On-Demand Sales Performance Management

The Cost of Homegrown Systems: A Recurring Compensation Quandary

2009-08-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

For a long-time Silicon Valley resident like myself, it’s hard not to admire Hewlett-Packard – and rare to see such a widely admired icon stumble. But this unfortunately happened recently when it came to correctly compensating a significant chunk of its sales force over the past several quarters. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article: “Problems with an in-house system named Omega have kept about 2,000 of H-P’s more than 23,000 salespeople from getting their proper monthly commissions for much of this year.” Says the article, some have had to settle temporarily for just 60 to 70 percent of what they should have been getting for their efforts.

Subsequently, three employees have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all employees and ex-employees affected by the problems. According to the Wall Street Journal, the plaintiffs claim that more than 50,000 people may have been underpaid due to issues with Omega.

Omega, it seems, was inherited from Compaq, which H-P acquired in 2002. And Compaq itself had inherited Omega when it purchased DEC way back in 1998. As a compensation-management system, Omega was probably adequate back in the day. But, as is the case with so many homegrown legacy systems, it hit a wall as “H-P’s product lines and sales channels ballooned, creating more data for Omega to digest,” suggests the Wall Street Journal. H-P, of course, did all it could to fix Omega, including “new software to ease how it processes sales data,” but some things are resistant to fixes.

That’s one of the big problems with homegrown systems: they can cost you big time, often just when you need them the most. In terms of hard dollars, homegrown systems are pricey to build, costly to maintain, difficult to economically scale, and expensive to modify in the face of business change. In terms of opportunity costs, they lack the latest features and functionality, and they slow down and mess up vital business processes and initiatives – in this case, sales compensation, which has a direct bearing on sales performance.

H-P is by no means the only large company affected by problems with legacy commissions-management systems. In December of 2008, it was reported that Sprint was facing a lawsuit from thousands of its store employees who said the wireless carrier failed to pay them proper commissions. The article went on to state that “19,000 former and current employees are potentially affected,” and it was the integration of Sprint and Nextel’s back-end systems that led “to more than $5 million in lost commissions.”

Back when many of these original systems were conceived, there were no commercially available alternatives. Fortunately, that is no longer the case.

Companies relying on homegrown legacy systems to drive sales performance should investigate the powerful solutions available today, and prepare themselves for some very pleasant surprises in terms of scalability, cost of ownership, flexibility, ease of deployment, analytics capabilities and visibility into business processes. In particular, the next generation of multitenant Software-as a Service (SaaS)-based sales performance management solutions deliver these advantages in spades.

The alternative? Keep throwing money at the old homegrown system… and hope the Wall Street Journal doesn’t call.

Choosing a True SaaS Provider: 10 Key Questions to Ask

2009-06-30T13:45:00.001-07:00

This blog has never been shy about championing the advantages of true multi-tenant SaaS applications while exposing the enormous disadvantages of hosted, single-tenant SaaS-“ish” offerings. Sadly, many traditional software vendors looking to latch onto SaaS are taking the latter route to market out of expediency. And in doing so, they confuse customers who are interested in SaaS and, ultimately, disappoint and disservice them.

Beagle Research Group has just released a concise viewpoint that crystallizes the above argument, and discusses how customers can avoid confusion and disappointment when purchasing a SaaS solution. Titled Multi-tenancy Matters, the paper presents a history of SaaS, a succinct description of the multi-tenant value proposition, and an excellent explanation of why multi-tenancy has to be designed into a true SaaS offering from the ground up.

But the heart of Beagle Research’s paper lies in the 10 questions it insists prospects should ask when evaluating SaaS providers – and the corresponding 10 answers they need to be looking for and why. This is a list that all potential SaaS buyers should carry in their back pockets.

As Beagle Research points out, SaaS “is rapidly becoming the de facto standard of the software industry,” and “many conventional vendors will offer partial SaaS solutions to maintain marketshare while they upgrade to the new standard.” Read this paper and use its list of 10 questions to make sure your company avoids the pitfalls of partial SaaS solutions.

SaaS Wins Big with Siemens Deployment

2009-06-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

There’s no doubt that SuccessFactors hit the jackpot with its newly announced mega-deal with Siemens, to deploy its on-demand talent management solution to more than 420,000 users in 80 countries. But not only is this a big win for SuccessFactors...it’s a BIG win for SaaS.

The inability of SaaS to support large enterprise deployments has long been the rallying cry of SaaS naysayers. As THINKStrategies’ Jeff Kaplan notes in his blog today, this deal closes the book on that myth.

The deal “clearly illustrates that SaaS is well-suited for global enterprises, and further dispels the myth that it is just for small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs) that can’t afford the luxury of traditional, on-premise enterprise applications.”

Of equal note, this deal was won over traditional on-premise players. As Forrester analyst Ray Wang noted to IDG’s Chris Kanaracus, “Siemens is a traditional SAP house. For their team to make a big bet on SuccessFactors represents the new type of thinking present among many CIOs and enterprises today. Their software vendors may not be innovating fast enough to keep up with the enterprise’s requirements.”

Clearly Siemens, which conducted “an in-depth market evaluation of 30 leading vendors and seven system providers,” has no lingering qualms about the advantages of SaaS. According to Siemens’ head of CIT: "The enterprise cloud computing business model is a strategic direction for us. It not only lowers IT costs, and creates faster end-to-end processes, but can also grow with our requirements both globally and locally."

But there is more to this deal than the dueling delivery models of SaaS versus on-premise. The current global recession will end at some point, with signs that it is already beginning to relax its grip. "CEOs and CFOs are looking to come out of the economic downturn much faster, with more focus and vigor,” says SuccessFactors’ chief marketing officer. Those companies with the most well-motivated and strategically directed employees will be strongest out of the gate when the economy bounces back.

Global giant Siemens understands this. And like the growing number of companies choosing SaaS over on-premise applications, it will now begin to reap the benefits.

SaaS’s Spring Fling: Venture Community Bets Heavily on SaaS

2009-05-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

The SaaS battle continues to rage in some quarters, with traditional on-premise software vendors still fighting a vociferous rearguard action, even as some are slowly moving to test the SaaS waters for themselves. Yet a growing number of customer successes continue to push SaaS acceptance to new heights. And investors continue to place ever larger bets on the SaaS proposition, despite a weak economy that has placed a damper on pending IPOs.

The latest cases in point are SaaS vendors Workday, which closed a $75 million venture round, and ExactTarget, which just last week attracted $70 million in venture funding. ExactTarget had to forgo an IPO late last year because of the economic downturn, but that hasn’t kept the VC community from regarding the company as a prime investment opportunity. Meanwhile, Workday has now raised a total of more than $150 million from investors who clearly believe in CEO (and PeopleSoft founder) David Duffield’s vision for SaaS.

What is particularly notable is that each of these two rounds of investment, coming just a week apart, eclipse in size almost all other venture rounds this year! And they may well also eclipse them in sheer promise due to the remarkable upside potential of SaaS.

SaaS...a Market? Or a Market Advantage?

2009-03-04T17:15:00.000-08:00

“SaaS is not a market. It’s just software,” reads the title of a recent blog post by Mark Everett Hall of Computerworld. He’s riffing on a statement made by Trisha Gross of SaaS-based Hubspan, who argues that “there’s a market for CRM, ERP, supply chain management, integration software and other markets, but not SaaS.”

These are common misunderstandings by folks who have not walked a day in both the shoes of an on-premise provider and a SaaS provider. But SaaS is not “just a channel,” nor is it “just a way to consume software.”

Unfortunately, these perspectives don’t recognize so many of the true differences between SaaS and traditional enterprise software. It would be like saying the difference between using a horse-and-buggy versus air travel is merely the “delivery model.” Of course the method of delivery is different, but the benefits to the passenger (and the provider) are far greater.

Beyond the means of delivery, SaaS doesn’t require customers to buy and maintain expensive hardware. It’s about reducing the risk of “shelf-ware” so common in the on-premise world. It’s about letting customers dip a toe into their software investments, rather than paying millions of dollars up front. It’s about keeping vendors honest: if customers aren’t happy, they will walk. It’s about not stranding customers on old and obsolete versions, and forcing them to do costly upgrades. It’s about allowing vendors to focus on a single line of code, meaning more efficient engineering organizations that can spend more time innovating.

The conclusion Mark draws at the end of his post is that “instead of SaaS vendors being measured against themselves, they should be compared in the same market as their packaged app competitors, which would greatly diminish their relative size and importance. I’m not sure a lot of SaaS players and their backers would want to go down that road.”

Completely agree. No SaaS vendor worth its salt should be shy of inviting such a comparison. If SaaS vendors are doing a good job, their on-premise counterparts are likely squirming - telling anyone who will listen why SaaS isn’t relevant or, better yet, starting to apply “on-demand” and “SaaS” descriptors to their on-premise applications.

Fortunately for true multi-tenant SaaS vendors, the genie is out of the bottle and it’s just a matter of time. So, while SaaS might not be a market in the traditional sense, it’s clear that, all other things being equal, it is a huge market advantage.

SaaS Growth: It’s Addictive

2009-01-29T13:42:00.000-08:00

An interesting press release crossed my desk the other day, saying IDC is boosting its SaaS growth projection for 2009 from 36 percent to 42 percent over 2008. According to this leader in market research, surveys and customer interviews indicate the current economic downturn “will actually accelerate the growth prospects for the software-as-a-service model as vendors position offerings as right-sized, zero-CAPEX alternatives to on-premise applications.”

You won’t get any argument from me there. “Right-sized, zero-CAPEX” is exactly how we and every other sane SaaS vendor are positioning our offerings. And IDC’s market projections bear out the accelerated “growth prospects” part of the statement, including this formidable nugget: “The percentage of U.S. firms which plan to spend at least 25 percent of their IT budgets on SaaS applications will increase from 23 percent in 2008 to nearly 45 percent in 2010.”

But here’s the part of this announcement that really got my attention. Robert Mahowald, director of on-demand and SaaS research at IDC, was quoted as saying: "SaaS services have benefited by the perception that they are tactical fixes which allow for relatively easy expansion during hard times, and several key vendors finished the year very strong, reporting stable financials and inroads into new customer sets."

Well, SaaS can certainly be seen as a tactical fix, “allowing for easy expansion in hard times,” and I’m sure that many customers look at it that way, which is fine. But more to the point, SaaS is even more of a highly strategic, long-term investment, and that’s true in both good and bad times.

I will be surprised, very surprised, if an appreciable number of SaaS customers dump their on-demand applications in favor of on-premise solutions when the economy eventually rights itself. The excellent renewal rates enjoyed by SaaS leaders show that, once bitten by the SaaS bug, there’s little impetus to go back to on-premise solutions.

Meanwhile, sound SaaS vendors will be using their mounting revenues to continue enhancing their offerings and expanding their functionality – and doing so at a rate that may be difficult for many harder-pressed, on-premise vendors to counter during this recession.

In short, even before the present economic melt-down, it was clear that SaaS was approaching the tipping point vis a vis on-premise software. IDC’s insights reveal the tipping point is now a lot closer than anticipated. And once tipped, no matter what brought you to that point, it will be counter-intuitive to go back.

Prosperity from innovation: A vote for the IT Innovation Tax Credit

2009-01-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

If there’s been one dominant driver of economic expansion these past 30 years, it’s been the phenomenal gains in productivity made possible by information technology. This nation’s ace in the hole, IT innovation has fueled our booms, created entirely new economic sectors, and helped keep recent recessions relatively shallow.

Galvanized by an op-ed piece penned by economist Joseph E. Stiglitz in the November 30th New York Times, Genius.com CEO David Thompson has launched a petition among Silicon Valley CEOs and investors urging Congress to enact a tax credit for companies that continue to invest in information technologies and services in the current recession.

This is a terrific idea. As the petition states, it will “bolster our technological leadership and ensure that we preserve and add to the 2.5 million jobs targeted by President-elect Obama.”

It’s not about feathering the nest of technology providers. It’s about ensuring that technology-using companies maintain their competitive edge, increase their productivity, and emerge from this downturn in a strong position globally.

I’m pleased to be an early signer of the Innovation Advocates for Growth petition. I not only urge fellow tech CEOs to sign, but encourage the leaders of technology-using companies - as well as individual technology consumers - to jump on the IT Innovation Tax Credit bandwagon through letters of their own to representatives in Congress. The credit will be a proactive and powerful economic stimulus, and an investment in the continued productivity and prosperity of this country.

Sprint …a cautionary tale. Beware the business-critical ramifications of badly managed sales compensation

2008-12-04T13:16:00.000-08:00

Anyone happen to see the recent news item highlighting what can happen when companies engage in non-effective sales compensation management in December 2nd’s Information Week?

The article says “Sprint is facing a lawsuit from thousands of its store employees who say the wireless carrier has failed to pay them proper commissions.” It goes on to state that “19,000 former and current employees are potentially affected,” and that it was the integration of Sprint and Nextel’s back-end systems that led “to more than $5 million in lost commissions.” Ouch!

According to the article, court documents say that Sprint knew there was a computer problem, spent $10 million to fix it, and “did not acknowledge employees hadn’t been paid correct commission.” Double ouch.

From my perspective, regardless of whether the commissions were paid correctly or not, the damage is done. And it is considerable.

There’s nothing like having your employees this riled up – not to mention 19,000 of them. Hence the first question facing any company in this unfortunate position is how much trust – and indeed motivation – will their employees have going forward? There’s a lot of damage needing to be repaired – and that’s true whether you have 19,000 reps or 19. Then there’s the enormous financial impact around the settlement to deal with. And all the time and effort that will go into handling the case and its aftermath. And the potential for balance-sheet revisions and corporate financial restatements. And the erosion of shareholder and analyst confidence.

But the clincher is, this is the type of corporate mess that can so easily be avoided. Providing sales reps with real-time, web-based visibility into their commission plans can help nip a problem like this in the bud, long before it snowballs to class-action suit status. This visibility, combined with accurate, rules-based commissions calculation (emphasis on rules-based), is the foundation for effective sales compensation management.

And the bedrock on which this foundation rests is the effective integration of all the data used to determine compensation. Any competent compensation-management solution absolutely has to get this right. And, with the advent of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, it doesn’t take a lot of costly on-premise software and expensive consultants to nail this particular kind of data integration either, at least not anymore.

Finally, complete compensation audit trails are mandatory, and entirely possible. The attorney representing Sprint’s store clerks alleged the company made the internal process for appealing shortages in commissions too “time-consuming and burdensome.”

Sprint is a reputable company, and it’s certainly not in its interest to purposefully, as the article has it, “shaft employees.” The company obviously needs to overhaul its current compensation-management process, and fast.

You don’t have to be the size of Sprint to take a lesson here. Sales compensation management is a business-critical function for any organization. It doesn’t pay to confuse, betray and anger the employees that feed you, no matter how inadvertently it may happen. And there’s certainly no excuse for it with state-of-the-art SaaS-based sales compensation management solutions that are available today.

The Rustling of Autumn Spreadsheets

2008-12-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

Chill winds and the last rustling of leaves come even to Silicon Valley, eventually, along with the usual waves of nostalgia—for old friends, that first car, your first spreadsheet-managed compensation plan. No, I’m not losing it. The deal with nostalgia is that you can only get nostalgic over something once its time is past. And there’s nothing that fits that bill better than managing sales performance via spreadsheets. Like my first car, that particular paradigm is well past its prime and better remembered than relied on.

Today of course there’s another chill wind coursing around the globe: that of recession. And many companies of all sizes are finding themselves nostalgic for yesterday’s revenues, profits and forecasts. How long they’ll be forced to remain nostalgic depends on many factors, but one that stands out is sales performance. Happily, this is something companies can work on to improve, and an improvement here goes a long way.

It’s axiomatic that when performance measures align directly to business goals, sales reps on variable compensation are motivated not only to sell more, but also to sell more profitably. But companies are particularly challenged to achieve this alignment because of their traditional reliance on spreadsheets coupled with email and paper-based methods to manage sales compensation.

Companies that have moved off of manual methods will gleefully recite a whole litany of spreadsheet shortcomings, starting with how difficult, tedious and costly it is to create and administer effective comp plans in Excel. And they’ll tell you that these shortcomings extend to the error-prone nature of the beast; the lack of meaningful reporting, analysis and auditing capabilities; and how hard it is to collaborate and share with spreadsheets, yet how easy it is to confuse, confound and demoralize those you so desperately need to motivate.

The vast majority of companies that still use spreadsheets for compensation management know all or part of this in their hearts, but are likely asking themselves how they can justify the expense of an automated solution, especially given the uncertainty of the global economic climate.

My response is: how can you not? Especially now that inexpensive SaaS solutions for compensation management have taken the wind out of the sails of far more costly on-premise software solutions.

The net is, it’s time that companies tossed their sheaves of sales compensation spreadsheets to the winds. Be nostalgic about them if you want, but just get rid of them and automate. It will go a long way towards keeping you from having to be nostalgic about healthy top- and bottom-line growth.

Ride the Economic Wind…Don’t Get Blown Away in ‘09

2008-11-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

It’s been a wild economic ride—slide, many would call it—this past year. And the only thing certain about the coming year is that it will be shaped, squeezed and knocked around by continued consumer uncertainty. Because buying cycles promise to be so unpredictable in 2009, companies need to equip their sales organizations to be able to move smoothly and productively with the dynamics of the business and with the gyrations of local and global markets.

This means acting right now to put in place highly adaptable sales compensation plans for 2009 that enable sales and finance to align with corporate objectives, both long and short term, and clear a path for meeting them. Today more than ever, to hesitate is to lose.

Nonetheless, despite the enormous stakes, experience tells us that only half of all 2009 sales plans will be ready for primetime come January. And if that isn’t dismal enough, regardless of whether they’re delivered late or on time, the vast majority of these plans will be dumbed-down or else overly complex and confusing. Either way, they’ll be ineffective at a pivotal time.

But experience also shows us a way out of this dilemma. Here, distilled into seven key practices, is what you need to do in order to arm sales to make the most of the coming uncertain year:

1. Automate. It worked for CRM. Now try it for sales compensation management. Companies still using spreadsheets to manage compensation are pouring scarce administrative dollars down the drain. Worse, they’ll never be able to achieve top sales performance because they lack the requisite visibility, flexibility, scalability and accuracy that come with automation. You should wish this problem on your competition, not yourself.

2. Model. Don’t rush blindly into implementing new plans or plan changes. This is no time to experiment. Model your plans and plan changes up front to gauge their impact. If you’ve automated, modeling shouldn’t be hard to do.

3. Keep it simple and consistent. If you have more than four key performance indicators, or 10 or more conditions to determine credit allocation and payment release, then your plan is too complex and risks confusing your reps. By the same token, as lead-to-sales times invariably lengthen in 2009, try to keep the long-term mainstays of your plan consistent, to keep reps focused on selling, not calculating.

4. Keep it visible. Give the troops in the sales trenches real-time visibility into plans and compensation processes so they can see how they’re doing towards plan, and how much more they stand to make if they do “x,” “y” or “z.” Once you’ve automated, this kind of visibility via the Web becomes easy.

5. Keep it flexible. Plans should ultimately drive long-term behavior, but you want the flexibility to drive short-term activity as well. Make sure you can react to sudden opportunities and challenges through SPIFs and contests without altering the long-term framework of your plan.

6. Analyze. Knowledge is power. Automating compensation provides a bonanza of useful data on who bought what from whom and for what price and conditions. Leverage this data through analytics for insights into selling patterns, commission spend, plan effectiveness and how to further drive sales performance.

7. Measure constantly. In turbulent times, it helps to use all your senses all the time. Don’t wait until the end of 2009 to measure your plan’s effectiveness. There are bound to be numerous bumps and sudden shifts along the way that will impact your business. You need to stay on top of them with mid-year, quarterly and even monthly sales performance reality checks accompanied as necessary by fine-tunings of quotas, commissions, territories, etc.

While 2009 isn’t likely to yield blow-away financial results for all that many companies, there are key steps that can be taken to keep a business from being blown away altogether - and even to help it prosper in a challenging environment. More closely managing sales performance is one of those steps. Late, confusing, hard-to-manage or overly simplistic compensation plans are roadblocks to optimal sales performance, in both good years and bad.
Why wait for a good year to find out how much of a roadblock your plans have been?

Incent Right? Incent Differently

2008-10-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, this article on Yahoo Finance caught my eye. The article is titled, ‘Firms Try to Shore Up Incentive Pay’, and talks about how many companies today are faced with sagging morale among their employees, and as such, are looking for ways to keep their staff whole – especially when things like stock awards, MBOs and other variable compensation targets are not being achieved.

Obviously, this is a topic that much interests me, seeing as how I’m in the business of helping companies to incent their people in the right ways. In the past, I’ve referred to this as ‘Behavioral Science’, and it’s an area that has become increasingly germane as the economy has soured.

This Yahoo article says, “As plummeting stock prices and profits pummel companies' incentive-pay plans, many firms are considering extra measures to reward employees… nearly three-quarters had implemented or were considering such measures, including stock awards or special bonuses. Respondents said they were worried about keeping key workers and boosting morale in the turbulent economy.”

Now, intuitively, one might say that it seems less likely that companies would experience employee turnover during turbulent times, as people who have stable employment would want to make sure that things stay that way. However, top-performers are always in demand, and those are the people companies can least afford to lose, especially now. Unfortunately, those are the people who are not making their bonuses currently.

“… many surveyed companies said they were thinking of tweaking bonus plans to increase their chances of paying out, and modifying long-term incentive programs to "improve the value" for workers. Nearly a third said they were considering additional programs to keep key employees -- often special payments to supplement regular bonus pools.”

One possible answer is the use of non-cash rewards as a way to motivate behavior and improve performance. Non-cash rewards have proven effective in motivating employees to excel in all types of economies. And they have proven effective not just for the sales team, but other functions such as customer support, marketing and other specific corporate audiences.

Non-cash rewards go where cash cannot in rewarding specific behaviors and creating a positive work environment. They provide greater agility anytime there’s a special opportunity such as rewarding up sell or cross sell, moving excess inventory in the channel, resolving customer-support cases, attracting prospects to marketing events, etc. The instant gratification factor of non-cash rewards also is attractive to many employees, particularly younger employees with little patience for annual or semiannual bonuses.

Put on your behavioral scientist white lab coat and give it a try. Let’s get creative.

Turn That Frown Upside Down

2008-10-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Difficult though it may be, I’ve been looking for reasons to stay optimistic amidst the avalanche of negative news about the economy.

It seems like all we’ve been hearing is that our current state of affairs is horrible, and we’re teetering on the brink of wholesale disaster. Then Monday arrives and Wall Street posts its largest single-day gain in the history of the market – perhaps this bailout just might work.

As an entrepreneur, it got me thinking about other reasons to stay positive when it seems like the prevailing wisdom might call for switching to pessimism.

No way. Any company can build brand value and gobble up market share when times are good – the truly exceptional companies do that even when things are rough.

I love this quote from Jason Calacanis (founder of Weblogs, Inc. and current CEO of Mahalo.com): “Great entrepreneurs build value and market-share in down markets. They go to work seven days a week and the(y) breakout when other folks check out.”

I love that sentiment – it gives me a warm feeling – and it led to me a wonderful article (published on TechCrunch.com) that uses Calacanis’s quote. The upshot of the article is that times may be tough all over, but there are still opportunities in the technology sector, as there *always* is for companies who have a unique solution to offer.

“While the floor is crumbling for many industries much in the same way it did for Silicon Valley during the dot-bomb years, the sky isn’t necessarily falling on the startup industry – at least not for those with marketable technology or products, dedicated and capable teams, an executable business plan, and access to the resources necessary to help it reach users and customers.”

This is a vitally important concept, and one that should be shouted from the rooftops. Companies will still need to spend money – no matter how bad the economic situation gets. It’s just that they will preserve their cash and spend it carefully on products that can help them improve, streamline their processes and boost their bottom lines.

So all is NOT gloom and doom.

“For those startups that are building and marketing something of value for consumers or businesses, there is much work to do. While there is always a need to attract mainstream users, this isn’t the time to stretch or over-commit resources to hit everyone all at once. Branding is an expensive proposition, one that requires time, capital, diligence, dedicated teams, enthusiastic customers, and patience. As counter intuitive as it may seem, this is exactly the right time to market into the echo chamber to earn the support of influentials who will create significant, concentrated brand visibility and momentum to carry you forward.”

Build a strong brand, and it will return to you ten-fold, I think. And now is the right time to do it. After all, you’re still aiming for the same target you always were – your customers are out there; the dartboard may have gotten smaller lately; but the target is still there, waiting to receive the arrow that is your message, your brand, your solution.

Cloud Computing - A Silver Lining

2008-10-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

Is it true that every cloud has a silver lining? What about cloud computing? I was reminded of the silver-lining adage recently when I noticed that several online news outlets had picked up this story from silicon.com – the thrust of which is that many companies still are not even aware of SaaS.

Sometimes we may lapse into thinking that we’re a bigger deal than we really are; and this forces us SaaS vendors to work that much harder to earn validation in the marketplace.

This article quotes statistics taken from a study conducted by BT (British Telecom), “One of the problems that we've unearthed in a survey that we did recently was about 81 per cent of customers we spoke to didn't really know about software as a service…”

This quote was from Chris Lindsay from BT, who goes on to say, "It's quite eye-opening really in terms of the lack of awareness but [also] the benefits are very clearly spelt out by the customers who have adopted the services…"

So the bad news is that 81% of companies (in the UK anyway) aren’t familiar with SaaS as a delivery model, but the good news is that, if they were familiar with it, they’d like it.

Unfortunately, several other online media outlets picked up this story and trumpeted it from the rooftops, using the somewhat sensational (and misleading) headlines such as, “Business Not Taking to SaaS”, “Businesses Still Clueless Over SaaS”, and “Businesses Still in the Dark About SaaS”.

What this tells me is that we – as an industry – still have a lot of work to do in order to get the word out on the SaaS delivery model in general. I think, too often, perhaps we forget that Silicon Valley doesn’t extend worldwide yet – in different parts of the world, the market penetration and mindshare that SaaS has claimed varies wildly depending on the geography you’re talking about.

Remember that the study in question was conducted in the UK, and there was some great news out of that region earlier this week, when TechWorld (billed as “The UK’s infrastructure and networking knowledge centre”) published this article that found a majority of companies planned “to adopt SaaS within five years.”

Neil Barton, director at Hostway, said: “Companies are certain that SaaS will make their application usage more c006Fst-effective because of the reduction in software management costs, and the ability to eliminate buying too many or too few software licenses.”

I agree with Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies who said, "I think (SaaS) adoption is far more advanced than is being readily reported.”

What SMBs are most concerned about is the functionality, Kaplan said. What they're finding is it's not just simpler and less expensive, it also adds a whole layer of application opportunity they couldn't get from legacy apps.

"A lot are having a revelation."

So perhaps that’s the silver lining to this particular cloud?

If not that, then perhaps the news yesterday that Symantec had agreed to buy MessageLab’s SaaS business unit for $695 million. Clearly, Symantec’s CEO John W. Thompson expects to make a major push into the SaaS market immediately. Reaction from industry media members was positive, as TheStreet.com and Forbes both published articles lauding the acquisition – one titled “Symantec Adds to Web-Software Arsenal”, and the other cleverly titled “Symantec Has Its Head in the Cloud”.

I think we’ve only seen the beginning of large companies looking to strategically make inroads into the SaaS/cloud-computing market. It makes too much sense to ignore, especially in these trying times.

_

Da Vinci, Plate Tectonics and CapEx Budgets

2008-10-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Here in San Jose, where Xactly is headquartered, the Tech Museum of Innovation – located right down the street from us – recently unveiled the world premiere of an exhibit titled ‘Leonardo: 500 Years into the Future’, billed as “the largest, most comprehensive exhibit of the innovative art, science and engineering works of Leonardo da Vinci” and “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see how this genius of the Renaissance has influenced and inspired much of the technology we use today.”

Now, I already knew some things about da Vinci and his life, but I learned that in addition to being one of the greatest painters and sculptors of all-time, his ideas about improving the world around him were simply astounding. In a time when no real technology existed, da Vinci “conceptualized a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.” [source]

He did all this five hundred years ago! I think it’s clear that the assertion made about da Vinci that he was perhaps ‘the most diversely talented person who ever lived’ is unequivocally correct.

Why am I telling you all of this (apart from the fact that it’s fascinating, and I seek to enlighten and instruct)?

Well, I was going to open this blog post by saying that we’re living in uncertain economic times.

But I stopped and realized that that’s an understatement on the same sort of level as saying “Leonardo da Vinci was slightly ahead of his time, don’t you think? If he was alive today, I’ll bet he'd be smart enough to have his own cable-access show, or maybe get a job selling Christmas trees at Home Depot. Possibly.”

It doesn’t quite capture it – and the economic crisis we’re facing can’t be understated. So it got me thinking about the need for companies to cut spending and save money on upfront costs; budgets are being slashed all over the place. But in most cases, companies don’t have the option to stop buying solutions altogether, they just must make smarter decisions about how they spend their money.

Opting for a SaaS solution in order to save their capital-expense budgets makes a lot of sense for these companies. As the always-eloquent and erudite Phil Wainewright points out in his blog, this financial crisis should be an opportunity for SaaS companies to continue to grow.

Phil says in his latest post, “If credit remains tight, then one of the first things businesses are going to cut is capital expenditure — either because they can’t stomach the risk, or because they can’t raise the finance. The upside for SaaS vendors is that those cash-strapped businesses will find the pay-as-you-go SaaS model highly appealing — especially if it helps deliver operational cost savings at the same time. So while the credit crunch seems certain to harm the front-loaded cost model of conventional software sales, SaaS should continue to grow by picking up some of those canceled projects.”

Sing it, Phil. We are in lock-step with you on this kind of thinking.

Additionally, when one considers that among the hardest-hit entities at the moment are the banks and financial institutions, I enjoyed this article (published by AmericanBanker.com) that touts the advantages of SaaS and BPO as an effective way to cut costs in the current economic climate.

To quote the article, opting for outsourcing some processes and choosing Software-as-a-Service solutions “not only reduces the bank's operating expenses and protects them from cost spikes… it can also help institutions reduce their risk through service level agreements. This allows executives to focus their attention and resources on critical areas like customer experience and new product strategy to stay competitive and grow their businesses.”

Banks, as we all know, are not early adopters when it comes to technology. They are forced to remain fairly conservative and are not prone to making broad sweeping changes in the way they run their business. I like the idea that we can help them navigate through this choppy water, and help them look ahead into the future.

Maybe not 500 years ahead like Leonardo… but we’re working on it.

_

CIOs are a Smart Bunch

2008-09-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

In talking to CIOs these days, I’m hearing a lot of commonalities when it comes to discussing their focus and priorities.

One of these common threads is the need to opt for on-demand solutions over traditional on-premise software options because of man-power constraints. It seems there simply are not enough skilled folks to administer to these bulky on-premise software tools any longer.

Doing a little casting about on the internet, it seems as though I’ve hit upon something that’s begun to pick up steam: CIO.com published this great article about that very same topic. To quote the author, Thomas Wailgum:

“…however, there is a bigger problem that on-premise software vendors face: The net effect of the skills shortage is pushing existing and potential customers to consider alternative software delivery models, AMR Research analyst Dana Stiffler contends.

‘I think what it really means long term is that people are really crying out for a different delivery model for enterprise software and business functionality,’ she says. ‘And it's my belief that combinations of SaaS and business process outsourcing (BPO) will eventually begin to emerge and make that gap be slightly less noticeable.’

I’ve been banging on the ease-of-use drum for awhile. Consistently, I’ve called attention to the lower cost of entry, lower TCO, instantaneous upgrades, plus the freedom and flexibility that come with a subscription-based service model, but now we must add: no need to hire specialized, expensive personnel to administer to the technology.

Those on-premise software vendors better think about founding some schools just to train qualified technicians for their applications!

Better yet, I don’t want to wake any of them up. Forget I said anything.

_

A History Lesson - Wall Street-style

2008-09-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
--George Santayana
(The Life of Reason - 1905)

It’s at times like these that I’m extremely glad I live and work in California, as I would not want to be anywhere near the smoldering wreckage of Wall Street at the moment.

Are we nearing a serious financial crisis? Both presidential candidates seem to think so, as they are each piling in to the latest financial news and using it to boost their campaigns.

It got me thinking about how long these types of securities scares have been taking place.

A long time, as it turns out. Many people seem to believe that the dot-com bubble of 1999-2000 was the first of its kind.

Not so, my friend. You would be off by about 300 years, in fact.

Way back in 1720, the first ‘stock market crash’ rocked the old world. At the time, England was strapped for cash after its involvement in Spain’s War of Succession, so King George I made a deal with a private firm – the South Sea Company – granting them a monopoly on shipping trade routes with Spain.

George saw this as a good vehicle to finance government debt, and the wealthy saw it as a good opportunity to invest some of their hard-earned shillings. It became ever more fashionable for society folks to buy stock in the South Sea Company, and it drove the share price sky high.

Stock certificate for the South Sea Company – circa 1719

Meanwhile, wealthy folks in England were so eager to buy into the company, to keep up with the Lord Joneses as it were, that they were blithely oblivious to one minor detail: the company failed to show any kind of profit, mostly due to the fact that King Philip of Spain was resolutely unwilling to negotiate any more than three English voyages per year in his waters.

Oops. That might have been something that would show up in a good 10-Q or 10-K, hm?

Regardless, the precarious financial house of cards finally came tumbling down, after shares peaked in September of 1720. Investors got wise to the situation, a mad rush to sell shares ensued, and many fortunes were left in tatters.

Even celebrities took a bath on the South Sea Company: "When Sir Isaac Newton was asked about the continuance of the rising of South Sea stock? ---- He answered 'that he could not calculate the madness of people'. (Spence, Anecdotes, 1820, p368); Newton's niece Catherine Conduitt reported that Newton had participated and "lost twenty thousand pounds (a giant fortune at the time). Of this, however, he never much liked to hear..."

This was the world’s first economic bubble.

It reminds of the heady days of 1999 and 2000, when Priceline.com – a little-known website where consumers could ‘name their own price’ for airline tickets and hotel rooms went public despite never having come close to turning a profit; and on the strength of their decision to hire William Shatner as their celebrity pitchman, Priceline’s share price soared, and the company’s valuation was higher than that of the three largest U.S. airlines… combined.

When investors remembered that public companies were supposed to MAKE money, Priceline’s share price retreated faster than a French infantry unit that comes face-to-face with a Cub Scout troop.

This week, I’ve been interested to see what the reaction would be in the wake of the triumvirate of bombshell announcements that came to light – the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the declaration of bankruptcy by 158-year old Lehman Brothers Holdings, and the frantic scramble for cash by insurer AIG.

The Federal Reserve Bank chose to reassure the shaken financial markets by holding the U.S. interest rate steady – and in response, the stock markets bounced around in an attempt to make sense of it all.

What does it all mean? Is it, as some have suggested, a harbinger of another crash like the one Wall Street suffered in 1929?

I don’t see it that way, partly because this is a more sophisticated time, although there are times when we seem doomed to repeat the past. For example, the sub-prime credit crisis was predicted far and wide prior to it happening, and Warren Buffett – in the late 1990s – decried the internet bubble as untenable, since it made no kind of sense to have unprofitable companies (companies who had NEVER shown a profit) sporting multi-billion dollar valuations.

I thought about attempting to tie this whole post back to the SaaS market in general, perhaps drawing a thin analogy to the fiscal prudence of using an on-demand model, but I’ll save that for a different day.

Are We Hearing the Death Rattle of On-Premise Software?

2008-09-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

Lately, I’ve been somewhat bemused when I see a small subset of the SaaS buzz that is registering out on the fringes of the blogosphere.

There seems to be an undercurrent of negative sentiment toward the on-demand world these days, and while I’m bemused, I’m not surprised.

I don’t want to confer validation on any of these ridiculous statements by calling them out specifically – though Jeff Kaplan (founder of THINKstrategies) does a very nice job of echoing some of my sentiments in this insightful article that was recently published on SeekingAlpha.

You’ve got people predicting the imminent demise of the SaaS market. Some folks would describe a prediction like that as ‘fuzzy thinking’ – and they’re half right; it’s fuzzy, but it’s not thinking.

The SaaS market is expanding like a balloon at the moment, which is why analysts are quoting growth rates of more than 100% in the next two years.

There are other recent examples of people attempting to throw water on the SaaS flame, but in my mind this fire will not be quelled – in fact, we’re not far from it becoming a raging inferno. However, this hasn’t stopped the haters from hating.

Is this not the *definition* of a ‘disruptive technology’? “…a technological innovation, product, or service that uses a "disruptive" strategy…to overturn the existing dominant technologies or status quo products in a market.”

HOW LOW-END DISRUPTION OCCURS OVER TIME (source: Wikipedia)

That’s what we’re seeing at the moment, I think – the ‘status quo’ vendors in the software space have become roused from their slumber and are reacting angrily to this challenge to their supremacy. So let’s call it what it is: the Death Rattle of the on-premise software world.

"If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel
cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business."

--Henry David Thoreau, ’Walden’(1854)

Boundary Conditions

2008-08-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

Someone very clever once wrote, “Human beings are naturally drawn to ‘boundary conditions’ “ – for example, where land meets water, where the earth touches the sky, where space meets time.

In other words, we like to congregate at these boundary conditions; stand on the edge of something and gaze over at something else.

Is that why beach houses are so expensive?

I feel as though the SaaS market is at one of these boundary conditions right now. As we see more and more companies choose on-demand solutions, the ‘old way’ of doing things is giving way to the ‘new way’ of doing them.

It’s not hard to see why this is so: when one considers the lower cost of entry, lower TCO, instantaneous upgrades, plus the freedom and flexibility that come with a subscription-based service model, the exploding popularity of SaaS makes perfect sense.

Evidence of the ‘SaaS explosion’ can be found all over the place. Recently, Penny Crossman wrote a terrific article describing the “almost-meteoric rise of SaaS on Wall Street”.

On the same day last week, Salesforce.com announced not only the acquisition of InStranet (to strengthen its service and support offerings), but also record earnings for their second quarter.

The SaaS market is spectacularly healthy and growing at a dizzying pace. According to IDC’s Worldwide Software On-Demand Forecast 2007-2011 the CAGR is forecast 32% among companies of all sizes, and another analyst (that I'm not able to mention by name) estimates that Software-as-a-Service will grow to a $19.3 billion industry by 2011. This means that SaaS – already a healthy $6 billion industry in 2006, will have more than tripled in size in less than five years.

If we, as an industry, have not already reached our tipping point, it seems to be rapidly approaching.

Won’t you join me at this boundary condition? Let’s gaze over at the old, on-premise world and be glad that we’ve claimed such a valuable piece of beachfront real estate.

Announcing the Launch of XACTLY REWARDS

2008-08-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

I’m excited today to announce our newest product, Xactly Rewards.

Let me tell you a bit about it, because this launch has been getting a lot of wonderful attention in the media, and for good reason, I think.

In the past, I’ve spent time in the blog discussing the benefits of ‘non-cash rewards’, and I think it’s an incredibly powerful tool to use in order for companies to improve performance – perhaps even more so than using the good, old standby – cash.

In fact, a University of Chicago study found that NON-cash rewards boosted performance by an astounding 38.6%, compared to only a 14.6% boost using cash alone.

Why would non-cash rewards be so much more effective than cash at improving employee behavior and performance?

The allure of getting those new golf clubs, or a trip to Cancun, or Springsteen tickets, tends to be a stronger inducement than simply an impersonal amount of cash. Instant gratification can be very powerful, it seems.

Xactly Rewards harnesses that power.

This is the world’s first non-cash incentive application that is directly integrated into your CRM tool. Imagine designing a contest for your sales team, or devising a SPIF for your call center or tech support team, and being able to put it into place with virtually no effort?

Our team built this tool natively on Salesforce’s Force.com platform. We leveraged their infrastructure 100% (utilizing the AppEx code, Web Services and API), which allowed us to rapidly develop and deploy the tool on Salesforce’s AppExchange.

Best of all, companies will be able to test this tool out for themselves with no obligation and no cost. Come check it out – I invite you to TRY XACTLY REWARDS FOR FREE December 1, 2008.

Behavioral Science - Part II

2008-08-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

I’m sure everyone has seen the coverage a major oil company received recently when they announced a quarterly profit of nearly $12 BILLION – the highest ever recorded in corporate history.

I’m a CEO, and my company is not a non-profit organization; which is to say, we’re all in the corporate world to make a profit. But twelve billion dollars a quarter is more than a little offensive to me.

The good news is that consumer backlash seems to have begun, and as a result prices at the pump have begun to fall. As a fan of behavioral science, I find these types of sociological tipping points very interesting indeed.

It has always seemed to me as though the demand for gasoline is relatively inelastic. In other words, demand and consumption of gasoline historically has not been materially affected by the price of gas; which is a pretty sweet position for big oil – no matter what ridiculous price they chose to throw at the American consumer, demand for gas wouldn’t fall.

That’s finally starting to change, and the falling prices are evidence of that (not to mention the plummeting sales of gas-guzzling SUVs) – oil companies have finally given consumers the incentive they needed to change their behavior.

Speaking of incenting to change behavior – hey, that’s one of my favorite topics! – let me relate a quick story.

Recently, I found myself on an Alaska Airlines flight, taking me from Here to There. After the flight attendant made the standard safety announcements, she launched into an elaborate spiel about an Alaska Airlines credit card offer. She talked it up in a big way, and clearly knew the program backward and forward. I was impressed – I’ve had sales reps who could’ve learned a thing or two from this young lady!

This got me curious, and upon de-planing at my destination, I made a point of going up to her; I wanted to know if the airline incented her to do this.

She confirmed that, indeed, Alaska Air paid her a small commission for every new credit card account that she managed to recruit from one of her flights.

I complimented her on a job well done and stepped off the plane with a small smile creeping across my face.

Clearly, more and more companies are realizing the power of this type of ‘behavioral science’ – incenting their people in order to elicit the desired behavior.

It does my heart good to see it.

Upcoming Business Finance Webinar: Leveraging the Power of On-Demand Analytics to Drive Finance and Sales Performance

2008-08-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

This upcoming webinar expands on one of our previous posts:
The Power of Analytics

Utilize "Post-Sales" Data to Gain Key Business Insights

Register to learn more.

In this Webinar, Xactly’s Christopher Cabrera and IDC’s Henry Morris will discuss how post-sales analytics can provide new and strategic insight into an organization’s selling patterns, commission spend, product performance, sales rep and team performance, and sales plan effectiveness. They will examine how post-sales data – traditionally scattered across a variety of disparate systems including ERP/order entry, HR, Pricing and Product – can be now be integrated, modeled and analyzed with an eye towards enhancing business strategies, changing sales rep behaviors, and super-charging sales organizations.

Participants will take away:

* How aggregating data for on-demand analytics can be streamlined efficiently
* Best practices for driving financial and sales performance with analytics
* Best practices for modeling and analyzing post sales data to optimize finance and sales performance
* A view of finance and executive dashboards and custom analytic capabilities for sales performance analytics

Featured Speakers:
Christopher W. Cabrera, Founder & CEO - Xactly Corporation
Henry Morris, Senior Vice President Worldwide Software & Services Research — IDC

Date: September 18, 2008
Time: 1:00 p.m. EDT

Register to learn more.

SaaS - Not 'Xactly' a Risky Proposition

2008-08-11T06:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, I flew to visit a potential customer – this prospect happens to be a good-sized bank, and as is often the case with financial institutions they are extremely cautious about everything having to do with risk and security.

As a matter of fact, an executive in attendance made a point of asking me if there are risks inherent in the SaaS architecture.

“It seems like one of the main advantages of your model is that it’s extremely low-risk; the initial investment is very small. Am I missing something, some catch?” he asked me.

I pointed out that, on the contrary, he had it right from the beginning – the real risk would come from getting locked into a long-term commitment to an on-premise vendor and having to do so *before* you know for sure if their solution will work the way you need it to (and the way THEY say it will).

A true SaaS solution gives the customer the ultimate amount of freedom and flexibility; companies have embraced the idea of a ‘try-n-buy’ – instituting a pilot program that allows the customer to dip its toe into the water before deciding if they want to get wet.

This freedom enjoyed by the customer forces us SaaS vendors to be nimble and requires us to focus relentlessly on customer service. However, it also comes with a built-in competitive advantage: customers can find budget for these projects so much more easily than with an on-premise solution.

Phil Wainewright, who writes a terrific blog for ZDNet, wrote the following in a recent post of his: “Certainly, the low-risk, pay-as-you-go model will give SaaS vendors a big competitive advantage if capex budgets are slashed…”

The title of that post is, “Eight reasons SaaS will surge in 2008”, and Wainewright goes on to quote Microsoft SaaS architecture expert Gianpaolo Carraro who compares the current SaaS revolution to the awakening companies had in the mid-90s around using an Intra-net as well as the Internet.

I like that word: “awakening”. That’s definitely what this feels like – companies are waking up to the possibilities in the SaaS world. I can almost smell the morning coffee brewing.

Business Intelligence Network (podcast) - Automate Sales Performance Management as Software as a Service

2008-08-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

Karen Steele discusses Xactly's ability to automate sales performance management as software as a service.

Listen to the podcast here.

The Power of Analytics

2008-08-05T04:52:00.000-07:00

In recent years, prices for raw metals and minerals have skyrocketed. Mining companies have fanned out to all corners of the globe, conferences have been convened to discuss the topic, and all the while prices continue to rise.

But did you know that right now, at this very moment, there are tens of billions of dollars worth of iron ore and other valuable metals and minerals just sitting on the floor of every ocean on earth? Scientists have known about manganese nodules for decades (as a matter of fact, geologist A.A. Archer estimated that the sea floors and abyssal plains of the ocean contain something like 500 BILLION TONS of untapped metal ore). Iron prices should be dirt cheap!

So what’s the problem? Why has this vast natural resource lain undisturbed for decades? The issue is that no one has been able to successfully come up with a way to mine it cost-effectively.

This got me thinking about the difficulties of different kinds of mining, specifically DATA mining.

For a long time, many companies have been talking about the ability to provide Analytics. And I will admit that there are some phenomenally cool, whiz-bang products out there in the business intelligence space. However, there has always been one inherent problem with this: Analytics are only as good as the data they’re analyzing.

Those whiz-bang B.I. solutions can only do their cool stuff once you have the underlying data.

Getting at that data traditionally has been harder than stripping iron ore out of a manganese nodule eighteen fathoms below. This is the dirty little secret around why more than HALF of all data warehouse projects fail.

You see, first a company needs to figure out where the data IS, and more importantly, how to get at it. This usually involves getting IT involved and purchasing an ETL tool to extract and cleanse the data.

Then comes the hard part: aggregating the data into one place which requires architecting the data schema and building a data mart or data warehouse. Then, a presentation or (BI) layer must be selected in order to view and analyze the data. Of course, you will need to do a lengthy requirements phase to talk about what you want to see, etc., reports will need to be built, multiple constituencies need to be involved. There are a lot of moving parts.

Lots of money has been spent just analyzing why these massive data warehousing projects fail – you can read just a small subset of some of the findings here and here.

What about analyzing your CRM data, you may ask? You could certainly do that, but what are you really analyzing? Pre-sales data entered by sales reps, complete with equal measures of sand-bagging on one side and pie-eyed optimism on the other.

No self-respecting CFO would run his or her business on such data. I’m talking about true POST-sales data – getting to this rich data is what will make Analytics truly sing.

What if a company could streamline this entire process and make it fantastically simple – giving you access to ALL your post-sales data without any intervention from IT, tedious consulting projects or ETL tools?

Well, don’t despair, Xactly to the rescue! But don’t just take my word for it…

If you speak to Henry Morris (SVP Worldwide Software & Services Research at leading research firm IDC) he’ll tell you: "I always thought business intelligence [BI] on demand would have difficulty taking off, since the application has to get its data from an outside source. But Xactly already has your data.“

As a byproduct of solving the variable compensation problem for companies, Xactly has pre-built a sophisticated data warehouse that contains every bit of this rich data. Not only that, but because of our fixed data schema (just one of the innumerable benefits of being a true on-demand company), every company can get access to this data.

We then layer a wonderful Analytics engine over the top of it, complete with all the tools you could ever need, and now you’ve got something companies have thrown millions of dollars at, usually ending in frustration and tears.

Let us tell you more about it – you’ll wonder where we’ve been all your life.

Now that we’ve got this problem licked, I’m off to tinker with some ideas on these manganese nodules. I may have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Webinar Recording Available: The Business Case for On-Demand Sales Performance Management Analytics

2008-07-31T14:01:00.000-07:00

CRM applications have revolutionized the selling process, organizing pre-sales data that reps and management need to manage the sales pipeline. But what about “post-sales” data? There is a ton of information produced at the time of sale that is effectively orphaned—information on what a customer actually bought, the final price, the commission paid, the territory where it was sold, etc. This is data that, if collected and cleansed, can be used to increase sales performance and maximize profits going forward.

In this Webinar, Xactly’s Karen Steele and THINKStrategies’ Jeff Kaplan will discuss how post-sales analytics can provide new and strategic insight into an organization’s selling patterns, commission spend, product performance, sales rep and team performance, and sales plan effectiveness. They will examine how post-sales data—traditionally scattered across a variety of disparate systems including ERP, HR, and Payroll—can be now be integrated and analyzed with an eye towards enhancing business strategies, changing sales rep behaviors, and super-charging sales organizations.

View Webinar