The Sales Compensation Management SiriusView

To keep sales reps happy and productive, b to b organizations must ensure that they are compensated fairly and accurately. Sales compensation management solutions help compensation administrators achieve this by automating and making sales compensation plan creation, administration and assessment more efficient.

The following are excerpts that provide a quick snapshot of when to consider each sales compensation management vendor. Additional analysis is contained in the complete Sales Compensation Management 2016 SiriusView.

Anaplan’s spreadsheet like interface and intuitive, easy to learn functionality make it ideal for companies that have outgrown spreadsheets but are unwilling to completely give up their flexibility in favor of more rigid preconfigured SCM tools and templates. Anaplan’s cloud based, collaborative planning platform is the foundation of its ICM App (incentive compensation management application) and is a good solution for companies already using Anaplan’s Smart Business Platform™ as well as those interested in seeking opportunities to make SCM administration more integrated with corporate and sales planning. Organizations that have a large number of payees and desire more preconfiguration in a solution, as well as advanced plan distribution and dispute resolution, may benefit from other vendors’ solutions.

CallidusCloud is a choice that makes sense for larger companies that require the ability to administer large transaction volumes across multiple complex plans. It provides a robust and mature suite of solutions (on premise or cloud) and benefits customers whose needs include sales performance management (SPM); territory and quota optimization; sales training and onboarding; configure, price, quote; and contract lifecycle management. Smaller organizations may find CallidusCloud’s pricing prohibitive and its functionality more complex than is needed for their compensation plans. Organizations that do not want to dedicate a full time compensation manager to administer the solution and those with a small number of payees may benefit more from other solutions. 

Organizations looking for a single, scalable solution to manage compensation enterprise wide should consider Iconixx. Those with extensive needs for frequent modeling and scenario planning also can benefit from Iconixx’s offering and its rapid change implementation rollouts. Iconixx is primarily an SCM tool with some performance management capabilities. Organizations with business needs for an advanced performance management system in addition to compensation management may want to consider other vendors. 

Consider Optymyze when seeking an SCM tool that provides the flexibility to grow and expand through professional services offerings (e.g. design, administration, sales operations as a service) and complementary products that enhance sales productivity. Smaller organizations (those with less than $100 million in revenue) may find Optymyze’s product and service offerings mismatched with their particular needs, as more than 60 percent of Optymyze’s customers are enterprises with revenues that exceed $1 billion.

Large enterprises looking for the options of a software as a service, hosted or on premise SCM solution should consider Oracle Incentive Compensation, a key component in Oracle’s Sales Performance Management Cloud offering. Oracle’s Sales Performance Management is a logical fit for current Oracle Sales Cloud customers, and recent improvements to the platform make it appealing to organizations using other SFA and enterprise resource planning platforms. Smaller, price sensitive organizations or those with less complex incentive management needs may wish to consider other options.

Finally, Xactly’s experience and focus on incentive compensation management and plan administrators can benefit organizations looking for an easy to use interface and benchmark data to help them create more competitive plans. Additionally, organizations with a strong business need for tight integration between the SFA system and SCM solution can benefit from Xactly. Larger organizations with multilingual support needs and those with a desire for a seamless, automated non cash global rewards program may want to consider an alternative solution.