Xactly launches new sales performance solutions in the cloud with Force.com

Taking sales compensation to the cloud

Xactly Corporation founder and CEO Christopher Cabrera has been thinking about innovative ways to manage sales compensation for years. While in his former role, as the SVP of operations at a leading on-premise company, he saw an opportunity to help a much larger market. With a multi-tenant, cloud-computing model, sales compensation solutions could become cost-effective for mid-sized companies. His brainchild, Xactly, develops cloud-based sales performance management solutions.

According to Cabrera, “The Xactly management team saw what salesforce.com was doing in the cloud–and especially how the economics made sense for a broader base. We designed our product for mid-sized companies that weren’t served by the traditional on-premise solutions, which typically address only businesses with 10,000 or more seats.”

Xactly’s flagship product, Incent, is a cost-effective alternative to on-premise solutions. The cloud-computing product integrates easily with salesforce.com to utilize CRM data for calculating and presenting sales compensation data. A unique incentive estimation mashup lets sales reps get real time compensation estimates–from any computer at any time–driving more strategic use of CRM and incenting performance.

Moving into new markets with Force.com

More than 200 companies use Incent today, and that number is growing rapidly. The product is approaching version 5.0 and as it has matured its appeal and extended up market. According to Cabrera, “Although we originally designed Incent for mid-market businesses, it is increasingly being used by larger ones. The application has become more robust with each release, so it can handle the complex needs of the enterprise companies that are finally embracing cloud computing.”

At the same time, Xactly’s management team has identified another new opportunity –small-to-medium businesses. These companies primarily use Excel to manage their compensation, limiting their flexibility and creativity. Not only are multi-tenancy and the cloud-computing cost structure attractive to small-to-medium size companies–which can’t afford large infrastructure investments–but the easy integration and seamless upgrades offered through Force.com make transitioning painless.

The new offering, Xactly Business Solutions, is a native Force.com application built with Apex code and Visualforce that takes advantage of salesforce.com hosting and security. The product is a self-service, end-to-end solution requiring minimal implementation that helps small-medium size companies use compensation more strategically. With Force.com, workflows automatically route commissions for approval, and dashboards give individuals and team leaders real-time comp visibility.

The Force.com advantage

Development with Force.com was extremely fast. According to Cabrera, “Business Solutions is a very robust, transaction-oriented application with a rules-based engine at the center. With Force.com we had something functional and demonstrable–with the UI totally built out–in a very short timeframe, just under eight weeks.”

In fact, completion of the Business Solutions product took three and a half developers just four and half months. According to Cabrera, ”It was really impressive to be able to do what we did with Force.com in just two months. Based on what I’ve seen in the past, I’d say that it is about four times faster than using other development platforms.”

Cabrera adds, “There’s so much we can do with Force.com that we couldn’t do in the on-premise world. We can innovate quickly, give our customers instantaneous upgrades, and easily integrate using APIs. With Force.com, the customer always has the very latest and greatest, and that’s a huge selling point.”

Meeting a variety of needs

Business Solutions is not Xactly’s first Force.com product. Its initial offering is a non-cash, points-based system that helps clients optimize their use of points, for SPIFs, contests, and other incentives. The solution, called Xactly Rewards, is totally integrated with Salesforce CRM. Xactly Analytics is an additional module which includes prebuilt compensation dashboards and ad hoc analysis and reporting.

Xactly Incent, Xactly Rewards, and Xactly Analytics are all available through the AppExchange marketplace, and Cabrera notes that the lead traction has increased over the last three quarters. “It’s a great place to be,” he comments. “With the AppExchange you have the opportunity to reach all of the salesforce.com users and deliver value to them. It’s hard to match this distribution channel anywhere.”

In addition to its product offerings, Xactly’s business includes strategy, implementation, training, and support services. According to Cabrera, “The nature of compensation management is that it requires automating a number of business processes and bringing in data from different systems. But we offer more than just implementation. Our strategy services help customers align incentives to the right behaviors, so their comp plans influence the bottom line.”

The sky’s the limit

Xactly is a premier partner in the salesforce.com ISV program. As an application that drives more strategic use of CRM, it makes sense for the two companies to be closely aligned on development, field level engagement, and account management. Working together, Xactly and salesforce.com can help businesses–of all sizes–get the most of out CRM and cloud computing.

As they look to the future, Cabrera and the rest of the Xactly management team are optimistic. The company, which is well capitalized, boasts a 95% renewal rate, and tends to double its subscriber base each year. Although the company doesn’st release specifics, Cabrera notes that Xactly has seen triple digit revenue growth for the last three years.

Like many companies, Xactly has seen some elongated deal cycles as a result of the global economic slowdown. However, as Cabrera points out, “sIn times like these, tools like the ones we offer–that help business get more out of what they have, without making big infrastructure investments–are more important than ever.“s Xactly and Force.com will help them do just that.

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