Xactly & Customertimes Improve Sales Performance Management

Xactly is a best-in-class Sales Performance Management (SPM) software company, helping organizations around the world with solutions to increase revenue, contain costs, and reduce risks. 

They are a valued Customertimes partner, and we’ve worked together on several projects over the last few years. Here, we’re introducing the game-changing products they’re known for and talking about what makes our partnership so effective.  

Incentive Compensation Management 

One of the biggest components of SPM is Incentive Compensation Management (ICM). Understanding how to incentivize sales performance is a key consideration for most companies, and an average of 10% of all revenue is spent on sales compensation.  

Since commission is the most influential performance driver for sales reps, it must be managed effectively. When sales reps are underpaid, attrition will rise, leading to reduced revenue and increased recruiting costs. When they are overpaid, compensation costs increase while profit margins decrease.  

As a result, Xactly’s customers are looking for ICM solutions to help manage incentive compensation effectively. Their flagship product, Xactly Incent, automates the flow of data from Sales, HR, and Finance to accurately calculate compensation without the risk of human error. 

“Xactly solves many of the common challenges we hear from our clients,” says Jim Goldfinger, Chief Customer Officer at Customertimes. “They tell us: 

– ‘We’re too reliant on Excel – we’re calculating incentives manually, and it’s leading to costly errors.  

– ‘We’re only getting visibility into commission payments at the end of the month, and by then it’s too late to make changes.  

– ‘Our sales team has to reconcile their own commissions against their pay stubs, and often they find a discrepancy. 

– ‘We don’t actually know if our compensation plans are working or not.’ 

“With the support of Xactly’s Incent software, we’re able to help our customers fix these problems.”  

Xactly Incent leverages AI-driven forecasting and analytics so each company has the insight to set the right compensation plan for their team. Plus, it provides complete transparency to both field sales teams and leadership to ensure compensation is aligned with corporate goals.  

Starting with Sharp 

Customertimes started working with Xactly in 2016, when Sharp Electronics USA purchased Xactly Incent. We were already working with Sharp on their Salesforce implementation, including integrations with SAP, when they asked us to help with their Xactly implementation.  

The project was a natural extension of that work and a great fit for our team given our breadth of expertise, our cost-effective resource model, and Sharp’s need to integrate Xactly with both Salesforce and SAP.  

As Xactly has begun to hyperscale their business in recent months, they’ve recognized the importance of partnering with trusted organizations like Customertimes that can support their strategic growth. Based on their experience with us, we are now one of their SI and Advisory Alliance partners, and the combination of our integration expertise and Xactly’s leading-edge SPM software has created an all-in-one partnership that benefits everyone. 

Why It Works 

Here’s what makes this partnership so effective. 

Xactly helps companies leverage SPM to drive revenue. With the rules established by their tools, they’re tying data together from disparate systems to provide accurate revenue forecasts so companies can correctly calculate incentives and optimize territories.  

Customertimes provides the integration expertise to make all of that happen. With our knowledge of core applications like SAP, Salesforce, and Business Intelligence, we help Xactly’s customers unlock the true potential of SPM in a scalable, cost-effective way.  

“Together, we’re bringing our customers more value,” says Goldfinger. “Xactly improves compensation management and forecasting, and we help implement and integrate Xactly to help their customers improve business processes and maximize their technology investment. 

“Being able to get sales info from those ERP systems, whether it’s SAP, QuickBooks, etc, enables Xactly’s clients to accurately calculate commissions and forecast future payments. Our expertise with ERP solutions is what makes us such a valuable partner: Xactly can focus on the software while we handle the implementation.”  

Our work with Xactly leverages the skills we have in the integration and analytics space, and as is always the case with Customertimes, no project is too large or too small.  

“We’re flexible enough to scale up or down on demand,” says Goldfinger, “and unlike some of our competitors, we have the breadth of experience to handle projects of any size and manage data from any source. With Customertimes, you get the agility to scale quickly and cost-effectively.”  

Where We’re Headed Next  

As Xactly continues to grow globally, Customertimes is prepared to grow our partnership. We are quickly scaling our pool of certified Xactly resources so we can help with any implementation, and with resources around the world, we can provide in-time zone support for any client.  

“We’ve completed several projects together, and we see how positive the impact can be when we combine Xactly’s software with Customertimes’ expertise,” says Iain Devers, Regional Alliance Manager at Xactly. “Customertimes adds tremendous value as a full-service supplier, and we’re looking forward to the next chapter of our partnership.”