The leading sales and marketing advisory firm released a vendor profile on Centive as part of an ongoing assessment of the sales incentive management market. The research note reviews Centive’s flagship sales incentive management solution, Compel^®. It discusses the product strengths and industry challenges and concludes that on-demand sales incentive management systems, like Compel, are “viable alternatives to software-based applications, as well as spreadsheet-based or homegrown sales commissions systems. Not only are they cost-effective, they can improve the accuracy and timeliness of your commission payments to incentive-based staff.”

Sirius Decisions acknowledges Compel’s tactical and strategic value in the sales incentive management market: “Centive’s Compel offers full ICM functionality for small and midsize organizations, and can even help shape your strategy using its concept of the sales operations center.”

Compel is an affordable, on-demand sales incentive management solution that automates the entire sales compensation process in one secure, centralized system. Compel goes beyond simply calculating accurate sales commission and bonus payments; it also provides strategic value by enabling customers to model and forecast sales incentive expense, optimize plan effectiveness, and drive sales performance and top-line revenue growth.

As a member of the charter class of the first salesforce.com AppExchange Incubator and key strategic partner of salesforce.com, Centive successfully delivered on its pioneering vision of integrated sales process, From Prospect to Paycheck^™.

Its flagship solution for sales commission management, Compel^®, tightly integrates with the leading on-demand CRM application, salesforce.com's AppExchange. Compel is an affordable on-demand solution that automates the entire sales commission management process in one secure, centralized system. The AppExchange certified solution provides users with full, secure, single sign-on access to actual and potential commission and bonus earnings and related performance information from within salesforce.com’s CRM solution. Going beyond simply calculating accurate sales commission and bonus payments, Compel also provides strategic value by enabling customers to model and forecast commission expense, optimize plan effectiveness, and drive sales performance and top-line revenue growth.

A growing number of excited customers, such as Cars.com, Salary.com, Dräger Medical, ChoicePoint and others, are reaping the benefits of the automated sales commission management process with Compel.

“Deploying Compel via the AppExchange was incredibly fast and smooth. In fact, Centive and salesforce.com delivered in less time and for less cost than what was originally budgeted. Compel was the only on-demand solution that met our requirements for plan and payee modeling, plan management, support for our compliance initiatives and certified integration with salesforce.com.”

— Lisa Campbell, Vice President & CFO, Cars.com

One of the greatest advantages of automating the commission compensation management process is the ability to easily model sales compensation data and plans. The best-practice approach to sales commission modeling ensures accuracy, efficiency and safety by utilizing a single on-demand environment.

Compel, the leading on-demand sales compensation management solution, was designed as a strategic platform for creating, managing, optimizing and communicating sales compensation programs. This vision has, from day one, included modeling as a key component rather than an afterthought addressed with bolt-on solutions. Centive’s vision has invariably been to deliver an integrated solution that supports the entire commission compensation management process, from plan creation, modeling and commission cost forecasting to data integration, plan and document management, reporting and analytics.

The modern approach — Single Intelligent System

Compel’s mature and time-tested Plan Modeler enables customers to easily create various plan and revenue attainment scenarios within the core Compel solution. Compel enables customers to perform modeling and related cost analysis to evaluate a nearly unlimited number of complex “what-if” scenarios. Customers can instantly clone existing plans, alter and adjust all plan variables - such as rates, tiers, accelerators, overrides, etc. - and then create models that explore related costs based on various projected revenue attainment scenarios.

Costs associated with each model can be evaluated at both the macro (plan) level and the micro (participant) level to ensure costs and associated earnings meet expectations.

Compel is the only solution that enable modeling as a native tool within the core solution. There is no need to purchase a modeling module, no requirement to extract and transfer plan components from one environment to another, and no burden to maintain two separate deployments (production and modeling) in order to perform “what-if” cost modeling. Compel’s temporal data model, cloning, and plan and transaction versioning allow production and modeling functions to reside securely in the same environment without co-mingling of data. By enabling an instant toggle between production and modeled plans and data, Compel ensures an efficient and accurate process for modeling and analyzing “what-if” scenarios.

The old-school approach — Separate Testing and Production Environments

Modeling in other commission compensation management solutions requires two separate environments – one for production and one for testing. This means two separate deployments; maintenance of two separate systems, including organization, products, accounts, rates, overrides, crediting, etc.; and transferring data and plan components back and forth between these two systems. As result, this less efficient approach introduces greater risks of errors, jeopardizing the integrity and synchronization of modeled and production data and plans.

To learn more about Compel and its smart modeling capability follow the links below.