its portfolio also covers migration assurance, analytics, optimization, asset assurance, digital billing, roaming, and origin-based routing products and services.

With live installations across 100+ countries, Subex serves major telecom companies including Econet Global, Telia Company, and Vodafone, and partners with KPMG, Deloitte, AWS, and Google Cloud. The company has 900+ employees and is headquartered in London.

02 · The trigger

Why a booking and billing split broke the spreadsheet

Subex's commission structure presented an unusual problem. Rather than paying on total deal value, commissions are divided into two components: one portion credited when a deal is booked, and the remainder credited on successful billing. Managing that split for a global workforce of over 100 reps spread across Europe, UAE, the Americas, and LATAM became increasingly challenging.

The scale of what the team was managing:

Handling those calculations manually in Excel for a large distributed team was tedious and error-prone, and the nature of the comp plans made it harder still. Each sales region followed its own quarterly quota targets and regional commission structures, which added layers of intricacy to every computation. Reps operating across different geographies needed careful conversion from USD into local currencies to be paid fairly.

The plans themselves would not sit still. Subex's compensation policies were dynamic, and a fast-growing business meant frequent exceptions midway through the year, which made spreadsheet-based calculations cumbersome and error-prone.

Reps felt the opacity. They had limited insight into deal-level payouts, outstanding balances, and the commission rates applied, which bred discontentment. The tiered structure meant a rep received a fraction of their commission initially and the rest over time, so they were often left wondering what the remaining amount looked like. Underneath all of it sat an operational risk: the intricate commission process relied on a few select individuals.

03 · The evaluation

What Subex needed from a commission system

Subex needed a platform that would streamline the entire process by fetching sales data from its CRM and billing data from its invoicing platforms. Its requirements came straight from the problems above.

04 · The decision

The decision logic: A platform that handled currency conversion but not regional quota models, or quota models but not the booking and billing split, would have left part of the process in Excel. Subex needed all three in one system, which is what the evaluation tested.

05 · The implementation

Live across four regions since June 2022

In June 2022, Subex implemented Visdum to streamline its global commission process for 100+ reps. Native connectors made integrating the CRM and billing system straightforward to set up, and the Subex team could map and filter the data it needed through data streams.

Visdum's calculation rule engines handle the booking, billing, and revenue recognition commission plans, calculating the splits accurately against contract and payment milestones. Quotas are configured per region, with different periods for multiple components, and automated currency conversion handles payouts for teams across 20+ locations without manual effort.

The rep-facing piece: Personalized dashboards give each rep deal-level visibility into payouts, accelerators, and balances, and every rep has their own login, reached through Microsoft SSO.

06 · What success looks like

Twenty plans, five currencies, one automated process

Subex now manages over 20 unique compensation plans across multiple currencies for its 100+ commissioned sellers worldwide. Automation has significantly reduced manual effort while giving the sales team transparency it did not have before. Plan changes made midway through a year or quarter are accommodated quickly, with no manual data updates, which has made the operations team's job considerably easier.

Reps use Visdum's estimator to forecast potential earnings from their pipeline, which encourages strategic deal pursuit. With real-time visibility into the commission attached to each opportunity, they make better-informed decisions and prioritize their effort accordingly. Personalized dashboards showing payouts, accelerators, and balances have raised both transparency and rep satisfaction.

The process is also more resilient. Automated calculations removed the overreliance on specific individuals that had been an operational risk, and integration with Salesforce enabled quicker computation and payout cycles. The platform is equipped to carry Subex's expansion into new markets and products.

Most importantly, the system has built an environment of transparency and trust. With dashboards offering granular visibility into earnings and accelerators, representatives feel valued and incentivized to hit their targets consistently, which is what Subex's vision of an agile, high-performing global sales force depended on.