Oracle's API Manager is the company's offering for API lifecycle management.
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Varicent
Score 7.5 out of 10
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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.
Oracle API Manager is well suited in a business or company that make use of Apis to facilitate access of backend services and data sources by the staff or customers or both. It is also imported in situations where all actions in a system need to be attributed to specific users.
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.
Absence of Role-Based Access. A finer grain control on what type of users can call certain API Endpoints is needed.
Performance with third-party databases isn't as fast as using Oracle Database.
Long learning curve. Although Oracle API Manager provides performance and a vast deal of features, a certain level of expertise is required to effectively make use of them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oracle API Manager is much easier to learn and understand then IBM Data Power Gateway and IBM API Connect. We selected Oracle API Manager in our company because to have a good intuitive interface with drag and drop features and because beginners and easily get up to speed to use this tool.
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.
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.
Oracle API Manager supports both REST & SOAP API's.
Secure and attributable connection to back-end services and data sources. In addition to creating API's for querying data, you can also create API endpoints that can manipulate the data in the back-end databases.
Although Oracle API Manager provides performance and a vast deal of features, to start with it is really important you train your people working on development, deployment and administrators to effectively use Oracle API Manager.
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.
