CommVault Drives Global Sales Compensation with Xactly Incent

Testimonials & Case Studies / CommVault

“Easy to implement and use, Xactly Incent has transformed the way we do business. We've gained agility, accuracy, and a global view of sales compensation couples with powerful analytics capability which is helping to optimize our compensation spend and drive greater sales performance globally.”

- Robert Tafeen from CommVault

About CommVault
CommVault is a rapidly growing, publicly traded data and information management software company. The company develops and distributes software and services for high-performance data protection, universal availability and simplified management of data in complex physical, virtual and cloud storage environments.

Benefits at a Glance:

• Global view of sales compensation
• Improved process efficiency
• Reduced compensation administration
• Increased sales performance
• Alignment of sales with business objectives

The Challenge
With annual sales of more than $400 million, CommVault markets and sells its software and services worldwide through a field force comprised of approximately 600 field sales representatives and systems engineers. The company's sales compensation environment encompasses the selling of software, maintenance contracts, and professional services. Commission rates are variable across products, and quarterly and semi-annual bonuses are paid based on quota attainment.

CommVault has a complicated compensation environment, with even more complex commissions management. The company had been managing international and U.S. sales initiatives separately, which meant commissions were also siloed. When the company embarked on a mission to streamline operations through centralization, CommVault determined compensation was a perfect fit for global consolidation.“As our business expanded, corporate put a magnifying glass on processes and determined global standardization would make our company more efficient and successful,” explains Robert Tafeen, Accounting Manager at CommVault. “With our sales force growing rapidly, and footprint expanding to nearly 40 countries, we knew a consistent global approach to compensation management would ensure greater visibility and accuracy into this critical business function.”

The Solution
CommVault, having previously used spreadsheets and a legacy system to manage compensation, made the switch to Xactly’s cloud-based enterprise sales compensation solution, Xactly Incent, to automate compensation management and improve operational and sales efficiency. However, the company was still set in disparate processes across regions, operating two separate instances of the Incent platform. When the decision came down to standardize the compensation process globally, Xactly was the natural choice to help CommVault with the transition, due to its robust functionality, seamless integration with Salesforce CRM, multi-currency support, and superior analytics.

In addition to Incent, CommVault also licensed Xactly Analytics and eDocs & Approvals modules.
”Our dual teams had happily been using Xactly for years, and the robust solution addressed all our requirements, including easy integration with salesforce.com,” claims Tafeen. ”When we broached the possibility of a single instance, the Xactly team was helpful, guiding us through the consolidation path with a can-do attitude.”

Rapid Implementation and Time to Value
With the help of Xactly professional services, CommVault merged the two instances of Xactly Incent into one global sales compensation management process.
Now, CommVault's sales reps and systems engineers are able to see precisely what they are going to be paid and why, simply by logging into Xactly Incent directly or through Salesforce CRM. At the same time, sales administration, finance and top management are experiencing multiple additional business benefits.

Global View of Sales Compensation
Today, CommVault has a single global application powering its sales compensation management process, end to end. This overarching advantage is delivering benefits that range from time and money savings to global visibility into compensation processes and sales performance. ”Moving to a global application has certainly saved us time from the administrative standpoint. Processes like compensation plan creation are now completed within hours by just one person, freeing up administration time across geographies to pursue strategic initiatives,” claims Tafeen. ”The biggest benefit with automation is having a single source of trusted compensation-related information, enabling us to extract data and derive insights much faster.”

Improved Compensation Reporting and Analysis
CommVault is also making considerable use of Xactly Analytics in order to analyze and report on compensation. This includes how much compensation is being paid and to whom, what the effective compensation rate is, and what kind of deals are being paid on. Having this information in one application has enabled easier data extracts, but major value lies in being able to quickly provide executives with real-time information on which to make decisions on how to set up comp plans for future years. ”We do a lot of reporting and analysis on the data we get out of Xactly, including post-mortem reviews to make sure we're compensating people the way we intended,” explains Tafeen. ”But we also engage in analyses to make sure that future comp plans are designed effectively to focus our sales force in the direction that we want.”

Faster, More Accurate Commissions Processing
With Xactly Incent, CommVault is able to manage the vast array of variables around its compensation payouts, with improved speed and accuracy. Sales operations are also able to more efficiently support the company's monthly and quarterly close processes. ”We have a very tight close deadline,” says Tafeen. “We close our books very quickly, so we're doing commissions calculations very quickly after month end or quarter end. Xactly Incent enables us to get accurate commissions calculations locked down within a few days of quarter end.”

Enhanced SOX Compliance
Xactly Incent, with its centralized repository of all compensation related information and comprehensive audit trails, has also enhanced CommVault's SOX compliance capabilities. “Using Xactly definitely helps us with our SOX compliance,” says Tafeen. ”We are a public company and thus we have to place much more emphasis on testing a system or application versus simply using spreadsheets. Xactly Incent is SAS 70 Type 2 audited, which is a major plus.”

Concludes Tafeen, ”Easy to implement and use, Xactly Incent has transformed the way we manage sales compensation at CommVault. We've gained agility, accuracy and a global, trusted view of sales compensation coupled with powerful analytics capability which is helping to optimize our compensation spend and drive greater sales performance.”