Item: Spiff
Rating: 10
Author: Mark Guilday

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Spiff to calculate and communicate fully the details of our Sales Team's various compensation packages. Mostly bonus-based but also a small group based on commissions. Bonuses include tiers and caps and it couldn't be easier to set these up. The only bummer is our data doesn't live in Salesforce so we can't fully use the awesome capabilities of the Salesforce sync but with that said the support team has been so incredible and easy to work with and created a very complex but easy to use Excel file that can take care of all the complexities of our compensation upload process.

Pros and Cons

Great UI that can easily break down each account and all adjustments as well as base calculations at any level.
Amazing support team with almost real time support via Slack and email.
Listens and implements product feedback quickly. Some features I have asked for are delivered within a quarter.

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.

Return on Investment

Errors on compensation have gone down dramatically and we now use Spiff to even check some of the finance calculations they send us and it did find an error a few quarters back.
Able to save at least 30% on the time it has taken to process and approve commissions/bonuses.
Greatly increased transparency into adjustments and exact calculations at any level. Our previous product (Xactly) wasn't able to show the same level of detail and resulted in many more questions from the Sales Reps.

Usability

As an admin who has done this in Excel and Xactly and Spiff, it's hard to explain how much better the process is but it's evident in every area that it's better. That means fewer errors along the way, it means less time to process and it also means a better, more clear UI for everyone involved. For reps they care most about two things, how much am I getting paid (Spiff has that clearly shown at the top of the statement with a simple graph to compare previous time periods) and why was I paid less than I thought I was going to be (Spiff lets you drill down on each account to see every adjustment and even have links on the rule level as well as account level to see the exact numbers and how they were calculated so they can see exactly how we got to that number). I have a tight relationship with everyone I have worked with at Spiff and they give me a Slack channel where I can ask them quick little questions and a support team via email that responds quickly. They never leave you in the dark or high and dry the night before it's due.

Trust in the Compensation Process

I kind of answered this in the last question but the way Spiff displays calculations is great. First off you have links at various levels that you can drill into, step by step to see how it's calculated. Sometimes that's 5 or more levels deep and it clearly shows you each of those steps so you can look back to your statement and see it matches. Also, we have a lot of adjustments and we are able to set up the statement to show the adjustments in a list view so they can see them at a glance without clicking into each account but if they want to drill deeper, one click and they have all the info about any adjustment right there.

Alternatives Considered

Xactly Insights and Microsoft Excel

I only have experience with Xactly and just plain old Excel spreadsheets and while Excel is nice only because everyone knows how to use it, even if you don't know all the advanced stuff, the UI is not the best and can be overwhelming if the data isn't prepared by an advanced excel user. Even then, the time it demands to make everything work and look good makes it not really an option that competes with any true compensation tool. When using excel, just think about how you share it with each rep? Do you have many teams? That means splitting the files into those teams and then that manager splits it up and even if that's not an issue it opens you up to errors that aren't under your control. Really, excel is just not an option for any sales org over a few reps. Xactly, I only used for a few months but the UI is old-fashioned (we didn't use the new version so this is a review of their product many years back so it may well have improved since) and was very buggy for us. It took us twice as long as Spiff and showed way less information. We got so many questions each time commissions went out that we don't get them now.

Key Insights

Do you think Spiff delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Spiff's feature set?

Yes

Did Spiff live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Spiff go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Spiff again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Slack, Salesforce.com, MicroStrategy Analytics

Likelihood to Recommend

Our experience has been very good and the support we got at the start was second to none. Our hands were held for months and the amount of work they did to get us set up and troubleshoot any issues that popped up along the way as we communicated more and more nuances of our compensation plans was staggering and impressive. I truly feel like these people care about the product and their customers and while this doesn't matter, they are one of the only products I use where I genuinely would want to hang out with them outside of work. I say this because while I can only speak to how well our process went, I believe this tool would work just as well for any compensation setup from very complex to smaller and fewer complex sales contests and other things. If your data is in Salesforce and you are currently using reports from SFDC as the numbers that drive compensation that is Spiff's bread and butter and I have no doubt this is the best tool for you. If you are like us and don't use SFDC data, don't discount spiff. They have an amazing team that will make the excel upload process easy and intuitive.

Great tool for Sales Reps and Admins, Love it!

Overall Satisfaction with Spiff