When the California State Automobile Association (CSAA) faced a shifting customer demographic that required increasingly segmented and customized products, the agency had to figure out how to design, manage and administer sales compensation more efficiently, according to Michael Kahns, manager of sales and incentive compensation at the San Francisco-based organization.

So CSAA, the state branch of the American Automobile Association, turned to IBM and San Jose-based Callidus Software Inc. to implement an Enterprise Incentive Management (EIM) system. The iniative is designed to help CSAA automate the design, administration, reporting and analysis of incentives and compensation for its sales force, the companies said in a statement.

As a result, CSAA can now bring new products -- including life, auto and homeowner"s insurance -- to market faster. And its field agents are able to access critical sales information on demand, Kahns said.

?My team is responsible for managing sales compensation, and we were working with a legacy system and spreadsheets on the administration side to process commission and incentive payments,? Kahns said. ?And as we are growing and adding more products, that process became more and more cumbersome. We really needed a solution such as Callidus to help streamline our administration.?

In addition, the EIM system provides the company with a Web-based reporting platform, he said.

?Previously, reporting had been done through hard copy and spreadsheets, and managers and sales reps had to hunt through various reports and spreadsheets that were delivered at various times to get the info that they needed. That was pretty inefficient and time-consuming,? Kahns said. ?This solution delivers reports at their fingertips so they can dive down into the information and get the details that they want in terms of premiums and the commissions that that generates.?

The EIM implementation is part of CSAA?s STAR (Strategic Transformation for Accelerating Results) project , a multiphased business and technology initiative led by IBM to help the organization transform its systems, operations and business processes, according the the statement.