Sales Performance Management (SPM) Solutions & Software
Many businesses still rely on manual processes to manage sales compensation plans and related incentives. This can take up a tremendous amount of time and effort that could be better spent on actual sales. By automating these processes, you can redirect resources to more value-adding activities.
Increase Visibility Into the Sales Pipeline
Successful selling requires a clear view into the sales pipeline and where deals stand at any given moment in time. This is especially true if you have a large, geographically spread out sales force or have multiple channels such as resellers or agents selling for you. With SPM, you can get instant views into what’s happening throughout your sales organization, allowing you to make more informed decisions about how to direct your time and money for maximum impact.
Improve Collaboration and Communication
One of the main benefits of SPM is that it allows your team to collaborate more efficiently. Being able to work together on projects can decrease the chance of errors, improve the speed of completing a project and enhance overall morale.
With real-time reporting capabilities, you can view your team’s progress in detail at any time. You can see what they are working on, who they are collaborating with, and how many deals they have closed — all of which can help you make more informed business decisions.
Expedite the Sales Process
The “S” in SPM stands for sales, so it makes sense that one of the main benefits of using this software is that it will expedite your sales process. SPM can streamline your sales operation by cutting out redundant processes or even automating them completely. You can accelerate your pipeline by automating key stages in the lifecycle, such as qualifying leads or moving deals along to closed-won status. By reducing cycle time, you give your reps more time to do what they do best: selling.
Optimize Your Sales Performance Management Today
When it comes to your sales organization, the way you compensate your team can make or break your business. Most companies rely on compensation plans and incentive programs to help drive their sales teams forward. However, without a strategic structure in place, most compensation plans fail to produce the desired results.
In order to succeed in today’s competitive market, businesses must provide their salespeople with motivation, a clear vision, and the appropriate tools and technology. Learn more about our trusted SPM solution partners below!
Akeron
Akeron is the software house based in Lucca, which develops modern applications capable of increasing productivity, managing and improving company performances by placing people at the center of the processes. Akeron Srl today has over 500 customers in every field and size: from leading names such as Decathlon, Bolton Group, Prada, HDI Assicurazioni, and Cressi Sub to medium and small companies.
Anaplan
Anaplan helps connect organizations and people to make better-informed decisions. The leader in Connected Planning, Anaplan offers solutions for every business function within an organization.
CaptivateIQ
CaptivateIQ modernizes how businesses manage and track sales compensation with a smarter solution designed to save companies countless hours and costly errors. CaptivateIQ’s flexible modeling platform helps business teams set up and automate any commission plan to empower customer-facing teams to do their best work.
Learn more about CaptivateIQ
NICE
NICE Sales Performance Management (SPM) is an integrated solution helping sales organizations better manage incentive compensation, sales crediting, territories, and quotas.
Learn more about NICE
Oracle
Oracle provides a comprehensive, cloud-based SPM solution including territory planning, quota modeling, incentives and games, sales coaching, and more. Oracle’s SPM solution addresses real-world sales performance challenges by enabling companies to better manage performance, motivate behaviors, and mentor the best practices of the sales organization.
Performio
Performio was built by sales comp experts for sales comp professionals. 15+ years of deep sales comp experience across hundreds of customers in dozens of industries has resulted in a product that strikes the perfect balance of flexibility and ease of use. Performio’s rich library of plan components makes building comp plans easy, and the no-code visual editor handles all your necessary data transformations in one place. Paired with fast implementations and white-glove service, you’ll be up and running quickly with the added peace of mind that Performio has your back. Performio truly stands apart from every other sales commission software.
Learn more about Performio
Sales Cookie
Ready to be your Sales Team’s hero? Sales Cookie is a flexible and powerful cloud-based solution to automate commissions and provide real-time dashboards. They believe that automation is key to motivating sales teams to push for the next level and deliver amazing results.
Learn more about Sales Cookie
SAP Sales Performance Management
SAP Sales Performance Management (formerly CallidusCloud), a global leader in sales performance management, helps organizations automate processes and inform strategy to make every stage of the sales cycle better. With its Lead to Money suite, SAP Sales Cloud empowers companies to “make more money, faster.”
Learn more about SAP Sales Performance Management
Spiff
Spiff is a leading sales compensation platform that automates commission calculations. With a combination of intuitive UI, real-time visibility, and seamless integrations into current systems, the platform enables finance and sales operations teams to self-manage complex incentive compensation plans.
Learn more about Spiff
Varicent
Varicent helps clients accurately track, manage, and report on sales processes through the industry-leading Sales Performance Management (SPM) solution. Clients realize bottom-line efficiencies and top-line results.
Learn more about Varicent
Xactly
Xactly has helped thousands of companies and millions of sellers around the world beat their revenue targets. Using Xactly’s solutions, leaders look past the current quarter to create revenue streams for long-term growth.
Learn more about Xactly
Think your organization has what it takes to be an OpenSymmetry partner?
Reach out to us and tell us about your company.
About Us
OpenSymmetry enables clients to achieve greater operational efficiency and get better sales results. We are a global consulting company specializing in the planning, implementation, and optimization of industry leading technology suppliers of sales performance management solutions.
CONSIDERATIONS WHEN REPLACING YOUR SPM TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION
Understanding the challenges companies face when migrating Sales Performance Management (SPM) technology solutions can be a significant undertaking. This paper is designed to provide high-level guidance to stakeholders who carry this responsibility. As OpenSymmetry has helped many companies evaluate and effectively migrate to new technology solutions, we are sharing seven key areas that we find critical to completing this kind of effort.
1. CURRENT STATE ASSESSMENT & FUTURE STATE PLANNING
A critical initial step before migrating to a new SPM solution is understanding how well your current program is performing across people, processes, and technology. From there you can devise a future state vision for how your SPM program should operate. By understanding both current state gaps and what your future state needs look like, you can effectively begin defining requirements while also clearly articulating success criteria. It’s important to recognize that your previous or initial SPM implementation may not have gathered all necessary processes/requirements, so it’s vital to take a fresh, holistic view in this first step.
2. DATA INTEGRATION
One of the most complex and time-consuming requirements is determining how to best leverage current source data feeds to support the new platform. Within the context of your current state assessment and future state planning, the team should review what their reporting, analytics, and any future state compensation elements needs are to ensure a meaningful inventory of data requirements are defined. SPM solutions vary in terms of how data is gathered, translated, and uploaded into the system. Some solution applications may have a standardized format requiring additional configuration, whereas others may have the ability of data field mapping, which provides additional flexibility. The ability to own the data translation from your source systems to the SPM platform is key. Another focus point is to ensure that you evaluate all manual feeds to incorporate automation, as well as any additional error validation processes.
3. HISTORICAL DATA
Migrating historical data is an often-overlooked requirement when moving from one SPM platform to another. To keep costs down and minimize complexity, clients may want to ID only the data that is needed to ensure ongoing management of comp (e.g. payment history) and then transfer detail-level data into data storage to be referenced at a future date. It is important to consider what historical data is needed for the new system for reference on future payments
4. PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Each SPM solution may require users to interact with the system in different ways. This area may need additional attention, especially as it has the potential to improve processes currently employed to manage sales compensation. Understanding the impact a new system will have on current processes, as well as those who manage the processes, is critical to ensuring a successful launch and ongoing management of core processes. As an example, two of the leading solutions in the market have very different expectations regarding the skills users need to possess to effectively maintain compensation plans and reports and, in some cases, execute the day-to-day activities. Defining expectations of your staff related to the new technology, prior to the project, will ideally give your organization the necessary time to introduce training that ensures effective ongoing management of the program.
5. WORKFLOW
SPM solutions vary widely in their ability to support automated workflow. As a result, there are significant challenges for sales compensation teams related to an SPM migration. Capabilities can range from templates to existing documentation, levels of routing, and even implementation of a stopgap for a payee to accept plan documentation prior to payout. Within the context of your future state definition, capturing and defining areas where automated workflows can be leveraged is a necessary part of the core requirements. Before a new system is deployed, it is important to map these processes out to drive user adoption, leverage the SPM system as an auditable repository, and minimize email management.
6. REPORTING & ANALYTICS
It is critical to develop a holistic vision of information distribution to the various stakeholders and tools used to deliver this content (i.e. static pages vs. dashboards). Similar to workflows, different vendors have various capabilities related to reporting for the end users. Assessing these capabilities against your business requirements is imperative to the success of the roll-out. For example, some vendors require more robust configurations in the system (e.g. crediting logic) to enable specific analytics capabilities, while some solutions, architected specifically for reporting and analytics, have much more robust capabilities. Another area for consideration is the use of the vendor’s reporting solution against your in-house technology stack. Some solutions make it easy to port data into new environments, which could be a consideration in helping to keep the number of reporting tools requiring management to a minimum.
7. DEPLOYMENT
The implementation of a new solution should be designed to minimize the impact on payees and managers. One of the most critical aspects of your effort is assessing how all stakeholders will be impacted and how to mitigate any disruption. It is important to identify upcoming changes for your sales organization, administrators, and other internal partners with a plan in place to offer the steps needed to ensure the best chances for solution adoption.
The first step when considering a new SPM platform is an assessment of your current program and the development of a future state vision. OpenSymmetry offers a no-cost workshop to help you gain an understanding of how your current SPM program performs against your needs and industry best practices, as well as a readout on current solutions in the market.
Leveraging the OpenSymmetry assessment methodology and knowledge of the leading SPM providers, you will be equipped with:
• A current state analysis scorecard
• The framework for a business case to support change
• Contemporary intel on the SPM market and SPM vendor capabilities
• High-level deployment and license cost estimates
