Xactly Adds Breadth and BI

Software-as-a-service vendors are moving from becoming tactical business assets to more strategic in nature, as exemplified by a series of news releases from Xactly Corporation today. The company has announced the availability of Xactly Incent 3.2, the latest version of its on-demand sales compensation management (SCM) application and several enhancements. The additional functions and modules for Incent 3.2 provide a set of open APIs for integration with other systems (Xactly Connect), a means of easily adding non-cash compensation to the management equation (Xactly Rewards), and modeling for detailed impact analysis of changes in commissions forecasts, compensation plans, and reorganizations (Xactly Modeling). These enhancements are part of Xactly's strategic product roadmap, which is intended to provide the midmarket with a flexible compensation management application with implications beyond the sales team. "Xactly will extend its SCM leadership and broaden the category of incentive compensation management, and leverage business data to automate our customers' key processes," says Chris Cabrera, Xactly founder, president, and CEO. "We will build, buy, or partner as necessary to make Xactly even more of a strategic resource." Pursuant to that goal, Xactly Modeling is a new module that acts as a sandbox for safely designing and optimizing new compensation, organization, plan, and expense scenarios. The agility and forecasting prowess built into Xactly Modeling give Xactly Incent some of the flavor of business intelligence. The added consideration of easy integration with existing CRM, finance, and other systems through Xactly Connect shows the possibility of Xactly implementations that reach beyond the sales department. The roadmap includes all of the products announced today--Connect, Rewards, and Modeling--as well as a number of others planned for the next 18 months. These will cover such areas as quota management, territory management, price management, and forecasting and planning. "The roadmap is the big story; it's showing long-term vision beyond SCM, seeing how customers are starting to use Xactly as a sales-driven BI suite," says Jeff Kaplan, managing director of THINKstratregies. "The bottom line is that SaaS companies like Xactly are really extending themselves beyond the original product set, recognizing that they can have broader impact and play a more important role in business, moving from a tactical mindset to a strategic one." Related articles: Xactly Ties SCM to Data Management and Analytics Automate Your Sales Compensation Program Sales Compensation is Back, Baby!