Powerfull, Flexible SPM environment, delivered by a passionate team of professionals
Updated October 27, 2021

Powerfull, Flexible SPM environment, delivered by a passionate team of professionals

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Varicent Incentive Compensation Management

[Varicent Incentive Compensation Management is] currently used within Business Market domain, where we support both Sales (internal) and Partners (external) compensations. Our IT landscape is highly complex and has many moving pieces in order to reduce legacy systems and we want to reduce our IT spent and enable business to be able to manage systems themselves in order to be more efficient and effective. From a business perspective we wanted to increase the adoption rate within Sales of the compensation plans by using functionalities in reporting and forecasting. By using Varicent we have been paying correct and on time for three years in a row.
  • 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
  • Workflow Management works fine, but it is not on same "level" with rest of product.
  • Inquiry Mangement works fine, but it is not on same "level" with rest of product.
  • 95% reduction of calculation time
  • 3125% increase of logins
  • 50% reduction of Admins
  • Reduction of Plan implementation by 3 months
  • Speed to insight increased from weekly to daily
Strong Admin User Interface with high intuitive design You don't need to be a programmer to understand Varicent - everything can be tracked/traced in the admin client "in-screen" education videos to help admins navigate the model Many ways to get things done
When we implemented our model, everything was fine untill we crossed the year. We had issues in truncate loading the data after is was "frozen" for payout. The issue had to do with the design of our specific compensations model. The team was eager to help and together we redesigned the part of our model and implemented it. Varicent does not consider you as a client, you are part of the family. They are always there to help, think with you etc. etc.
Since our initial implementation we expanded the model with a completely different domain. Then, we created another Varicent environment for other purposes, but all linked to our initially implemented model. We have been able to expand, without having to change our initital implementation, making the expansion not only succesfull, but also without risk to the compensations model. New functionalites in reporting have been setup on top of the compensation model, without having to change the model itself. (change on change will get risky/costly in the end, and with Varicent we minimize that risk to almost 0%).
Before we had Varicent [Incentive Compensation Management], we had Beqom. It was an on premise model with customizations, limiting our future plans. We had several vendors over for a discussion and invited them to proof their platform by delivering a POC. Varicent was the only vendor actually delivering the POC on our written scenario in several days and by using Varicent, showing that our scenario had an error in expected outcomes.

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?

Yes

Did implementation of Varicent go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Varicent again?

Yes

Varicent Incentive Compensation is perfectly suited for both smaller and large companies, specificaly when you are in need of a platform that is flexible to your specific compensation logic and scalable as well. Also, Varicent is highly invested in the roadmap of the software. If you are looking to achieve automation of processes, reducing manual activities, decreasing calcing times etc., then Varicent is the way to go.

Varicent Feature Ratings

Sales compensation plan creation
9
Complex sales crediting
9
Sales compensation process automation
9
Incentive auditing/regulation compliance
9
Sales compensation dashboards & forecasting
9
Incentive modeling
8
Agile incentive strategy
9
ICM mobile visibility
7

Using Varicent Incentive Compensation Management

385 - 1 Super Admin
2 Business Admins
1 Business Analist
1 Finance Analist

Rest are payees/salesreps and/or Sales Managers
3 - 1 Super Admin and 2 Business Admins.
Skill level is standard excel and know how to navigate a website.
For innovation/development and looking for expanding the model you need a brain that is good at data modelling (what is the source data, what is the expected output and how do I get there)
  • Compensations of Sales
  • Compensations of Business Partners
  • Territory Management
  • Automation of processes
  • The level of automation was unexpected. All manual work for our compensation plan is down to 0%, except for supporting hierarchy changes.
  • Data Discovery Dashboards are great for many, many purposes (reporting, admin education)
  • Automating more manual processes outside of compensations domain
  • Centralize communication within the system
We achieved major goals since our initial implementation and I don't know about any other application that can bring us the same.

Evaluating Varicent Incentive Compensation Management and Competitors

Yes - Beqom (on premise)
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
Only vendor that was able to deliver a POC on short term
We took a very long time for our selection process. Longlist to shortlist and from shortlist to POCs etc.
Only thing I would change is speed up this process. On the content I would not make any change. We have been very, very detailed and did not "just" make our decision.

Varicent Incentive Compensation Management Implementation

Only downsight: it only took about 4 months.
I was the best project I have ever been responsible for/working on where my brain got challenged every hour of the day.
Good times!
  • Implemented in-house
  • Third-party professional services
Our initial model for Sales was implemented together with the vendor.
Our second model for Partners was implemented together with Cognizant.
Our thrid model for a different domain was implemented together with Cognizant.
Yes - Discovery - Design - Building

Discovery:
Many discussions/meetings to make sure we are all on the same page regarding our data, processes etc. etc.
In other words: WHAT do we need

Design:
When the WHAT is known, the next phase is the "HOW".

When all that is known and done... building is least of the time spent on the implementation.
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled - - Don't just think about what you need today. Also consider what you might need in the future.
- Aks the vendor for best practices in order to get highest flexibility for future changes.

  • None that I can remember

Varicent Incentive Compensation Management Training

  • Online training
  • in-person training
  • no training
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.
Many new features have been implemented since our first training.
If you understand your model, all these new functions can be learned easily by just trying them out and ask a support question here and there.

Configuring Varicent Incentive Compensation Management

Varicent is delivering all flexibility I can ask for.
You "basically" have 4 main options to create (table, calcs, datastore and reports).
I have not found anything so far that I could not configurate/built etc.
Think about how you would like to manage your compensations.
Do you require yearly changes on the same basics? The consider a more "table driven" approach, where you can configurate the way the model works, based on configurations stored in tables (instead of building more calcs).
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Some - we have added small pieces of custom code - Very easy. You have an Admin option to import an "external tool". That can be Python for example.
We used it to clean up some data before putting it in the tables (adding unique ID for example)
I don't see how customization is required when the application itself is allready very wide regarding how to get things done.

Varicent Incentive Compensation Management Support

You have a support page where you can create tickets, but you also have a CSM available.
They are all doing a great job in replying fast and making sure you know what they are doing when something is wrong/needed.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
No, we have standard support.
I am not even sure premium is offered, but if it is... i would not know the difference from current "standard".
Yes - It was replied on fast. Team asked for a quick call with screen sharing to make sure we are all on same page.
Then they reproduced it and all their findings went to the development team.
All steps of the way I knew about the status, who was my point of contact etc.

Using Varicent Incentive Compensation Management

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Composer
  • Managing data
  • Data Discovery
  • Navigation

Varicent Incentive Compensation Management Reliability

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.

Integrating Varicent Incentive Compensation Management

I have not found anything I can't do yet.
  • Salesforce
We are pulling many tables from our Salesforce environment to be able to report compensations with a daily refresh rate.
It was not that hard, you can either use the built-in API and schedule the import... or you can go with an external tool like Python inside ICM and restrict the API a bit more to reduce data being pulled. We are also sending data back from ICM into Salesforce.
  • No
Not having any ideas to do that at the moment.
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
No that I can think off.
Think wider then just integrating Varicent for 1 specific purpose.

Relationship with Varicent

Friendly team, stayed involved with implementation after Sales was done as well.
They take their time to make sure the "pre-discovery" gets done correctly and complete.
Sales team kept in touch and knew about progress from implementation team etc.
Implementation team is best experience I have ever had in a big project.
Varicent is there to help you, so make sure your business issue is transparent.

Upgrading Varicent Incentive Compensation Management

Yes - We have several upgrades during the year, since it is a Cloud application
  • Data Discovery
  • Ask Varicent Assistent
  • New UI for Admins