Vue Software

Tag Archive for 'Review'

Merced ICM… Two Years Later

Published
by
Julien Dionne
on November 8, 2010
in Uncategorized and Vendor / SPM Solution Review and Info
. 1 Comment
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (8 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

I’m back from my blogging “vacation” and I apologize to all my readers for this long delay. I’ve been extremely busy juggling projects and I started an MBA a few months ago which has been using most of my free time. I will do my best to do a better job at fitting blogging in my schedule.

For this first new post, I’d like to talk about Merced Systems. I covered Merced’s incentive solution (then called Merced Incentive Management or MIM) about two years ago, soon after it acquired Practique Associates. At that time, the big question was, is Merced going to be successful at integrating the incentive compensation tool to the rest of its products, and will it be able to compete against well established vendors such as Callidus and Varicent in the competitive US market.  Gaining credibility from clients, selling enterprise solutions and going live with them is a long cycle, and finally, after two years, some conclusion can be drawn.

The Company…
First, I’d like to talk about the company itself. Even with the recession, Merced Systems has managed to grow and post profits for 7 consecutive years. I’m pointing this out because in a world where most other SPM companies are relying on investments to develop solutions and gain market share, Merced has actually been making money – and reinvesting it into R&D to improve their product.  It now counts over 225 employees concentrated in its Silicon Valley and London offices, responsible for more than 125 customers deployed in over 20 countries. Merced’s big challenge at the moment is to hire enough smart people to sustain its rapid growth.

The Challenges…
One of the first challenges Merced needed to overcome to be successful in the US market was to develop the ability to implement and support its ICM solution in the United States as well. Now with over two years of ICM experience under its belt, this is no longer a concern.

The other hurdle that Merced needed to overcome was to attract large clients in the United States to show that it could be successful here as well. One of its first projects in the US was Nationwide. The goal was to help agents gain more visibility into their performance, to increase payment accuracy and to reduce calculation time. Merced ICM successfully managed to accomplish these goals, and the phase one of the project was completed in early 2010. Many customers in the United States are finally live or are currently being implemented; these customers include Bank of America, Otsuka and Dell. When I spoke with Mark Selcow, Merced System’s president, he pointed out that not only was Merced successful at gaining traction in the US market, but that it was also keeping its momentum in the European market. Merced recently announced the successful deployment of the ICM Suite at Kia Motors.

The Solution…
Now about the solution itself; as a reminder, in a nutshell, Merced ICM calculates compensation and incentives, and provides meaningful reports and dashboards. Since Merced acquired Practique, Selcow noted that Merced System’s engineers have been working very hard at integrating the incentive solution to the other tools of the Merced Suite comprising Merced Planning (for territory planning, quota planning and goal setting), Merced Intelligence (for sales and compensation analytics) and to the Merced Performance Suite (used for performance scorecards, ranking, and coaching). Selcow believes that scorecarding for seller self-correction and coaching to drive best sales behaviors are emerging trends in Sales Performance Management, and will become an important part of ICM/SPM solutions.

In my opinion, one of the biggest improvements recently brought to the incentive compensation suite is the Workflow Manager module. Workflow Manager allows users to setup various workflow that can range from dispute resolution and payment approval, to requiring approval to submit a manual adjustment, MBOs, or to make any changes to a plan component.

Two years ago I also showed screenshots of some standard reports and dashboards available with this solution. I had a hard time choosing a good adjective to describe them, but the first word that came to mind was “outdated”. Again, thanks to Merced’s competent engineering team, Merced ICM received a face lift with the Merced Analytics suite. Leveraging MicroStrategy Business Intelligence, Merced ICM delivers stunning reports and dashboards.

Significant improvements were also brought to the functionality and features of the application. Some of Merced’s innovations are based on their aggressive roadmap to become the number one sales solution provider (with Merced ICM being a significant part of that objective). However, Selcow also noted that Merced is a very agile company and that many innovations are a result of customer requests.

In Conclusion…
Another aspect that makes Merced different from its competitors is the ability for a client to choose to deploy it on-premise or on-demand and to have the ability to easily switch from one to the other if needs evolve.  With Callidus trying to be a completely recurring revenue business, or Varicent which is mostly on-premise, having the ability to choose between both delivery models can be a huge advantage.

But according to Mark Selcow, even with great technical solutions, what REALLY makes Merced Systems and Merced ICM different from the competition is its relentless focus on its customer’s success during and after an implementation. “We don’t see ourselves as a solution provider” he told me, “we become a true partner”.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Related Posts:
Merced Incentive Management
Merced Systems

ActekSoft ACom3 Review

Published
by
Julien Dionne
on March 16, 2010
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (6 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

ActekSoft was founded in 1999 and currently supports over 30 clients (mostly in the insurance industry).  I talked about them earlier this year when they got acquired by Callidus Software. Acteksoft’s flagship product is called ACom3 and can be deployed On-Premise or On-Demand.  Approximately one third of ActekSoft’s clients are currently hosted.

As I’ve discussed in a previous post, Gartner recently released their 2009 ICM MarketScope for the insurance industry. Gartner cites the following as some of the main reasons why ActekSoft deserved a positive rating:

ActekSoft was rated Positive this year, due primarily to its deep understanding and ability to deliver health insurance requirements, the number of new deals in the past 12 months and the positive nature of its customer references. Four of its customers were interviewed for this report… Several themes resonated throughout these interviews. First, ActekSoft is very committed to the pricing that is quoted to the customer… Second, customers cite a culture of customer satisfaction and commitment to project delivery.

ACom3 is accessible via a web browser. After logging into the application, administrators find themselves into a relatively intuitive interface; the various application areas are accessed via the top menu, and configuration for each of those areas are accessible in the left menu. Different sections can also be expanded and collapsed by clicking on the + or - icons. The content of each of these sections is completely configurable by simply dragging and dropping fields into the appropriate section. Sections can also easily be added as required.

A plan consists of ‘schedules’ which are applicable to a certain region and hierarchy. These schedules are rule driven and reference formulas, filters, tables, etc. Reference data is typically imported into the application, but editing information such as transaction details or producer information can be performed manually by inserting text into text boxes, or by selecting values from drop down menus.

The look and feel of the interface for payees is very similar to the administrator’s interface. Upon logging in the application, the payees can access performance details for themselves and for their subordinates via reports and dashboards. They can also access important information such as their appointments, their book of business, etc.

All of these features are very similar to what is expected from any sales performance management solution, so you may wonder what makes ACom3 different than other non-insurance specific solutions. I will discuss some of these differentiators in my next post.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Related Posts:
Callidus Software Acquires ActekSoft
ActekSoft ACom3 Review Part 2

Varicent SPM 6.0 and Presenter Review

Published
by
admin
on May 6, 2009
in Vendor / SPM Solution Review and Info
. 9 Comments
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (8 votes, average: 3.13 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

Varicent announced a new major release of their application – Varicent SPM 6.0 – at their user conference on Monday. The new features of this release include a new module called Presenter (a tool to build interactive sales reports), Model Manager (a tool to facilitate the management of multiple compensation models / lines of business), and CRM Integration (providing the ability to embed Varicent SPM into Microsoft Dynamics CRM). I spent the past 3 days training on this new release of Varicent SPM, and in particular on the Presenter module which I will review now.

Presenter allows to create and configure custom reports, and to publish them to the web. In the past, Varicent users had to use the “Web Forms” module to create similar reports, but web forms are more complex to build, and lack key features such as the ability to embed graphs. This new module is supposed to empower business users to design their own reports, directly from within the Varicent SPM application.

Reports consist of 4 key components storing data:
- Calculations
- Parameters (restrictions on the results being displayed)
- Scalars (variable returning single value)
- Sources (where the information is coming from)

As well as other building blocks: Images, Text, Controls, Scalars, Fixed Grid, Data Grids and Charts. Creating a report only consists of adding these elements to the empty report page.

The positioning of the objects on the report is fairly straightforward and consists of creating tables and inserting the objects in their own cell. In order to position everything perfectly, tables can be embedded into each other (a new table created within the cell of another table), etc. The positioning of the objects can be fine tuned by adjusting the cell’s alignment settings, borders and cell spacing. In other words, positioning objects in Presenter’s reports feels exactly like designing a web page a few years ago before CSS became a standard.

Presenter also includes many other formatting features which should be familiar from Excel. For example, borders and cell shading can be adjusted in a very similar way, and it is even easy to setup some conditional formatting (such as a cell being highlighted in yellow if a commission is over a certain amount). Reports can also include links to other reports which allows to “drill down” on specific results. Presenter reports can be made very “dynamic” by including dropdown menus (called pick lists by Varicent) to filter results for certain people, product lines, etc.

Once the objects are inserted into the report, clicking on the “Preview” tab shows how the report would look like on the web once it is published, using actual calculation results.

So can “business users” really create their own reports? Presenter seems to be much easier to use than other BI/reporting applications such as Actuate and Business Objects and does not require any reporting experience. Furthermore, simple reports can be created fairly rapidly. This being said, the ‘complexity’ lies in figuring out which sources or calculations need to be used, and also to be able to create these objects when required. For someone with Varicent implementation experience, the learning curve should be very quick.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Related Posts:
Varicent
Varicent Insight 2009

A review of Callidus Software’s New MBO Solution: TrueMBO

Published
by
admin
on April 30, 2009
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (9 votes, average: 3.78 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

Before I left on vacation, I wrote a few posts on Management by Objectives (MBO), but I didn’t have time to post the solution reviews before leaving. I will now resume this series by posting a quick review of one of Callidus Software’s latest on-demand offering called TrueMBO.

As I mentioned in the previous posts, administering the MBO process can be very time consuming. TrueMBO eliminates the need for back and forth e-mails between employees and managers when objectives are being decided upon, and also later when employees are assigned a performance achievement for each objective. It can also be used as a central point to administer MBOs company-wide.

When a manager logs in TrueMBO, he or she will see 3 sections; one section displays the MBO programs currently setup, another is the Inbox section where managers and employees can exchange messages related to MBOs, and the last section is for the many pre-configured and customized reports.

Clicking on the name of the MBO Program opens up a new tab with additional information and options. In this tab, a manager will be able to set objectives for the program, to score these objectives, and to notify the team of their performance. The Organization Hierarchy panel shows the manager’s subordinates. Finally, the Team Status provides the most useful information to the manager by illustrating the MBO phase in which each team member is.

Setting up objectives is also a very intuitive task, where objectives are being given a name and a weight (which must total 100%), and a target payout (how much money is earned if the objective is met). These objectives can also be picked from previously used objectives, or from a library which can be defined by an administrator.

The employee’s interface is even simpler than the manager’s, and provides the employee with the ability to exchange messages with his or her manager, to participate to setting up and accepting their objectives, to approve the ‘scores’ and associated bonus received, and to view various reports related to their performance.

If you are looking for a simple on-demand solution to administer your performance evaluation process, TrueMBO could be the right solution for you. TrueMBO will appeal in particular to companies already using Callidus Software’s solutions because of the possible synergies with the Callidus Sales Performance on-demand applications (hierarchy maintenance, performance calculations, etc), but it can also be used as a standalone MBO solution. TrueMBO is available for 5$ per employee per month until the end of June 2009.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Related Posts:
A small sovereign city-state located in South Western Europe on the northern central coast of the Mediterranean Sea
Callidus Software

Excentive Incentive Management Review

Published
by
admin
on February 24, 2009
in Vendor / SPM Solution Review and Info
. 2 Comments
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (15 votes, average: 3.73 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

Here is my latest Incentive Compensation Management application review. This week I am reviewing a relatively unknown (in North America) solution called Excentive Incentive Management.  Excentive was incorporated in 2002. Since then, they have gained a lot of popularity in France and have signed major clients such as Canon, Orange, and Air France. Earlier this year, they raised 700,000 Euros ($880,000 US) to accelerate international growth, part of over $1 million raised in recent months to fuel global expansion.

They also assembled an additional team driven by 10 seasoned managers active in the globalization of companies such as SAP, Hyperion, and OutlookSoft. One of their key target markets is of course North America, so we may soon start seeing some Excentive implementations over here if they can overcome some major challenges ahead, namely convincing prospective clients that they have the capability to deliver and support their implementations in the US, and that they are financially stable.

What is particularly interesting about the Excentive solution is that it includes performance management modules in addition to the sales performance solution. It makes it easy to compensate employees based on MBO campaigns. It’s a very flexible solution which can be a good option for as few as 50 payees, to as many as 50,000 payees, and it can be deployed on-premise or hosted.  Excentive Incentive Management is deployed across industries, and some implementations can process as many as 2 million transactions daily.

From the “regular” employee perspective, the application mostly consists of a repository of reports. These reports can be configured and customized by an administrator, but standard reports exist for most common information such as commission statements and performance review results.

Employees can also see the details of their compensation plans and can easily find out which commission was paid and find out if any transactions are missing.

Managers have access to additional information such as their team’s performance, salaries, etc.

Managers can also consult their employee’s records containing information about their past performance such as commissions earned in previous periods.

In addition to reports, managers can edit some of their team’s information including new salary figures, bonus values, based on constraints configured by the administrators.

One of the biggest features for managers is to be able to provide rating for their employees’ performance and to reuse all that info in a salary review process or a stock option allocation exercise, which are also supported by Excentive.

Finally, let’s look at some of the configuration of the solution, from the administrator’s perspective.
“Campaigns”, or the performance management component, can be configured in a few clicks from the campaigns menu.

Bonus and commission rules can be configured easily in a 3-step process. First, the properties of the rule are setup which includes the name of the rule and the dates for which it is effective. The rules engine can thus access the quantitative data (eg. sales by product/territory/period , margins, etc) as well as the quantitative performance indicators (eg. team spirit, customer loyalty, etc). This allows the calculation of the incentive (commission) as well as the bonus. Rules can be used for the classic earnings calculations as well as for recommendations and simulations.

The criteria step consists of specifying the conditions which must be met for the commission to fire.
This formula can be typed in, or created by clicking on the functions and other information stored in the database.

The resulting calculation is configured in the same way as the condition.

The reports we have looked at so far were all numbers presented in a tabular format, but it’s also possible to integrate visual elements to dashboards and reports.

Excentive’s solution also includes integrated modules to perform more complex tasks:

  • Hierarchy Manager: combine different dimensions such as region/office/people into multiple hierarchies necessary for workflow and approval processes.
  • Pool Manager: create teams and delegate ‘people-to-team’ assignments to local managers.
  • Mobility Manager: spot team changes and transfer people between departments/managers. Manage partial, time and team depending compensations
  • Culture Manager associate people with language, currency, location
  • Environment Manager which is a secure and fast way to move an application change from a development environment towards a test or production environment

Overall, Excentive is a slick web based application which shows a lot of promise if they can inspire enough trust from prospective clients. Since all modules are integrated in one solution at no additional cost, Excentive could be a good play for clients looking for not only incentive compensation management, but the entire spectrum of salary and performance management. Now could be a good time to negotiate a favorable price from the vendor, given that they are aggressively trying to enter this North American market.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related Posts:
Excentive
Merced Systems

Makana Motivator Pro Review

Published
by
admin
on January 8, 2009
in Vendor / SPM Solution Review and Info
. 0 Comments
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (6 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

Last November, I briefly talked about the newly released Makana Motivator Pro. Motivator Pro is an on-demand Sales Performance Management application which like Motivator Express helps with the design of compensation plans, but which also offers new payment and reporting modules. Unlike most SPM solutions, Motivator Pro is a self-serve solution (no additional implementation costs) designed for companies with a sales force with less than 100 payees.

I reviewed the planning features of Motivator (now called Motivator Express) already, so I will focus on reviewing the features that are new with Motivator Pro in this post.

Once logged in the administration interface, it is easy to see at a glance how to get started. We see 4 items in the top menu; Home, Planning, Payment, and Setup. The dashboard consists of 3 options; Take the Tour, Launch Plan Wizard, and Join Your Peers.

Planning
Creating a new plan using the step-by-step wizard is simple and straightforward. First, you select a category of positions which Motivator calls a job role. This will be the title of the plan document.

Step number 2 consists of specifying the target pay at 100% and the base salary. As with Motivator Express, some planning tips are provided during the configuration. Similarly, goals are defined in step 3 and goal payments are defined in step 4.

The design of the plans is very similar to how planning was performed in Makana Motivator Express. A green star in their top left corner indicates if the plans are in “production”.

Building the organization and hierarchy is done through the “Build Your Org” tab. Payee information can be uploaded, or created via the user interface.

Cost modeling is also straightforward. Projected payout is based on a percentage of historical attainment. and attainment assumptions can be changed globally, at the participant level, and even for each goal for an individual Projections are automatically rolled up to show total sales and incentive costs.

Many useful graphs can show information such as the quota attainment distribution.



Payment
The “Your Plans” tab in the Payment section displays all the plans currently designed. Each of the plan sections can be expanded to display more information (Measures, Formulas, and Payouts). The dates for which a plan is effective is displayed at the bottom of the plan. Once the plans are designed and ready to be used, it’s time to visit the “Assign Credit” tab and to import the orders. This is done via a simple file upload and the credits are automatically assigned based on the rules created during the planning phase. With another click, you can calculate the incentive payments for those credit assignments

Once payments are calculated, reports are automatically generated. These reports can be downloaded in an Excel or PDF format.

A web portal will also be available by the end of January, where payees will login and view their personal performance, their team’s performance, their ranking, and detailed reports on a dashboard.

The “Pro” in Motivator is a great addition which will benefit existing and new Makana customers alike. The main question, I was hoping to answer as a result of the demo was, is that solution really simple and intuitive enough for self-service. I think I can safely answer that yes it is, but it will take a bit of practice if the administrator is new to the comp world. However, the wizard and the online help, as well as the detailed “tips” displayed throughout the configuration should make it very quick to learn. Priced at $29 per month per payee with no implementation fee, this could be the right solution to finally replace those inaccurate spreadsheets and ineffective compensation plans.

For more information, click here to take a quick tour.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Related Posts:
“New” Sales Compensation Solution – Makana Motivator Pro
Makana Motivator for Free!