The Challenge
Leading enterprise organizations trust Avaya to strengthen the customer connections that deliver business value. The company unifies what can be a fragmented communications experience, connecting the channels, insights, and workflows that help build customer loyalty and fuel growing success.
As the heart of their business, Avaya operates a global sales organization spanning the Americas, Europe, and APAC, with hundreds of sellers, pre-sales engineers, and services professionals operating under highly complex and constantly evolving compensation plans.
For Trenli Crest, Senior Director of Sales Compensation Design and Administration, and Mireille Gourraud, Director Sales Compensation Administration, the mandate is mission‑critical: to design scalable commission plans, execute them flawlessly, and ensure every seller is paid accurately and on time without exception.
That mandate was constrained by Avaya’s previous legacy vendor. While it initially appeared capable of supporting Avaya’s needs, the user experience for the sales teams was nowhere near a seamless experience. Accessing commission data was cumbersome and time‑consuming. Information was buried under layers of navigation, leading many sellers to verify calculations themselves.
The company also encountered persistent limitations in flexibility, and performance.
The Solution
When Avaya re‑entered the market to evaluate alternatives in early 2025, the team took a disciplined, side‑by‑side approach comparing multiple vendors across real‑world scenarios, internal scoring, and cross‑functional feedback. The goal was to fundamentally improve how sales compensation was designed, administered, and experienced.
Unanimous decision to choose Everstage
Avaya evaluated several well‑known platforms and enterprise planning tools. While some solutions were familiar and others powerful, each came with trade‑offs: lingering rigidity, excessive complexity, heavy implementation effort, and cost constraints.
Everstage consistently emerged on top. Across compensation, IT, and sales operations teams, Everstage received the highest scores, proving its value was not limited to a single function.
Partnership mindset grounded in listening and flexibility
What truly differentiated Everstage was its approach to partnership. Instead of pushing rigid workflows, the Everstage team invested time in understanding Avaya’s unique processes. Unconventional requirements were met with curiosity and a problem‑solving mindset, not resistance.
No‑code platform built for compensation teams
One of Avaya’s goals from the beginning was to reduce dependency on their IT team. Everstage’s low‑code, no‑code architecture empowered compensation professionals to own plan configuration, adjustments, and administration directly. IT’s role shifted from hands-on execution to light governance and oversight.
The Results
Although Avaya has only been live on Everstage for a short time, the impact is already evident across operations, sales experience, and future readiness.
Reduced operational burden
The most immediate win was operational efficiency. With far less reliance on IT, the compensation team moved faster, responded to changes independently, and focused on higher‑value work. This independence improved agility without sacrificing accuracy or control.
Improved transparency and trust
Sales feedback is overwhelmingly positive, something Avaya had not experienced with any previous compensation administration system. Sellers can now quickly see what they’re being paid, why they’re being paid, and how calculations were derived. Instead of spending time validating commissions, they can focus more of their efforts on selling.
In the anonymous post-implementation feedback survey conducted by Trenli and Mireille, the sales team shared extremely positive reviews about Everstage.
“The new tool is perfect and delivers good details.”
“Everstage comp platform has been great; it’s clear, intuitive and makes compensation payout easy to understand for me.”
“Everstage- far better than our previous compensation tool!”
Strong foundation for future innovation
While the initial months focused on replicating existing processes accurately, Avaya is now looking ahead. Features like integrated queries, mobile access, and earnings estimators are high on the roadmap.
With Everstage, Avaya has a platform that evolves alongside its business—one that supports both today’s needs and tomorrow’s ambitions.
