Varicent - Press Releases

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(Toronto, ON) – Varicent Software, an innovator and provider of sales performance management (SPM) solutions today announced the general availability of Varicent SPM^TM 5.0, the latest release of its flagship solution for effectively managing incentive compensation and sales performance.

Varicent SPM 5.0 introduces:

• A newly designed user portal that allows organizations to more broadly deploy Web-based SPM reporting, analysis and dashboarding throughout the enterprise
• Enhanced workflow, data collection, task management and audit capabilities to better manage and control the most complex variable pay plans and processes
• Improved dispute resolution functionality for faster, real-time management and tracking of field inquiries
• Powerful Web Form builder so business users have more flexibility in the design and rollout of Web-based input templates, performance scorecards and compensation reports
• Varicent Composer^TM, a new graphical management capability that gives business users unmatched visibility and control of sales performance management business processes

"Varicent continues to show its thought leadership in sales performance management. They understand the tremendous complexity that most organizations have to deal with to automate and administer company-wide incentive compensation programs, as well as expand their performance management foot-print across the business," said Ken Wolf, CEO, Revelwood. "With SPM 5.0 and their new Composer capability, simplified user interface, enhanced workflow and other functionality they have set a new standard for the way that SPM applications should be managed and controlled."

Varicent SPM 5.0 Highlights

Broader Reach

Varicent SPM 5.0 includes a new, simplified user interface designed for business professionals across the enterprise - sales representatives, management, finance, HR personnel and executives. The new user interface enhances human interaction and usability of the solution. This makes SPM accessible to more casual users who need to gain insight into sales productivity, profitability and performance.

"After evaluating several approaches to sales performance management, we found the look-and-feel of Varicent to be the easiest to use across our organization," said Donna de Winter, CFO, Nexient Learning. "The ability to successfully deploy and use software is largely dependent on the user experience. All our employees on variable pay programs will be able to easily view and understand their compensation earned, expected and paid out."

Innovation

Varicent SPM 5.0 includes a new, innovative component, Varicent Composer that is designed to provide users with a significantly simpler way to manage the complexity inherent in any Sales Performance Management set of processes. Varicent Composer enables system administrators to create and edit graphical representations of calculations, business rules and data flows, thereby giving them greater visibility and control over incentive compensation rules, territory assignments, deal crediting, adjustments, overlays and exceptions which are usually buried deep in custom configuration, or code. This new visual illustration tool provides a better visual representation of the entire process from source data through to final compensation payouts.

Managing Complexity

"SPM only works if you address the needs of the business users," said Rod Radojevic, vice president of product marketing, Varicent. "To be successful in today's business climate, speed and flexibility is a necessity. Leading organizations realize that giving business professionals the ability to manage both processes and systems is a key element to making sales performance both more efficient and effective."

Varicent SPM 5.0's simple user interface is backed by a powerful, highly scalable calculation engine that leverages an Excel-based syntax, allowing business users to easily replicate and manage their unique, company-specific compensation models directly in Varicent SPM. This empowers the business user to control the application, including the integration with source systems (such as ERP, General Ledger, CRM and payroll) and to schedule routine tasks such as importing and exporting information to and from other core systems. Business users gain the ability to have a comprehensive review and approval wrapped around business processes while also managing compensation plans, creating and scheduling automated maintenance tasks, and configuring the system directly. Varicent SPM 5.0 nearly eliminates day-to-day IT support requirements.

"The idea of incentive compensation may seem very simple: pay X for achieving Y," continued Radojevic. "In reality, though, each company has a unique and specific approach to compensation plans, managing approvals, resolving disputes and paying out compensation earned. Spreadsheets, custom coding, and simple commission calculation engines automate these processes to some degree, but do not address the increasing sophistication and complexity of a lot of today's incentive plans and processes. Varicent 5.0 has both the flexibility and power to allow organization to test, analyze and implement the plans, approvals and processes the way that they want.

Varicent SPM 5.0 combines best practices for incentive compensation with the need for a solution that adapts to customer's operational requirements. It includes built-in business rules, and supports the creation and maintenance of any type of unique or customized business process flows. With Varicent SPM 5.0, companies can also easily configure their own approach to payment approvals, retroactive period adjustments, exception alerts, performance scorecarding, MBO management, field inquiries, document sign-offs, data collection and reporting.

Meeting the increasing need for better visibility and compliance, Varicent SPM 5.0 introduces enhanced audit and security mechanisms for more system control, better audit trails and improved user activity tracking. Users can drill into summarized audit reports to get detailed transactional information. The solution's audit reporting and analytics capabilities are designed to meet ever-changing compliance and audit requirements.