Callidus Answers the Demand for Commissions

The sales compensation market continued its on-demand drive today with the announcement by Callidus Software of its new on-demand product, Callidus On-Demand Services. Targeted to the upper midmarket and small enterprises, pricing for Callidus On-Demand typically starts at $50 to $150 per payee, per month, according to the company. With this release, Callidus joins rival best-of-breed sales compensation tool providers Xactly and Centive in the on-demand space. "The move to on-demand is representative of many software markets," says Jim Dickie, partner at CSO Insights. "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." Callidus TrueComp Enterprise Incentive Management (EIM) Suite, the company's on-premise offering, is targeted to companies with more than $1 billion in revenue and more than 1,000 payees. Callidus On-Demand is focused on companies in the $200 million to $1 billion revenue range, according to Shanker Trivedi, vice president and CMO. Besides the obvious advantages of rapid implementation and smaller IT burden, Trivedi says Callidus On-Demand will cost companies between 25 to 40 percent less than an on-premise EIM implementation. "What we're offering is exactly the same software that we deliver on-premise to our largest enterprise customers, but available to smaller enterprises via an on-demand solution." Companies will be able to customize their solutions via an on-demand framework, with the option of enhancing their on-demand solution with additional products from Callidus. One such product is TrueAnalytics, a software package that offers ad-hoc analytic capabilities for sales, marketing, and finance management. There are two big differences between TrueComp EIM Suite and Callidus On-Demand Services, according to Trivedi. The first is the way Callidus downloads data from the customer, which is now done via a secure connection to a Callidus site. The second is the way the software processes transact with payees. The key to both is security. "We're dealing with very important transaction, monetary, and personal account information," Trivedi says. "Customers have to know that information is secure." Trivedi only sees competition coming from other EIM vendors, such as Centive and Xactly, since Callidus doesn't target the SMB space with its products. He sees SMBs being content with the sales compensation functionality offered by CRM suite providers like Salesforce.com and NetSuite. "We don't address the lower end of the market," he says. "We only address those who require a complex sales compensation and distribution incentive plan." Related articles: Sales Compensation Gets Into Relationships Dangling the Carrot: Drive Your Sales Force to Profitablity Homegrown Sales Compensation Systems Fail to Fly

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