Bloomfire vs. Varicent

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Bloomfire
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Bloomfire provides knowledge engagement, aiming to deliver an experience that connects teams and individuals with the information they need to excel at their jobs. Their cloud-based knowledge engagement platform aims to give people one centralized, searchable place to engage with shared knowledge and grow their organization's collective intelligence.
$25
per month
Varicent
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
From quotas to sales and compensation, Varicent helps revenue leaders in enterprise organizations chart a more effective, connected path to revenue by providing vital data, insights, and sales go-to-market planning tools.N/A
Pricing
BloomfireVaricent
Editions & Modules
Basic
$25.00
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BloomfireVaricent
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$25 No setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BloomfireVaricent
Features
BloomfireVaricent
Sales ICM
Comparison of Sales ICM features of Product A and Product B
Bloomfire
-
Ratings
Varicent
6.7
55 Ratings
15% below category average
Sales compensation plan creation00 Ratings7.148 Ratings
Complex sales crediting00 Ratings7.548 Ratings
Sales compensation process automation00 Ratings7.452 Ratings
Incentive auditing/regulation compliance00 Ratings6.546 Ratings
Sales compensation dashboards & forecasting00 Ratings6.447 Ratings
Incentive modeling00 Ratings6.243 Ratings
Agile incentive strategy00 Ratings6.538 Ratings
ICM mobile visibility00 Ratings6.232 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BloomfireVaricent
Small Businesses
Front
Front
Score 9.1 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Everstage
Everstage
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Everstage
Everstage
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BloomfireVaricent
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(174 ratings)
7.3
(67 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(5 ratings)
4.8
(15 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(14 ratings)
7.0
(59 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
5.8
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(15 ratings)
6.8
(6 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(6 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
5.2
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
4.3
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(58 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.9
(3 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
5.9
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
BloomfireVaricent
Likelihood to Recommend
Bloomfire
Ad testing:
  • PTS: needed to bring a new senior marketing team member up to speed on how we got to our current TV campaign
  • Solution: Series featuring consumer insights, why specific spokesperson, agency brief, the entire creative process - scrips, animatics, rough cuts, feedback, and testing at each step. Including the actual creative from each step.
  • Total time to build: 1 hour
Concept testing:
  • PTS: things get lost, findable but version control
  • Solution: everything in one placeConcepts, testing, IHUTs, verbatims, videos with transcripts. Reduces the possibility of missing something, helps with any builds (reuse), but gives us a the chance to dig deeper. Example: search on terms like "indulgent", or "crispy" or "share" much faster
  • Total time to build: 1 hour
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Varicent
For the use cases we have at the bank, ICM is a perfect solution. For any bank or institution that has similar requirements, ICM would be a perfect solution. But I also think for any use case that has any sort of incentives based on Sales done, this would work amazing, as both Calculations and reports are handled by ICM very well; it's an all-in-one solution, I feel like.
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Pros
Bloomfire
  • Quickly reach out to whatever employee segment you want to reach by posting a topic and it will send a notification to everyone in that group with a link to the posting.
  • Bloomfire saves all of the previous posts so in your free time you can go to the site, and explore the various range of topics others have posted. The information on there will only be as good as the person posting it, but it will be people within your company and industry posting it. So it will always be helpful.
  • Bloomfire is a place to be noticed by your peers. Have a great topic you want to express, my company allows all to post there as long as we keep it professional. So you can share your ideas or experiences in a safe and productive manner. But we do have some fun on there too!
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Varicent
  • Flexibility - Varicent is not template based. You can implement the model specifically for your organisation.
  • Scalability - Since it is not stick to templates you are able to expand the model for other domains as well.
  • Reporting - Several ways of reporting are possible and each has their own benefit/purpose.
  • Strong/Powerfull Calculation Engine delivering fast results/speed to insight
  • User Interface is minimized to what you need and is not showing off all the functions it can "also" do
  • Strong audittrail
  • Appears to be almost unlimited in what you are able to create
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Cons
Bloomfire
  • I would recommend adding a feature to combine different posts/series by job title (so in addition to the Revenue Ops category, there could be a structured walkthrough for Revenue Manager).
  • Live Q+A sessions for group onboarding initiatives.
  • Ability to label bookmarks by priority/job type.
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Varicent
  • As [the] model gets more and more transactional data, the calculation time increases. This should/can be handled internally with better model optimization.
  • Migrating from one env to other sometimes is challenging. There can be better 'Alerts' or 'Explanation' provided to handle it or at least to give a hint of the error.
  • For managers viewing their rep's report, the access part can be made easier. It should be linked to Payee hierarchy and access can be done automatically.
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Likelihood to Renew
Bloomfire
Most likely we will renew, our team needs a refresher on possible opportunities to advance our usage and learning of opportunities to move this answer to a 10, can't live without it.
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Varicent
Customer support from IBM is impeccable. They are quick to respond and they don't nickel and dime you for every request you make. Their goal is to ensure your success and as a user, I really feel like they listen to my concerns. That's not to say there are no problems. All software has its issues, but I don't feel like those issues fall on deaf ears.
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Usability
Bloomfire
Bloomfire is an easy-to-use platform for posting information and asking questions of my peers. It also has a user-friendly search capability. Yet like any other CMS, the secret to success rests in such items as the ability to use metadata to tag content or posts, and Bloomfire provides a wide range of options to make posting content and subsequently searching for it.
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Varicent
Any calculations can be implemented as there are hardly any limitations on complexity. However, online real-time usability is lacking - a simple user enters, and the system calculates work in a way that it is in the browser and hence still needs overnight to be properly reflected in the batch calculations and backend tables.
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Reliability and Availability
Bloomfire
No answers on this topic
Varicent
Never went down in last 3 years that I worked with it (every hour of the day basically). That is a 10 in my book.
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Performance
Bloomfire
No answers on this topic
Varicent
All is fast, but with API's it is sometimes slower due to the application we are pulling data from. Reports are loaded directly or within seconds and our reports are very detailed with many columns and rows.
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Support Rating
Bloomfire
I have not needed to pose questions to the support team yet, as it is a very simple piece of software to use, however, its help documents and the bot ready to answer questions let me know I am in good hands. The help center could load a little quicker, but that's my only complaint.
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Varicent
Giving a 10 would suggest there is no room for improvement. I don't feel like their support is perfect. However, I have never met another team that was more dedicated to making sure we get what we want and need.
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In-Person Training
Bloomfire
No answers on this topic
Varicent
The training was good in general with a nice trainer as well. But, the training could be better if it is more focussed on our process/data etc.
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Online Training
Bloomfire
No answers on this topic
Varicent
There is a learning portal with many videos about navigation, creating reports and managing your model.
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Implementation Rating
Bloomfire
No answers on this topic
Varicent
Test test test. Make sure that the product is calculating everyone 100% correctly. DO NOT accept a 70% pass rate as some companies would like to have you believe is acceptable. This means conducting thorough testing by providing 100% of all expected results, but it will be worth it when you know that the compensation plans are working entirely as expected.
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Alternatives Considered
Bloomfire
I like Bloomfire because it is more concise with the work I do whereas Google search engine would provide broader information. It has just been so user-friendly, and easier to use [than] I could have imagined. I would use this program over any other that I have tried in the past.
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Varicent
In 2015, we used a scorecard containing 80 attributes in our review of Oracle, Callidus, and Xactly & Varicent. Oracle did not have true self serve capabilities- programming was heavily required, not intuitive, out of the box functionality was limited. Callidus & Xactly could not provide us a demo using our data, statements could not be sent out in bulk form, difficulty in importing/exporting to CRM. Varicent excelled in most areas and was the clear winner.
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Scalability
Bloomfire
No answers on this topic
Varicent
It is very scalable and adaptable to changing complexities of calculations and business rules under a variety of different scenarios. It does not get full points because in large data loads the time needed to calculate and import the data increases exponentially and may cause issues related to timing potentially.
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Return on Investment
Bloomfire
  • Feedback from users in being able to perform transactions for members has greatly improved.
  • There has been an increase in engagement of material presented in posts by learners in training classes.
  • Reps and agents say they feel confident they can easily locate information if ever there is a need on the front line.
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Varicent
  • Compliance - with a central system used for calculation incentive payments and commissions, we are able to provide reports and data showing every detail of how payments are calculated and why they are justified. We can also identify anomalies and outliers.
  • Integration with our payroll system is seamless. Except for regular pay, nothing goes to payroll without going through ICM. The process for paying incentives/bonuses/commissions is now very structured and efficient.
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ScreenShots

Bloomfire Screenshots

Screenshot of You are provided with a variety of options to brand your Bloomfire community, such as customizing its colors, displaying your organization’s logo, and building a custom Promo Bar. This creates an aesthetic that truly reflects your company’s culture.Screenshot of Bloomfire features an AI-powered search that makes sharing and searching for information a lot easier. It deep indexes every word in each piece of content, regardless of whether it’s a PDF, slide deck, video, or any other file type. The platform also creates tags for your content automatically. And if a video is uploaded, Bloomfire automatically transcribes it, making the spoken words searchable and allowing users to jump to the exact part of a video where certain keywords appear.

All of those features result in an easy and smart searching experience. There’s no need to navigate through folders or guess file names. All you need to do is perform a search like you would with Google. When searching, you can further narrow down your results based on categories such as author and content type.Screenshot of Bloomfire's AI enables you to search and find the video you are looking for based on its audio contents.Screenshot of Use Bloomfire while you work seamlessly across your favorite apps.

Varicent Screenshots

Screenshot of Varicent providing clarity and transparency to sellers, helping them to find answers faster and have confidence in compensation plans.Screenshot of Tools for sellers that help them align strategic initiatives, and that help them understand which deals will help them win.Screenshot of Varicent ICM model compensation plans that display the financial impact of changes. Its ability to more accurately forecast commission payouts with “what-if” assumptions, users can budget more effectively for sales compensation costs, manage target total compensation for sales representatives and assess plan effectiveness.Screenshot of Shareable information sent to the right people to drive the right results.