Alpha Comp

Callidus Introduces SPM Community: OpenCommissions

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | Callidus, EIM, SPM, User communities | No Comments

Callidus Software announced the launch of OpenCommissions a community sales performance management (SPM) website today with this press release. Featured are SPM related forums, a wiki, blogs, and even sales compensation management Excel and Word templates. Essentially what Callidus has done to create OpenCommissions is to make public parts of TrueConnect, the community site previously exclusively available to verified Callidus customers. Today’s visitors will find some of the content immediately available upon arrival; additional content is available after a free registration and finally, some content is still restricted to only Callidus customers. › Continue reading

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SaaS Pricing for Callidus On-Premise Solution

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 | Callidus, EIM, SPM, SaaS | No Comments

In addition to the financial results Callidus Software’s  Q1 2009 earnings call last week (transcript available here) had much other interesting information including mention of some new customers, new products, and employee headcount reduction.  One item in particular that caught my attention was a comment by Senior Vice President, Finance and Operations, and Chief Financial Officer Ronald Fior:

When we get to that stage I mean, we’re going to seriously consider and we’ve been actually testing it out, going to more of a subscription-based term license kind of idea for the license side of this business for the on-premises side, because as I already said, there are some certain verticals that just seem to be pretty well stuck on the idea that they’re going to do an on-premises.

What Fior is discussing here is a software as a service (SaaS) like pricing model for the verticals and customers that insist on an on-premise solution. › Continue reading

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Tags: Callidus, earnings, on premise, pricing, SaaS

Living by Numbers in SPM

Friday, June 26th, 2009 | Non cash incentive, SPM, analytics | No Comments

An article in the July 2009 issue of Wired magazine describes the growing popularity of a running training aid system from Nike. The system, called Nike+ (wiki page here) consists of an electronic sensor that attaches to a runner’s shoe; the sensor feeds data to a storage device, the Nike SportBand, or an Apple iPod fit with a small receiver. The system records running duration, pace, and distance data which can then be uploaded to a website allowing for goal setting, tracking, and comparison with other users of the device. Since the introduction of the product in 2006 1.2 million runners have collectively logged more than 130 million miles. Friendly competition and challenges such as fastest 5 miler or first to 50 miles this month type contests amongst groups of users has proliferated. What is behind the device’s popularity? The article cites a famous study performed at Western Electric’s Hawthorne manufacturing plant in Illinois in 1920. Management, trying to discover the most favorable work environment, changed various working conditions (length of breaks, lighting, etc.) measuring performance after each change. After an initial improvement in work performance with the first change, the new higher performance continued with each subsequent change including surprisingly a change back to the original conditions. What Hawthorne managers had discovered is that the motivating factor driving the performance increase was that the workers knew their performance data was being measured and recorded. The effect is now known in Sociology as the Hawthorne effect. Nike is capitalizing on this effect which seems to have a particularly strong influence on athletes and fitness buffs.

I can personally attest to the motivating effect of competition and knowing that I am or will be measured. › Continue reading

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Tags: commission, ipod, La Jolla, LJRWS, motivation, Nike, numbers, sales, SPM

EIM Solutions Resist Commoditization with Supplementary Features

Friday, June 5th, 2009 | EIM, SPM | No Comments

What are the standard features of an enterprise incentive management (EIM) software package? David Kelly discusses this difficult question in an insightful recent post on his blog. Kelly points out the ambiguity of the EIM solution relative to the standardized feature set present in general ledger solutions. This is certainly true but is it necessarily a negative? I’m not sure. Of course it is definitely a bad situation if the customer is expecting one thing and does not get it or gets something undesired. Additionally, difficult system delivery issues can arise if functionality confusion causes implementation project scope growth. However, these things can and should be managed by proper pre-sale vendor product evaluation and post-sale system integration. That we don’t have 15 EIM vendor software solutions with the exact same feature set is a good thing. Sure, certain features (plan calculations, audit support, reporting) should be addressed by all packages, but supplementary features are allowing vendors to differentiate themselves and resist the move towards commoditization that has occurred with, for example, G/L packages.
› Continue reading

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Tags: agent credential, base pay, bonus pay, Callidus, EIM, excentive, feature set, ngenera, SPM, trueproducer