Incentive Compensation News - Beta Carotene

Beta Carotene is Centive’s monthly incentive compensation newsletter. Follow the links below to read articles from the June 2008 issue:

• Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater
  Subtle Adjustments Can Help Save Your New Sales Compensation Plans
  
  
• Compel Reviewed on Popular Sales Compensation Blog
  Sales Compensation expert Julien Dionne takes an in-depth look at Centive's award winning on-demand sales compensation management solution
  
  
• Centive Named to JMP Securities' Hot 100 Software Companies
  The most recent of a string of awards bestowed upon Centive since the launch of Centive's on-demand sales performance management solution in May 2005
  

Sales Performance News - Centive Press Releases

July 2008

WageWorks Selects Centive Compel to Automate Sales Compensation Management

Upgrades to Award-Winning On-Demand Solution to Drive Sales Performance and Accurately Calculate Sales Commissions and Bonuses

LOWELL, Mass., July 10, 2008 - Centive, the leader in on-demand solutions for sales compensation and sales performance management, today announced that WageWorks, the leading provider of tax-advantaged benefits programs, has selected Centive Compel to automate sales compensation and drive sales performance.

Replacing another on-demand sales compensation solution that could no longer meet WageWorks requirements for effective dating, adjustment processing and reporting, WageWorks will now leverage Compel’s integrated on-demand Sales Performance Management platform to optimize plan effectiveness and strategically manage sales compensation for their growing sales force.

WageWorks helps employers support consumer directed pre-tax benefit programs, including health care (FSA, HSA, HRA), wellness programs, child and elder care, commuting services, education benefits, and employee sponsored programs, such as gym reimbursement. Wage Works also offers retiree health care and COBRA Services. Their customer base of over 2,000 customers includes more than twenty percent of the Fortune 500 employers and nearly fifty percent of the Fortune 100.

"Sales compensation is our most effective tool for driving the sales performance we need to fuel our growth," said Morgan Norman, vice president of Sales, WageWorks. "Centive has successfully demonstrated to us that Compel meets all of our requirements today, and will support us as we continue to grow. We are particularly impressed with Compel’s approach for delivering modeling, crediting, reporting and analytics all within the core solution; other vendors require third-party modules for these critical tools. In addition, security is very important to us and Centive proved to be only vendor to have successfully completed a SAS 70 Type II audit of their security and control protocols." Continued . . .

June 2008

ZipRealty Selects Centive Compel to Automate Sales Compensation for Nationwide Network of ZipAgents

LOWELL, Mass., June 23, 2008 - Centive, the leader in on-demand solutions for sales compensation and sales performance management, today announced that ZipRealty, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZIPR), a leading national real estate brokerage operating in 34 major markets in 19 states and the District of Columbia, has selected Centive Compel to automate sales compensation management and drive agent sales performance.

As one of the nation's fastest growing real estate brokerages, ZipRealty, Inc. provides its clients an innovative on-line solution for buying and selling homes, researching local markets and finding local agents. ZipRealty's licensed employee ZipAgents offer years of experience in their local communities, and provide customers with professional, personalized service backed by guaranteed client satisfaction.

"In a competitive real estate marketplace, we want to be sure our agents are highly motivated to provide the best possible service to help our clients buy and sell their homes," said David Rector, chief financial officer, ZipRealty, Inc. "A competitive and well-managed sales compensation program provides that motivation. We look forward to using Compel to automate our compensation programs, and especially to provide our ZipAgents with secure, web-based dashboards so they can monitor their own earnings and performance." Continued . . .

Centive Customers Drive Sales Performance with Compel

More CFOs and VPs of Sales choose Compel than any other on-demand sales compensation management solution. Hailed by CIO Magazine as the "most widely used choice for sales compensation management," companies use Compel to accurately model and forecast commission costs, calculate commission and bonus earnings and gain real-time visibility into sales performance metrics.

Follow the links to learn how Centive's customers save time and money, and drive sales performance with Compel:

• Customers - see a partial list of customers that use Compel to manage sales compensation
  
• Case Studies - Read how top performing companies manage sales compensation
  
• Testimonials - View video testimonials and hear how Centive's customers use Compel for sales performance management
  

Leverage Sales Compensation to Drive Sales Performance

Sales compensation is one of your greatest sales performance management tools; no other program will drive sales behavior, and ultimately, sales results to the same extent as incentive compensation. Getting salespeople to sell the right products and services to the right customers at the right price is the best way to increase revenue and profits, and compensation is the best lever to motivate sales people. The management truism, "what gets measured gets managed and what gets awarded gets done," is spot on. Sales representatives are much more likely to work towards a company's strategic goals when properly motivated by well-designed, accurately calculated, and frequently communicated sales compensation plans.

Achieving these goals requires a proper technology foundation - one that supports agility, speed, accuracy, reporting and analysis. Unfortunately, in most organizations, this technology foundation is absent. In fact, most companies today manage sales compensation programs with Excel spreadsheets and Access databases.

As a result, sales executives are handcuffed by slow, rigid, and unsophisticated systems that provide no strategic value, and sales representatives are frustrated and de-motivated by delays, errors, and uncertainties in their commission payments.

The result is the Performance Gap. The Performance Gap is the delta between the performance results executives expect from their sales compensation programs . . .

Software Review: Sales Compensation Management Solution

Blogger Julien Dionne takes a look at Centive's award winning on-demand Sales Compensation Management solution - Centive Compel.

In his popular blog on Sales Compensation and Sales Performance Management, Julien Dionne provides a high-level overview of Centive Compel.

Key observations include:

~ "One nice aspect of Compel is that all its functionalities are bundled within the core application (no additional modules are required for reporting, modeling, analytics, etc.)."

~ "Many companies like Adobe, Salary.com, McKesson, Cars.com and Sterling Commerce selected Compel to automate their sales compensation."

~ "Another very interesting feature of the salesperson dashboard is the ability to display sale opportunities (from salesforce.com or other CRM/SFA systems) and the effect they have on the rep’s total compensation."

~ "Centive uses effective dating for everything: people records, quotas, measures, plans, transactions, results, reports, etc., which makes its maintenance much easier. It also solves the difficult problem of handling prior period adjustments - Compel recognizes the crediting rules, roll-ups and structures that were in place at the time of the original transaction, and trues-up the adjustment to the current period."

~ "Compel also seems to offer all the functionalities anyone could be looking for, and does so without the need to purchase additional modules."

Read more here: Incentive, Compensation and Sales Performance Management Review

Centive Press Release – Sales Compensation News

Centive Named to JMP Securities' Hot 100 Software Companies

LOWELL, Mass., May 21, 2008 – Centive, the leader in on-demand solutions for sales compensation and sales performance management, today announced it was named to JMP Securities' 2008 report entitled, "The Hot 100: The Best Privately Held Software Companies." This report profiles 100 of the leading private companies in the software industry as identified by the software research team at JMP Securities.

"We are pleased to be honored with inclusion in the Hot 100 report by JMP Securities," said Michael Torto, president and CEO, Centive. "The employees at Centive have worked hard to earn a stellar reputation for delivering superior on-demand solutions, exceptional customer service and innovative market vision. Recognition by JMP Securities is something we will celebrate as a company; it's cool to be hot."

Centive's flagship product, Centive Compel®, is an affordable on-demand solution for modeling, managing, reporting and analyzing sales compensation programs. Compel is much more than just a commission calculation tool; it offers companies strategic value by providing sales representatives and managers with real-time visibility into commission earnings and key sales performance analytics. With Compel, sales organization stay aligned, focused and motivated to achieve performance targets.

The "Hot 100" recognition is the most recent of a string of awards and accolades bestowed upon Centive since the launch of Compel® in May 2005 as the market's first on-demand solution for automating sales performance and sales compensation management. Last week Centive was named a finalist in the "Best Customer Service" category for the American Business Awards.  In 2007 Compel earned the "Product of the Year" award and the "CRM Excellence" award from Technology Marketing Corporation, and the CRM WizKids Award from Beagle Research.  Compel is also a winner of the coveted CODiE award for "Best Financial Application. 

About Centive

Centive, headquartered in Lowell, MA, is the recognized leader in on-demand sales performance management. Companies use Centive Compel, hailed by CIO Magazine as the "most widely used choice for sales compensation management," to accurately model and forecast commission costs, calculate commission and bonus earnings and gain real-time visibility into sales performance metrics.  Centive is the first and only on-demand sales compensation / sales performance management vendor to be recognized as a SAS-70 Type II service provider.   To learn more about Centive, please visit http://www.centive.com/ or call 1-877-CENTIVE

# # #

Centive, Compel, Inspire Performance, From Prospect to Paycheck and the Carrot logo are registered trademarks of Centive, Inc.  All other company or product names are or may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contact:
Bob Conlin
Centive
781-852-3500
bconlin@centive.com

Automating Sales Incentives

Why You Need To Automate Sales Incentives

Results from a field survey provided insight into the key business goals and requirements for sales incentives compensation identified by sales and finance executives. It validates the need to automate the management of sales incentives with an affordable solution that meets these critical requirements.

The Top 5 Sales Incentives Goals and Requirements of Sales & Finance Executives

1. Modeling & forecasting: Executives understand that the sales incentives compensation process begins with modeling plans and forecasting commission costs. Their goal is to easily and efficiently build and analyze compensation plan models. They strive to eliminate the guessing game and deliver plans that align sales representatives with corporate objectives, improve plan effectiveness and predictably drive sales behavior.

   * Compel® empowers sales and finance executives to easily build, analyze and track multiple plan models to better forecast and control sales incentives . . .