Challenge (Problem Definition):     We have a Sales Incentive Program (SIP), which has been designed to drive sales in line with the  overall strategy of the organization, in terms of Sales, Margins and Key partner engagements, et  al.  Hence, the base incentive and its multipliers are designed in such a way as to drive sales of  the particular product family or product or certain technologies, partners et al.     The SIP is good from an organization point of view and it’s been well designed from that  perspective with the right levers to drive sales and align it to the organization’s overall strategy.  However, it’s not been designed well enough for the Sales Team who are critical and key  contributors in the value chain for whom this system has been put in place to drive optima  performance. Salespeople need to be motivated and stretched to meet and exceed their Sales  Targets, and the tool should be able to give insights through an intuitive dashboard to the sales  personnel as to how far or close is he/she to meeting the target, what does he/she needs to sell  more of and what will he/she earn as incentive if he/she hits/exceeds those targets.    Selection (of the tool):    I choose Visualization as a tool, to illustrate what a typical day (what is) in a salesperson work  life looks like today and what if, we introduce a daily dashboard which shows him/her things  he/she can do to improve his/her sales performance to make the most of the incentive  program.     Reference to Visualization video (.19 sec to .50 sec ,1.08 to 3.00 and the last 3 mins as well)     Application (of the tool to solve the problem):     This tool helps me to show the contrast between ‘what is’ and ‘what if’ visually, thereby making  the case for redesigning the Sales Incentive Program tool optimally for both the organization  and the Salesperson.     Visual thinking, Visual scenarios are powerful ways of communicating a problem statement and also  to visualize how a probable solution would look like    Visualization can unpack a complicated scenario visually and communicate with easy what the  actual problem looks like in real life and what an actual solution / probable solution can look possibly  look like.     Insight & Approach (Learnings what was effective and not effective): 200       What I learnt from deploying this tool to solve the problem of improving the Sales Incentive  Program dashboard for the Salesperson is that we were able to detail ‘the work day of a  salesperson’ which actually brought forth more insights into time management and what a

typical day should look like to be productive and what a nonproductive day would look like, this  again is a key indicator for a Sales Manager to quickly assess which sales resources are  productive by just looking at their time management.     This tool made the job of communicating the actual problem to the management so easy,  instead of flipping through slides of data or text explaining the problem.     It felt as the most appropriate tool, to visually document and explain what is and what if, clearly  to management and get them to see the problem statement well.           The whole approach of what is, what if, what wows and what works make design thinking a  easy way of life to solve day today challenges that we face both professionally and personally.

