THE 2025 STATE OF BI REPORT
DOWNLOAD NOW
We sat down with Stefanie Bosshart, Head of Sales & Revenue Operations at phData, along with Will Strouse, Principal Analytics Consultant, and Grant Henke, SVP of Engineering, to learn how the team built a complete, self-serve commissions solution using Sigma. Instead of purchasing a dedicated revenue platform, they used their existing architecture—including Sigma—to solve one of their most complex and business-critical processes: sales compensation.
Managing commissions at phData was becoming an increasingly fragile and inefficient process. As the company grew, so did the complexity of its compensation plans. The operations team found themselves managing a patchwork of multiple spreadsheets, each with its own logic. “We had about five spreadsheets stitched together,” said Bosshart. “If we changed one, it would break everything else.” This web of interconnected files made it nearly impossible to make changes confidently.
Even minor updates in Salesforce could wreak havoc. Strause recalled that “you’d change a field in Salesforce, and you’d have to go back and redo a bunch of comp calcs. It was like a web we couldn’t untangle.” There was no single source of truth, and each commission cycle required four people to validate each payout. “We couldn’t afford to get it wrong,” Bosshart emphasized.
We couldn’t afford to get it wrong.
— Stefanie Bosshart, Head of Sales & Revenue Operations at phData
Despite phData’s deep analytics expertise and access to powerful BI tools, commissions were still being calculated in Excel. The need to layer business rules, exceptions, and mid-year plan changes—like spiffs or territory transitions—meant going back to the warehouse or editing brittle logic chains across spreadsheets. “Adding our intelligence and color to the underlying data was a cumbersome process,” Henke explained. “Everything bottlenecked to four people who managed all the exceptions and nuance.”
Rather than investing in a specialized compensation platform, phData looked inward. They already had a modern data stack—they just needed a more intuitive way to interact with it. Sigma turned out to be that bridge. “A typical approach would be to build a bespoke application with a team of software engineers,” said Strouse. “Instead, we built a full comp app with Write-back, modals, custom logic, accelerators, gates, and the ability to do overrides—all inside Sigma.”
The solution was entirely self-service. The business team brought in six different Salesforce objects, transformed the data with dbt, and modeled everything inside Sigma using writeback to layer in their comp structure.
“I didn’t even realize I was building an app,” Bosshart said. “It was like, let me just try this… and then suddenly we had a system.” What started as a fix for stale spreadsheets ended up being a product-quality app. “We thought we were just stopping the spreadsheet pain,” Grant added. “But really, we ended up building a product.”
We ended up building a product.
— Stefanie Bosshart
Head of Sales & Revenue Operations at phData
This “fusion team” approach allowed the business to move quickly without engineering dependencies. “That’s what made this possible in a reasonable time frame,” said Henke. “It’s flexible enough to evolve as our business evolves.” Sigma’s spreadsheet-like interface empowered the ops team to handle non-standard rules and rapidly changing requirements without needing to rewrite pipelines or wait on dev cycles.
Today, what used to take three full days of work now takes under an hour. “It truly went from days to less than an hour,” Stefanie said. That dramatic shift was enabled by Sigma’s write-back, which allowed the team to implement complex exceptions and policy nuances—like spiffs or dual-seller transitions—without touching the warehouse. “Write-back gave us so much flexibility,” said Strouse. “We didn’t need to do a bunch of custom logic in the warehouse—we could do it right in Sigma.”
It truly went from days to less than an hour.
— Stefanie Bosshart, Head of Sales & Revenue Operations at phData
Just as importantly, the team has eliminated spreadsheet-related errors that used to plague their sales commission process. “I hope that going into this commission year, we have zero errors—errors that previously were due to spreadsheet issues,” said Bosshart. “A total elimination of those kinds of errors is definitely going to set us up to scale.”
Instead of passing spreadsheets around or waiting on data engineers, the team now builds everything in one place—from logic to visuals to the contextual notes sellers need. “We’re using Write-back, modals, a few visualizations, and adding some color to detail-level tables to make sure we’re being data-driven and totally transparent,” said Strauss.
The result is more than just operational efficiency—it’s transparency and trust at scale. “We can show reps exactly what they’ve earned, how much is held back until they hit their gate… and it’s gamified in a way that motivates them,” said Bosshart.
For instance, a rep can see they’ve earned $16,000, but won’t be paid out until they hit a quota threshold—giving them a clear, motivational view of what’s at stake. “They can see what they’re leaving on the table and what they need to do to unlock it.”
We can show reps exactly what they’ve earned, how much is held back until they hit their gate… and it’s gamified in a way that motivates them.
— Stefanie Bosshart
Head of Sales & Revenue Operations at phData
And because the process is faster and more accurate, the team can shift from fixing errors to thinking creatively about how to drive performance. “It means we can think more strategically about sales performance, contests, and how to better motivate the team,” said Bosshart.
Grant summed it up: “We want to come up with more creative and interesting spiffs—ways to reward positive behavior and outcomes for both us and our clients.”
With the core comp system up and running, phData is already thinking about what’s next. The team plans to evolve the model to include more gamification and performance insights. “We want to do more contests or dynamic spiffs,” said Bosshart. “It’s easy to evolve the model now.”
They’re also using the same Sigma structure to explore new areas like delivery and seller performance. “Sigma’s become the layer where we blend operations and data—without slowing down or having to go to engineering every time,” Henke said.
When you combine a modern data stack with the right tool, your business team can become your builders.
— Grant Henke, SVP Engineering, phData
At phData, Sigma has become more than just a BI tool. It’s the foundation for operational agility—enabling business users to move fast, build smart, and stay fully governed without compromise. As Henke put it, “When you combine a modern data stack with the right tool, your business team can become your builders.”
