Global Sales Performance Platform Transformation

American Express relied on a legacy Sales Performance System (SPS) to track corporate card spending and sales performance across regions. The platform aggregated data from multiple systems, applied region-specific calculations, and produced metrics used by sales and account teams to manage performance and incentives.

Over time, SPS evolved into a complex, regionally fragmented system with inconsistent processes and manual inputs. As part of a global transformation, American Express initiated a migration to Cornerstone OnDemand to establish a centralized, cloud-based system of record. Due to regional differences, the migration required tailored execution strategies rather than a single global approach.

The objective was to migrate sales and performance data, calculations, and reporting into Cornerstone while maintaining continuity for business teams. The challenge was understanding and reconstructing a system that had evolved over time with undocumented logic, manual processes, and regional variation. At the same time, the program required portfolio-level coordination to manage competing priorities, resource constraints, and cross-functional dependencies in an environment where demand exceeded capacity.

Operating as an EPMO portfolio consultant, the focus was on strengthening execution and governance while supporting product leadership. Discovery efforts were structured to map data sources, system dependencies, and calculation logic, with emphasis on identifying manual processes and defining how they would be replaced or automated in the new platform. Program governance was introduced to align regional workstreams, including standardized reporting cadences, risk management, and milestone tracking. This created visibility and accountability across product, sales, and development teams.

At the portfolio level, execution strategy was actively managed by prioritizing work based on impact and capacity, aligning resources across teams, and refining product roadmaps to account for dependencies and sequencing risks. This ensured critical path activities remained achievable despite competing demands. Cross-functional coordination was maintained to align data ingestion, hierarchy structures, and reporting requirements within Cornerstone, ensuring consistency in how performance metrics were calculated and attributed.

Cornerstone was established as the centralized system of record for sales performance and incentive data, enabling consistent access to performance metrics across regions. The migration reduced reliance on fragmented systems and manual processes while improving alignment between data, calculations, and reporting. Governance and execution standards introduced during the EMEA effort provided a foundation for subsequent regional rollouts.