Comments on: Varicent SPM 6.0 and Presenter Review

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:57:22 +0000

6.0 is light-years ahead of the previous release. I actually spoke with a sales rep earlier this year and he mentioned some of the future upgrades. VERY solid. Varicent is an industry leader.

-Michael
http://www.oneclickcommissions.com/sales-compensation.html

By: Mark Coleman

Mark Coleman — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:20:10 +0000

I am intrigued by Varicent’s product offering but also a little nervous since about 80% of their executive management team are salespeople. Sales compensation is a difficult problem to solve so I imagine they must have a deep bench of rocket scientists hidden somewhere.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:13:41 +0000

I don’t really see it as a liability. People need to get it through their heads that although the Varicent tool is meant to be used by the business users, it is not meant to be maintained and run by button pushers. If Varicent continues to gobble up more and more of the market, you can be sure that IC Analysts will need more exposure to the Varicent tool to get jobs.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:16:45 +0000

I can see what Varicent is trying to do with this new tool. They are essentially trying to make reporting easier for the end user. The problem lies in the fundamental aspect of Varicent, that it is a completely customizable tool. This prevents them from being able to use “canned” reports that are inherent in other past and current ICM applications. To get to the more advanced reporting in Callidus and formerly Siebel ICM, one needed to get the assistance of a report writer with skills in one of the various reporting tools. This “tool” is no different. While you might be able to select fields/calculations on which to base your report, the setting up of those calculations and in Varicent’s case the surrounding database tables, takes someone with more than just basic comp knowledge. Again one of Varicent’s biggest advantages, is also a huge liability.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:02:45 +0000

Jerry,

I would argue that a reporting module such as Presenter is a core competency to an SPM solution since they represent one of the major ROI/selling point to such a solution.

Secondly, when most competing solutions offer reporting tools, it would be a hard sell to explain to a potential client why Varicent doesn’t have anything like it and that if the client wants to do their own reports, they will need to invest in an expensive reporting solution (or spend a lot of time in Excel). There are some pros and cons to this approach, as there are many pros and cons to Callidus approach of integrating OEM best-of-breed BI tools to TrueComp.

Also, since the Varicent DB has an open architecture, in theory it is possible to report from it using other BI tools. However, I believe that Varicent is usually quite opposed to the idea of anyone accessing the database and may go as far as voiding guarantee and support if one did - maybe a point that could be negotiated before signing the contract if it is a requirement.

Julien

By: Jerry

Jerry — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:49:45 +0000

I think varicent should stick to their strong point of Comp Caclulation - since the data is in relational format why not give the freedom to the client/users to create their own reports in whatever format they wish - excel, crystal reports or any other BI tool. Custome Report writer is not the place they should be focusing on.

Same goes for the input side of things - to be blunt Webforms SUCK. Allow users to input data into the relational tables in whatever way they say fit. Throw webforms out the window.

Jerry

By: No

No — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:11:20 +0000

As a user all I can say is it needs major work.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:10:24 +0000

Hi Andy,

You are right that there is some new terminology and a learning curve involved. I’m not saying that a person who has never used Varicent or created a report can jump right in and create something easily… But in my opinion, if someone - with no IT or reporting background - participate actively to the implementation, learning how to use this new tool should not be too difficult. By contrast, I think that this same person would find it much more difficult to write a similar report with a ‘pixel perfect’ reporting program such as Actuate, which typically requires a far greater understanding of the relational database schema and SQL.

Julien

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:33:53 +0000

I cannot see how business users would use this- can you imagine them trying to figure out the layout and terms like “scalar” etc. This appears to be a souped up report writer