How a global medical technology leader transformed sales compensation across 40+ countries with Forma.ai

When a global medical equipment manufacturing and technology company spun out to form a standalone enterprise, the company saw an opportunity to modernize core functions—including sales compensation.  

With TUPE legislation in EMEA, the company had to maintain continuity with sales comp remuneration despite the spin, even as large sales teams were in transition. Additionally, the company used multiple legacy systems that managed compensation differently across regions and countries. The business needed to support complex global payrolls, build strategic incentive plans, and gain visibility across regions—all while deploying consistent employment practices during and after the spin. 

So first, the team set out to untangle the complexity. 

Before Forma.ai: Fragmented systems, manual work, and limited flexibility 

Broadly, cross-functional misalignment regarding compensation was a barrier for the company. Finance, sales, operations, HR, and payroll each operated with separate data sources and disconnected processes—leading to miscommunication and redundant work. There was no shared view into accruals, performance, or eligibility, making it difficult for stakeholders to stay aligned or act with confidence.  

Adding to this complexity, sales compensation was managed through a patchwork of rigid and varied tools—including a legacy system for calculations and a separate application (Salesforce GIC) for plan documentation and approvals.

“It was just painful. We had one system for calculation where any territory or data had to be updated, but plan documents were stored in another, and there was a lot of manual effort in between. There was no unified process—just a lot of back and forth.”

—Americas SIP Leader

Global Business Service Operations.

Despite being a global company, the legacy system only supported SAP-aligned countries, other regions, like LATAM, ran compensation manually via spreadsheets. Any changes to crediting or territory data required IT involvement, and even small adjustments introduced delays and risk.  

As such, compensation teams were bogged down in manual calculations, exception handling, and data reconciliation. There was little time left for proactive, strategic work to optimize growth: 

With the legacy solution, our SIP team spent nearly three weeks just validating data before we could process payments. Tracking down discrepancies required looping in multiple teams, and the entire process was slow and very challenging.”

—Americas SIP Leader

Global Business Service Operations.

Across the company, sales compensation was constrained on all fronts. Plan changes were slow and painful to implement. Compensation teams spent 2–3 weeks each cycle validating data. Stakeholders lacked visibility, and reps had to rely on outdated reports. Even plan design itself was limited by what the legacy tools could support—not what the business actually needed. 

“The legacy tool we were using was not very flexible. We had a lot of complaints where [we] had to design SIP around the tool.”

— Americas SIP Leader | Global Business Service Operations 

In short: systems—not strategy—were setting the ceiling. And it was holding back innovation and ROI.

Rather than forcing a global SAP rollout just to unify compensation, instead the team opted for a more flexible, modern solution that could support all countries from day one. 

Introducing Forma.ai: one system for global scale and total visibility 

Forma.ai became the company’s single platform for sales performance management—unifying planning, crediting, governance, and analytics in one place. 

The business now: 

• > Supports 4,200 payees across 40+ countries 
• > Processes 800M+ transactions annually with 100% payout accuracy 
• > Manages 35 unique payroll processes through a unified framework 
• > Automates crediting for regions like LATAM and Canada that previously relied on manual input 
• > Handles 15+ payroll timelines in parallel with zero delays 

Strategic flexibility, without the bottlenecks 

Before Forma.ai, compensation data and processes were scattered across teams—all operating in silos. Today, having centralized accruals, performance dashboards, and operational workflows in one system has been a major step forward in bringing stakeholders and data together. 

But it wasn’t just teams and processes that were fragmented—the tools were, too. In the legacy environment, plan complexity was avoided not because it lacked value, but because the systems simply couldn’t support it. Even basic plan changes were often met with a wait-and-see approach. 

With Forma.ai, however, the company not only launched one of the most significant comp plan structure overhauls yet—including new payout curves and objective-based plans tailored to evolving sales strategies—but also gained the agility to design, approve, and distribute plans faster than ever—without compromise. In the first 1–2 months of the fiscal year alone, they stood up over 820 unique plan structures and issued supporting dashboards to give reps clarity on new mechanics and payout curves. 

Today, plan tweaks can be modeled, reviewed, and approved in under 24 hours. This flexibility allows this MedTech leader to test, iterate, and align incentives in near real-time—without operational drag. 

“With our old system, it wasn’t even possible to structure plans around strategic objectives—we had to design everything around its limitations. Forma.ai is the polar opposite of that. Now, the plan follows the strategy—not the other way around.”

— Americas SIP Leader

Global Business Service Operations.

Additionally, the team went from manual builds to scalable plan design with Forma.ai. As they shared: 

“Building plans in the old system was painful. You couldn’t copy and paste, and everything had to go through change request approvals just to maintain an audit trail. If we could only automate 70% of a plan, people would say, ‘Let’s just do the whole thing manually.’ But now with Forma.ai, it’s so much easier. We can cut and paste across similar plans, customize quickly, and piece things together—products, countries, sources—in a way that makes sense.”

— Americas SIP Leader

Global Business Service Operations.

Smarter planning with data-driven territories and quotas 

With real-time crediting, territory logic, and performance data all housed in Forma.ai, the company now builds quotas based on actual historical signals—not outdated estimates or static spreadsheets. The result: fairer, faster, more defensible quota-setting. 

What once took weeks of manual effort can now be executed in a fraction of the time. Teams can adjust logic as needed, even mid-cycle: 

“One quick win is the territory changes. We can now quickly make adjustments ourselves in the system. Our teams can go in and do it themselves.”

— EMEA Sales Incentive Plan Manager | Global Business Services Operations

With Forma.ai the company has access to plan modeling capabilities to simulate the downstream impact of quota or objective changes—enabling more confident decision-making before finalizing the plan. 

Real-time insights to drive performance and alignment 

In the past, visibility into performance was slow and fragmented. Teams had to pull separate reports from secondary systems to approximate real-time data. 

Now, dashboards in Forma.ai centralize performance reporting for all stakeholders—across geographies, functions, and levels of access: 

• > SIP teams can monitor plan effectiveness across business units in one place.  

• > Finance and Works Council stakeholders get real-time analytics.  

• > And frontline managers can stay aligned without needing to manually validate data. 

“With Forma, pulling performance data is night and day compared to before. We can easily share real-time analytics—even with managers who don’t have direct access—because everything’s right there in the dashboards. Now, it’s faster, more accurate, and way easier to support the business.”

— Americas SIP Leader

Global Business Service Operations.

Moreover, Forma.ai also implemented built-in governance and controls to ensure every process—from approvals to payout execution—is fully aligned with both global and regional regulatory standards. Every change, exception, and payment is traceable—so the SIP function is always audit-ready.  

From operational overhead to strategic execution 

Beyond the platform itself, the team is greatly satisfied with Forma.ai’s support and strong partnership—highlighting proactive communication, consistency across personnel changes, and deep product expertise. 

“The support has been phenomenal. We'll send a request for a report or a ticket, and I get a response within 30 min—that's amazing. It makes all the difference in the world. Any company that wants that support to be immediate—this is the right application for them. Even as we've dealt with different individuals across the Forma.ai team, it's been seamless. We also haven’t heard a ‘no’ from Forma yet. Even when we push the system, the team finds a way to support us.”

— Americas SIP Leader

Global Business Service Operations.

Ultimately, today sales performance looks totally different at this global MedTech company: 

• > Reps can now view real-time dashboards showing exactly how their actions translate into earnings. No more guesswork—just clear, daily-updated visibility into upcoming paychecks and attainment. 

• > Managers are no longer required to manually approve every payment, freeing them up to focus on coaching and execution—while still having access to team performance metrics that refresh daily. 

• > Comp teams spend less time validating and fixing errors and can allocate more time analyzing and optimizing plan design. 

The company is still evolving how it uses analytics and long-term performance benchmarking. But with a unified system in place and a partner that can flex with them, they’re confident the foundation is now built to scale.