Board vs. Xactly

It's been very good when all departments of the company had to pitch in data/information for a specific business decision. My company had to have input from Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Customer Support, and accounting in order to decide on what kind of development was next needed for our platform.

Xactly has helped us recognize where our sales incentive plans are overly complicated and find ways to make them more functional and easy-to-understand for the sales reps who are expected to be motivated by them. Having data in Xactly allows us to more quickly identify outliers and communicate potential challenges to our stakeholders. Xactly also has reduced the number of errors in the incentive process (from quota and credit data received to getting those payments to payroll) and reduced the amount of time it takes to do that. It has also allowed us to make sure consistent practices are being used across 100+ sites in the US and Canada. My biggest complaints about Xactly are about the navigation within various objects - sometimes it can be time-consuming to switch between periods (especially in different years) and that can be frustrating. We're still figuring out the new reporting tools, but I see the value in the newly released tools.

Incentivized

• Board makes data summary easy - It makes comprehensive reports with great visuals.
• Board makes navigation is easy for users - it has abundant training materials to help you get started.
• With Board security is easy to set up and maintain for the organization - the support staff also provides great assistance for implementation and resolves other issues.

Incentivized

• Xactly Incent allows quick feed changes with Connect.
• Xactly Incent allows intuitive plan design so that quick changes can be made with plan changes.
• Document Management allows quick disbursement of plans to reps as well as record management of the plans.
• Xactly Incent allows visibility to the reps at any time so that they do not have to wonder what their commissions are.

Incentivized

• Board BI tool has a steep learning curve and can be challenging for a new user to reach to board's full capacity.
• We have to use a windows scheduler to schedule data import tasks; it would be great if Board could provide its own scheduler.

• It doesn't provide real-time results after updates are made that require recalculation. You have to wait for a refresh time to pass.
• The ability to edit the Draw section, so that you can identify and/or distinguish the difference between Recoverable and Non-Recoverable Draws.
• Customizing the rare and out of the ordinary situations. It can be done, but typically requires the aid of Support.

Incentivized

Board is a fantastic product for swift BI solution delivery when compared with its peers. Ease of use, support and integration with Microsoft Office Addin open a wide horizon of opportunities for further enhancements to solutions. Easy bespoke app development capabilities make it a winner for us. BOARD is just like a white canvas, it lets you explore your creative side while designing and delivering a solution

Incentivized

We have been using Xactly as a primary application to calculate the commissions payout on a daily basis and would continue the same as Xactly Incent meets our requirement. It keeps the process automated and reduces the manual effort to calculate commissions.

Incentivized

Overall, Board is easy to use and develop for. Users can quickly get up to speed and begin using with only a small amount of training. Generally, it takes longer to explain the data structure (our customization) than it does to explain the tool itself. The most consistent challenge we run into is hierarchy management. New members have to be mapped to each level of an entity. While there is a "normalization" process, it often fails to map correctly or in rare cases can change custom mapping that was previously set up.

Incentivized

From an admin perspective, the software's usability is high. The different components are organized in a way that is easy to figure out, for example, all elements of a plan are under the Plan Design section. There are some areas where searching within the system is a bit cumbersome because after clicking into a result and back out it clears your filter. I found the software easy to navigate when I first started and the amount of documentation and helpful videos they have on the community and within the University make the system even easier to learn.

Incentivized

In general the system is nearly always available. But the daily achievement calculation takes a hugh amount of time. therefore it was in the past month sometimes only from midday onwards completely updated and usable for Sales employees. Xactly support was and still is working hard to get it available early mornings. Availablility time has increased a lot. It's now down to around 10 am in the moring

very fast and no integration problems

Incentivized

Xactly is a very helpful tool ensuring appropriate and correct data is used when calculating commissions. The interface loads timely, but it is not intuitive to use. The learning curve to be proficient in Xactly takes a significant amount of time.

Incentivized

The only time I needed assistance was due to a problem in
the prints: the colors of the brochures as they were on the screen were not
reproduced in the print, but a series of standard colors were reproduced. This
fact made colored numbers on a colored background illegible. From the
assistance they confirmed that it was a problem of version 10.2 that occurred
when leaving the brochures with the default colors proposed by Board. To obtain
the desired colors, they had to be personalized ... I didn't like the solution
very much and the technician who recommended it didn't like me either, but they
would have solved the problem with the following versions. In any case, the
assistance was quick and effective even if not exactly efficient.

Incentivized

They take the time to understand the system. They keep us updated on the status of our cases. Finally, their continued follow up ensuring the initial issue was resolved is very nice. They will not close the case out until they have confirmed that our issue has been completely resolved and fixed.

Incentivized

Board is fairly simple and straight forward. Advance training on workflows and procedures is a good one but the training content only touches through the interesting areas. training content needs to cover a few areas more in-depth

Incentivized

It was great, good explanations and good training material provided, we were able to get a really good idea of how to use the system. I also think that it was enough time to learn how to setup the system.

Incentivized

Xactly offers training on new releases on a monthly basis and training on basic principles regularly via registration. My experience with both is that they do not provide the in-depth knowledge necessary to truly master the system and advanced courses still do not go to the level needed to autonomously manage the system and plans. Professional services are a large part of any cloud based service such as Xactly and I feel a reliance on such paid consulting services is a great money-maker for Xactly.

The problem of user profiling in our context is certainly
quite complex. The complexity is given by the fact that the company is divided
territorially into logistic points of sale, but at the same time they are
virtually divided into divisions (or specific implementation areas) and points
of sale of competence. The same operator can have access to data at different
logistic sales points, sales points of competence and divisions.

Incentivized

Go into implementation knowing how you will handle churn, if there are claw backs, treatment for every type of commission payment (i.e. new business, renewals, etc.) and know your average customer life. You'll also want details by customer for as far back as you can go (within reason).

Incentivized

We earlier used Planful, which was also a good product but not as good as Board. The backend reporting and analysis of data are top-notch. The reports generated are quick and accurate. Board also offers to learn to upskill the team so that they can use the tool effectively and collaborate.

We've also looked at Lattice, which is a compensation management software, but we found that it was lacking in terms of integration with Salesforce as well as inefficiency. Updates it usually takes a longer time for sales and Salesforce to translate to Lattice, and we find that with Xactly it usually takes about one business day, which is always beneficial to have things updated quicker.

Incentivized

It's very flexible. In most cases it can be adapted to your needs by programming which may cost extra money. We have a lot of different complans and close to 1.000 employees using Xactly in EMEA. It's mainly used by Sales and Finance

• With effective financial analysis and planning and using Board, we were able to see a +18% QoQ revenue increase consistently for seven months straight
• Using Board Dashboards, the senior management was able to better & clearly understand the financial position of the company at a given time and take better strategic decisions

• Being about to see their progress towards goals is motivating participants to do more.
• Stack ranking reports allow participants to see how they are performing compared to their peers. Creating some competition among the sales team.
• More accountability of sales team to perform. No more excuse of I didn't know I was behind goal.

Incentivized