Xactly - excellent system if you are willing to make the investment
Updated April 04, 2023
Xactly - excellent system if you are willing to make the investment

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Xactly Incent
- Our organization uses Xactly incent to calculate and communicate incentive payouts for over 100 different roles across multiple business units. - We pull data from multiple finances, HR, and sales platforms to perform these calculations on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. - Commission payouts are communicated to individual employees and management through the Xactly Incent statement function - We also provide reports for management through the Analytics module that helps summarize key findings on commission expense.
- Handles a wide variety of incentive types (commission, target-based bonus, bounty, kicker)
- Integrates data from multiple platforms to perform calculations
- Refreshes key data overnight so employees can track their earnings progress daily
- Allows for sending and archiving of incentive plan documentation, including electronic signature acknowledgment
- Xactly Incent requires a significant amount of programmer support to maintain.
- Employee statements are not particularly customizable, which can make it hard to communicate certain types of incentive calculations
- Xactly Incent does not provide management with an easy way to view aggregate commission payouts
- It has not allowed us to reduce HR headcount
- It did improve our ability to accurately calculate commissions and reduce errors
We regularly use data from Xactly Incent to monitor compensation expenses across a wide variety of metrics. Xactly Incent proved very useful to us in identifying business units that were overpaying employees and reducing profitability. It also allows us to easily calculate average payouts for individual roles/job bands, etc.
Our organization does not utilize goal/quota-based incentives on a wide scale. However, we do track compensation expense by business unit and role to help identify areas that need additional investment or reduction in expense in future periods. In this sense, Xactly is helping us meet our goal to improve profitability and manage optimal headcount levels across business units.
Integrating data from multiple systems has greatly reduced error and manual calculations. In addition to the 3rd party systems listed, we have also integrated Xactly with our in-house ERP system, which we use as the primary business tool across the organization. Xactly Incent was very effective in integrating with our in-house system, which is a big plus.
Sales Operations is using the data to gauge performance effectiveness. For example, they may compare commission payouts with total volume to get a sense of how much commissions are contributing to COGS. The Finance department is using reports from Xactly incent to prepare monthly and quarterly accruals, and for regulatory purposes..
Xactly Incent is less flexible than Excel but provides a much higher level of automation. We utilize Excel as a tool to validate and analyze calculation results in Xactly. The download feature in Xactly is easy to use and allows for easy integration with various Excel spreadsheets. These two programs can work well together.
Do you think Xactly Incent delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Xactly Incent's feature set?
Yes
Did Xactly Incent live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Xactly Incent go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Xactly Incent again?
Yes
Xactly Incent Feature Ratings
Using Xactly Incent
50 - Human Resources, Finance, Sales Operations
3 - Xactly Incent should be supported by individuals with a compensation background who have previous experience with Incent. I would not recommend trying to assign IT individuals to support the product, since it does not require coding, SQL, etc. to support. Someone with good problem solving skills who can also manage the relationship with Xactly support.
- Monthly commission calculations
- Annual bonus payouts
- Daily tracking of volume by product line
- For daily tracking of volume by product
- Identifying orders that were incorrectly entered by Sales Dept
- More insightful reporting for management
- Better daily dashboards for all sales reps
Evaluating Xactly Incent and Competitors
Yes - We were using a homemade solution that was custom configured by our organization. This system was very time-consuming to maintain and required a large team of IT professionals to run on a daily basis. In addition, every time we designed a new incentive plan it took a long time to configure the commission details.
- Product Features
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
Senior management in the Human Resources department had successfully implemented Xactly Incent at previous organizations and knew that it was a worthwhile product for a growing organization. Xactly has a strong reputation in the compensation field for being the best available solution on the market today. This was the most important factor in our decision.
I don't think we would change our selection. If doing it all over again, I would take more time to explain the importance of the product to the Compensation Department. There was poor communication along these lines, and many compensation analysts were concerned that they would be laid off as a result of Xactly's implementation. It turned out that more analysts were needed after implementation, so the stress was unnecessary.
Xactly Incent Implementation
- Third-party professional services
Accenture performed the implementation for our organization. They had a team of programmers located across the globe and several project managers. They were somehow directly connected to Xactly, however, so even though they worked for Accenture they acted like Xactly employees and our interactions with them were always coursed through Xactly.
Yes - We had multiple sales channels comprising thousands of employees and hundreds of plans, so the implementation was broken into three phases. Each phase focused on 1-2 of our sales channels. Each phase had a rigorous User Acceptance Training followed by a rollout. After rollout, we typically waited 2-3 months before making the system live to our sales reps.
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - As mentioned in an earlier comment, the biggest change management need with Xactly implementation is within the compensation department, and our organization did not focus much on explaining the "why" behind the implementation. The change required for the sales force was actually quite small - they simply started logging into Xactly instead of our old home-made system to access their monthly commission statements.
- DIfficulty configuring complicated commissions
- CHallenges getting organizational structure correct
- Issues resolved, but then remerging later
Xactly Incent Training
Configuring Xactly Incent
Use tags generously, because over time you will generate a lot of different credit rules, commission rules, rate tables, etc. etc.
I also think it is a worthwhile investment to engage an Xactly Technical Account Manager. The TAM will be able to handle even the most difficult configurations. The price you pay for a TAM is much cheaper than trying to pay a full time employee to handle all of the configurations.
I also think it is a worthwhile investment to engage an Xactly Technical Account Manager. The TAM will be able to handle even the most difficult configurations. The price you pay for a TAM is much cheaper than trying to pay a full time employee to handle all of the configurations.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - Customization on our end has mostly focused on the "pods" that make up the user dashboards. You have many options here on what kind of information you want to make available to the reps in addition to their regular commission statement.
I understand that even greater customization can take place but have not done that yet.
I understand that even greater customization can take place but have not done that yet.
No - we have not done any custom code
Nothing additional to add.
Xactly Incent Support
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
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 |
Yes, premium support was purchased. I would consider this an essential part of Xactly and everyone should factor this into the purchase decision. It would be difficult to successfully operate Xactly Incent without access to the premium support option. Xactly is too difficult to try and operate on your own.
Yes - Yes, there will be bugs that emerge in the software from time to time. ALthough it is not always easy for the Xactly Support team to identify and address the bug, they are very responsive to the issue and provide frequent updates on their progress when they are working to resolve it.
There are so many times I can hardly count. Often issues will emerge right before payroll deadline. However, if I create a ticket, mark it critical, and elevate the case to my contact in the Support department, I typically get resolution of the issue within 2-3 hours. This is one of my favorite aspects of Xactly Incent.
Using Xactly Incent
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Well integrated Consistent Convenient Feel confident using | Difficult to use Requires technical support Slow to learn Lots to learn |
- Accessing employee statements
- Changing employee hierarchy/reporting
- Closing the month/quarter
- Setting up new employees
- Setting up new types of commissions/incentives
- Creating new credit types
Yes, but I don't use it
Xactly Incent Reliability
Integrating Xactly Incent
- HRIS (ADP)
- Internal order system
We set up incent so that it automatically tracked new hires, transfers, promotions and terminations. This feature worked very well and saved a lot of time. We also set up nightly recalculations with our in-house order system. It was nice to come in every morning with a fresh set of data.
- Salesforce
- Workday
Yes - Xactly is experienced in facilitating interfaces with multiple systems.
- File import/export
- Single Signon
I would recommend including as many integrations as possible in your initial implementation. There is no need to wait, and loading things manually is much more difficult.
Relationship with Xactly Corp
Be open about your challenges and your wins with the system. Xactly has a good process for dealing with failures or unmet expectations.
Upgrading Xactly Incent
Yes - This is very easy - upgrades are performed during regular monthly maintenance, and new features are rolled out slowly over time. The Xactly team is good at communicating upgrades before they arrive, and they offer regular training.
- Easier user interface
- Quicker calculation engine
- Unsure, but look forward to new features