Xactly Incentivizes the Plan

On-demand sales compensation provider Xactly made available the Spring '06 release of Xactly Incent yesterday. The new product incorporates the industry's first online plan-document approval module as a component of the automated sales compensation application, according to the company. With the Spring '06 release, Xactly will have two product lines: Xactly Incent Enterprise Edition and Xactly Standard Edition. Yesterday's new features are part of the Enterprise Edition. The new plan-document approval system will let companies sidestep the time-consuming task of distributing paper-based compensation plans with an accompanying cover letter via postal mail to individual sales reps, then waiting for the sales rep to review and accept the plan with a signature. This process can repeat annually with thousands of individual comp plans. The latest version of Xactly Incent lets users manage the process online via the document approval feature. Xactly also has built out Incent's draw capabilities. Draw, whereby an individual is given compensation in advance of anticipated performance, is used by companies to integrate new, performance-based sales people into their business environment. Incent Enterprise Edition will let companies create four types of recoverable and nonrecoverable draw to meet different business needs. Simultaneous with Xactly's new product, the company has made Xactly Incent available for Salesforce.com's AppExchange on-demand application platform. It will make Incent available to Salesforce.com's audience of 399,000 paying subscribers. "All of these initiatives are designed to meet the needs of mid-market sales and finance compensation management professionals," said Desta Buchowski, vice president of product management at Xactly, in a written release accompanying the announcement. "In the SMB community profit margins are often razor thin, so tools that help companies sell more of their most profitable products are always attractive to SMB customers," says Laurie McCabe, vice president for SMB insights and business solutions at AMI-Partners, referring to Incent and AppExchange. "Xactly is providing the functionality and ease of use that SMBs need, without the up-front implementation costs. The market for on-demand sales compensation management software promises to be a lucrative one." Jim Dickie, a partner at CSO Insights, seconds the notion. "Sales compensation tools can be very pricy due to their complexity. Many vendors in this market have added on-demand to their offerings to open things up to smaller companies." Related articles: Sales Compensation Gets Into Relationships Dangling the Carrot: Drive Your Sales Force to Profitability