NICE Sales Performance Management vs. Varicent Incentive Compensation Management

NICE is well suited to measure the performance and overall fulfillment of individual employees in call centers/employees whose primary KPIs can be measured over phone interactions. It also does a good job of forecasting future potential as well as delineating individual metrics from team metrics. I haven't used it in situations outside of what I previously mentioned, but it seems like it works best with phone-tied metrics since NICE primarily focuses on this industry. That being said, I can see it being able to adapt to measure any type of Performance Metrics.

Incentivized

Varicent is well suited across all the domains (Finance, Insurance, Hi-Tech etc.) for sales incentive calculation. It can tackle the difficult scenarios/conditions provided by the client. This tool may not or should not be used in incentive forecasting. It's not a planning tool. Small scenario modeling can be done here but not on a large scale.

Incentivized

• Love the seamless integration with SAP Business Systems.
• Different skill settings are great for measuring specific data points for individual employees and teams.
• Has the ability to calculate otherwise timely measurements such as call length and sales forecasts.

Incentivized

• 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

• The UI is a little outdated making it not super user-friendly-especially for employees who only use it every once in a while.
• Dashboards and data are a little slow compared to other PM systems I've used.
• Expansion into more CRM integrations would be nice.

Incentivized

• Zions Bancorporation takes security very seriously. While we have NOT had any security issues with ICM, with it being a cloud application, our internal infosec team really wants some kind of MFA (multi factor authentication) support for off corporate network access.
• The ICM internal workflow manager is not as flexible as we would like. For what it does, it works extremely well. However, for our purposes, it would not fit our process so we created our own workflows using presenter reports, scheduler and automated data imports. We'd love to be able to use the internal workflow and I think with recent improvements we're getting close but it's just not there yet.
• In order to send emails to users (ie. payments need approval) we had to write an external python script. It works well but for most admins, they are not able to support it. It would be nice to have the ability to send emails based on defined triggers. The built in workflow can do this but as mentioned previously, we are not able to use it.
• I'd like to have the ability to run a partial calculation. Currently, there is only an option to run a full system calc or a single calculation. I would like the ability to run a stream of calcs (ie. from a parent down to all children only).

Incentivized

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.

It was extremely difficult to create reports. We had to download data and create them in other applications. This was very limiting and required a great deal of time and effort. Drag and drop functionality is needed so we can self serve in the product.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is a learning portal with many videos about navigation, creating reports and managing your model.

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.

When it comes to this specific situation (cell centers) NICE definitely has an ADP beat. The analytics, scheduling, and forecasts are extremely well-tailored for this situation. ADP has a more comprehensive solution in my opinion - I feel their UI and mobile app are also more user-friendly. But in terms of performance management functionality, NICE has a more robust system and is able to create additional metrics if we need them When I used ADP there were no custom options available.

Incentivized

Out of all of the products I have ever evaluated for this space, Varicent is head and shoulders above the rest in my opinion. For me, I think of Varicent as akin to building an Access database while the other programs are like building an Excel data model. In Varicent you control everything from what tables are built to how they are leveraged with the calculations that you build. In the other tools, you are pushed into finding ways to leverage their pre-built mechanism of action and any deviation from what you build necessitates you to build a brand new plan. This is the key differentiator of a table driven system as opposed to a rule based one. The flexibility and usability is wholly unmatched.

Incentivized

Varicent Incentive Compensation Management is a tool that allows [users] to implement the specific rules applying to the business, [without] any technical constraints from the tool. The reports would, however, need to be a little bit less rigid and add more controls regarding what has been entered by users.

• Reduced the amount of time spending on analytics and forecasting methods.
• Takes less time and hassle transitioning to the Cloud.
• Outdated look and feel have made the learning curve/time-to-value longer than expected.
• Saved a ton of time and ensured first time scheduling accuracy.

Incentivized

• Fewer calculation errors as previous solution was manual based.
• Ability to build tailored solutions in ICM to entice Brokers to write business for ANZ.
• Allows the Broker Managers to easily to see what commissions they are going to pay in the next Commission Run payment cycle and make changes if required.

Incentivized