Salesforce Spiff vs. Varicent vs. Xactly Incent®

Spiff can serve well organizations that regularly pay OTE and performance-based incentives as it takes away the pain for users to track their OTE pay. It is also very convenient to access past reports for comparison or whatever purpose you may need it for. The build-in ticketing system also allows users to easily raise inquiries and for admins to have a single inbox for inquiries that they need to address.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Being that Xactly Incent is custom built to meet our specific plan requirements, it has been well suited for almost everything. One scenario where we could use some improvement is manager reporting. Better visibility into the roll up of any team goals and team actuals. Also some of the incentive payment information is a bit clunky. We calculate incentives each quarter on a YTD basis and then subtract was has already been paid. Sometimes this creates a shortfall for the sales rep that needs to carry forward. Reporting for this doesn't flow easily.

Incentivized

• It syncs with your internal systems to show how much you have sold during the current period.
• It tells you how much you should expect to get paid based on your sales.
• It keeps track of how you have performed over the course of the year and tells you when you are in accellerators.
• It also details your organizations sales rules and payout rules so that you just have one place to go for all questions commission related.

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

• 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

• Although reporting has been improved, it's an area that I feel could use more development (which they are doing).
• Exports are good but to make them great, being able to customize the formatting and data that shows and which data doesn't show would be a great improvement.
• The backend can be somewhat confusing with statements and obligations and which should be used when and so on, just as one example. With that being said they are very willing to teach and also just do the updates for you if needed, but if it was a little more intuitive without that help would make it better.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• When clearing out or deleting the data in Incent, certain areas allow deletion only one by one. Eg position, people etc. Would be great if this can be done in bulk.
• Could improve in the style/view/functioning of Incent user interface
• Can implement more features for end users interface to keep them more engaged and ignoring a feel of boring UI

Incentivized

I enjoy using it and it is easy to see where you stand, the issue is still no live tracking, or at the very least, twice daily updates. You have the update in the morning, but I would like to see where I stand at the end of the day as well

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.

Xactly Incent is a great tool for calculating commissions. The interface is user friendly and the system is set up in a way that allows for multiple setups for each commission plan. Over the last couple years since I have been on the commission team we have been able to optimize our plans to promote scalability. Our sales and accounting teams have become familiar with navigating the system which promotes transparency. From an audit perspective, Incent provides us with the reports and data we need to provide to our auditors.

Incentivized

Overall, the use cases of Spiff have been helping us to address important problems when it comes to commission calculation: (1) Accuracy of the commission calculation, (2) Transparency over how the commission is calculated, (3) Automation of commission calculation, which in turn saves us significant amount of time and energy and allow us to focus more on more important tasks

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The devil is in the detail. It's not intuitive to use, also not for Sales employees. You need to train them. For superusers like me you need a lot of training to administrate the system. It has a lot of functionalities and complexity like staging and upload orders, reset triggers, updating & creating rate tables. A lot of formulars are necessary to learn.

In all my time using Spiff, I only recall it being unoperational (outside the times when there is scheduled maintence. During those times, Spiff does a good job at communicating when their services will be offline and why). The times when I do get a small error, 9 times out a 10 a simple refresh of the browser will fix the issue.

Incentivized

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.

Xactly Incent is always available, they have planned monthly maintenance on Friday nights but are very proactive to communicate it. Monthly maintenance is useful as they address any bugs and also are constantly upgrading the user interface to make it easier to use.

Incentivized

Pages load quickly, dashboards update numerous times throughout the day, and the integrations are seamless and operate without a hitch. On occasion, commissions will be delayed in calculating corrctly by a day or so, but that is quite rare. I don't find that delay to be a huge hinderance anyways.

Incentivized

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.

Xactly Incent performs extremely well. I have not experienced it "slowing down" when usage is heavy. This is particularly true when it comes to the regular recalculation of credits and commissions. It is not uncommon for Xactly to be dealing with hundreds of thousands of orders/credits in a pay period, but the system handles it well. Xactly recently changed their calculation engine and the speed for regular refreshes increased significantly.

Incentivized

I needed my account to be set up and there seemed to be some technical issues with onboarding and a customer service rep made herself immediately available to liaison with our IT department to get me up and running. I did not expect them to tend to our request with such urgency.

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.

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

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.

Awesome product, easy to use during daily activities. Reporting and user experience are very well organised. The sales team also likes this tool for reviewing their commissions at any time, which provides real-time updates. For new hires or mid-hires, the commission calculation is working very efficiently. Every sales-side organisation must have this tool.Awesome product, easy to use during daily activities. Reporting and user experience are very well organised. The sales team also likes this tool for reviewing their commissions at any time, which provides real-time updates. For new hires or mid-hires, the commission calculation is working very efficiently. Every sales-side organisation must have this tool.

Incentivized

The training was conducted by our Spiff Account Manager and they would even create recorded videos we could send to the sales team so when they log in, they would understand how to use Spiff. Account managers at Spiff are a huge reason why I like that company.

Incentivized

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

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.

I wasnt invovled but I heard it went smoothly!

Incentivized

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.

We have been satisfied with the implementation overall. The person from Xactly professional team was on our site to support the implementation and give us guides and instructions on how to operate the system in our case. it was really helpful moments. We have learned what and how to test Xactly Incent

It is a night and day difference between Sheets and Excel. The fact that it is integrated with Salesforce and calculates commission as you close deals make it super transparent and efficient when it comes to tracking your performance and commission. Spiff takes the manual work out of the equation. Reduces human error and increases collaboration.

Incentivized

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.

Ignoring the contractual issues that we had, Optymyze is very different from Xactly Incent. I would say that both offer high degrees of flexibility, but Xactly requires greater technical knowledge to customize. Optymyze allows administrators to manipulate data in a way similar to Domo or Tableau, allowing someone who is less technical to customize it. Xactly's connect module, on the other hand, requires strong knowledge of SQL to be able to manipulate data. I've been looking to take the training for Connect, so I can't comment on the limitations or flexibility beyond that.

Incentivized

We have a fairly large Enterprise sales team (200+ people and growing). Back when I first started at my organization this number was actually around 100 people. We've doubled in size since then and we have had zero problems adding these additional users.

Incentivized

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.

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

• increased transparency, allows me to share with my boss where i am at, i dont have to create a separate document tracking this information myself
• Reassurance on payout and accuracy, i know what is in Salesforce Spiff is already approved and directly translates to the payout of my goals
• reduction in errors and improved/less communication with the finance team for payouts. no other conversation needs to happen

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• I am not aware of the company investment, but the overall result is fantastic. Employees visibility to commissions and components of their commissions is great. They have much more accessibility to their numbers and better understanding of how commissions are calculated. They can also review commissions at their convince on the application.
• There seems to be more employee engagement and satisfaction with the overall commission process and reporting with Xactly Incent.

Incentivized