Item: Varicent
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Varicent as our Incentive Compensation Management system company-wide to support our worldwide sales organization representing employees in 37 countries. We have around a dozen different comp plans made up of anywhere from 2 to 6 components (aka measurements) for each plan. We pay monthly, but these plans include monthly, quarterly, and annual bonus components.

Pros and Cons

Calculate commissions
Robust reporting
Great user portal for plan participants

Better direct access to support (i.e. phone contact vs. logging a support ticket)
More consistent table structure
Make changes to table entries easier (i.e. vs. having to upload small changes)

Return on Investment

Decreased shadow accounting
Better sales productivity
Decrease in number of inquiries from field sales

Usability

Portal is user-friendly, but back end is more difficult to administer. There are multiple "spaghetti-like" paths that really require programming expertise to decipher, follow, and understand properly. Making even minor changes to one component can have detrimental downstream effects that cannot be easily diagnosed or resolved without system expertise that is not readily available internally.

Exceptional Examples of Varicent Support

Was quickly able to decipher a glitch that prevented us from distributing comp plans to plan participants. However in most cases, they drag their fee and string us along claiming to be "working on" the issue, while in reality they seem to be hoping it will just go away or we will finally figure it out on our own.

Scalability

We can add virtually any number of payees and plans without compromising system efficiency. Scalability is not an issue, but flexibility is definitely an issue. When we changed from our initial implementation build to a new fiscal year, we require virtually a complete rebuild of the system even though there were only minor tweaks to our comp plan.

Alternatives Considered

CaptivateIQ, QCommission, Synygy and Xactly Incent

Varicent is the leader in the ICM space because it is scalable and is always making improvements / enhancements based on customer input. However in my opinion based on my own experience, all ICM providers operate similarly in that they over-promise to get a customer's business and then under deliver once the contract is signed - a classic case of bait and switch. They won't tell you the limitations of the product and then when you need something else, they try to upsell you on the model / features you really need.

Key Insights

Do you think Varicent delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Varicent's feature set?

Yes

Did Varicent live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Varicent go as expected?

Would you buy Varicent again?

Other Software Used

Workday Payroll and Workforce Management, Ivanti Automation, Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Likelihood to Recommend

In my opinion, seems to over promise and under deliver. It is very difficult post-implementation to get assistance, and the software is not intuitive enough to operate effectively without ongoing support. We are required to log tickets to Varicent Support, which generally take several weeks to be addressed, and can take months to actually be resolved. We have several high priority issues that were initially raised during implementation and have yet to be addressed more than 6 months post-implementation.

Decent Partner in the ICM Space

Overall Satisfaction with Varicent