Ariba Streamlines Sales Compensation Management with Xactly

World’s Business Commerce Network Taps Xactly Incent to Efficiently Manage 60+ Compensation Plans

in 20 Currencies for 567 Service and Sales Employees

Press

Jan 30, 2012

4 min read

SAN JOSE, CA – January 30, 2012 – Xactly Corporation, the leader in on-demand incentive compensation and sales performance management, today announced that Ariba, Inc., the world’s business commerce network, is using Xactly Incent to effectively manage sales commissions across regions and provide real-time visibility and intelligence to sales reps and management.

Ariba is the world’s business commerce network. The company combines industry-leading cloud-based applications with the world's largest web-based trading community to help companies discover and collaborate with a global network of partners. Using the Ariba^® Network, businesses of all sizes can connect to their trading partners anywhere, at any time from any application or device to buy, sell and manage their cash more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

As Ariba expanded internally to capitalize on its growth and momentum, it was quickly outgrowing its homegrown, on-premise sales compensation management solution. Approaching 500 payees and several dozen different compensation plans, the system’s shortcomings in terms of insufficient automation, visibility and reporting were becoming glaringly apparent and Ariba made the decision to move to an automated, third-party solution. Critical in the decision-making process was for the new system to fit seamlessly into Ariba’s Cloud-based infrastructure and provide advanced analytic and reporting capabilities.

After a competitive review, Ariba selected cloud-based Xactly Incent, in conjunction with the Xactly Analytics module and Xactly Delta data management services.“Xactly stood out as the leader in on-demand compensation management, having built Xactly Incent from the ground up for on-demand deployment and end-to-end compensation management,” said Karina Day, Senior Manager, Global Compensation, Ariba. “As we evaluated Xactly Incent, we found it had all the functionality we were then lacking around reporting and analytics, automation, and management and sales rep visibility.”

Today, Ariba uses Xactly Incent to efficiently manage more than 60 different compensation plans across 567 sales and services employees, being paid in 20 currencies. Xactly Delta is used to move data from multiple enterprise information sources into Xactly Incent, which leverages the consolidated data to accurately determine commissions. Ariba is leveraging Xactly Analytics for custom reporting and analytic drill-downs based on the consolidated data residing within Xactly Incent. For example, Ariba’s finance staff is now able to quickly and easily create detailed reports on expenses using custom data by customer, contract and sales representative, a process that previously took days or weeks to manually pull.

“Xactly Incent has been a great move for us and the system is being enthusiastically embraced by all constituencies from sales to finance to management. The new visibility and efficiencies enabled by Xactly are helping us to be even more agile as a business,” added Day.

Xactly Incent is helping Ariba achieve better business results by:

Improving Field Visibility: Previously, Ariba’s sales and services reps were emailed their monthly commissions statements in a “static” spreadsheet. Now they are able to view that information in real-time within Xactly Incent and have the ability to drill into the data, compare their commission by month, view compensation across products, etc.
Increasing Management Insight: Instead of waiting days or weeks for reports, sales managers are now able to log into Xactly Incent and get reports themselves without depending on IT or finance. With this more timely and complete visibility, managers are able to make faster, better business decisions quicker and easier.
Delivering Faster Plan Approvals: In the past, it would take up to nine weeks for Ariba to get every payee’s new compensation plan approved and signed. Now, with plans distributed to each payee and viewable via Xactly Incent, 60 percent of plans are electronically signed off on within a week. Not only has this automated process phenomenally improved Ariba’s plan sign-off process, it also provides the company with a full electronic audit trail.
Providing Faster Financial Reporting: Xactly Incent has also helped Ariba streamline financial reporting around sales operations. The same data that is pulled into Xactly to enable accurate commission determinations is used to power timely analytics and reporting, providing much better business intelligence than their previous, homegrown system.
Reducing Disputes: With Xactly Incent, Ariba is experiencing closer finance-sales collaboration, with less shadow-accounting by its reps and far fewer time-consuming disputes around compensation matters; saving administrative time and, more importantly, enabling reps to stay focused on selling to and serving customers.

Additional Resources

Xactly Incent
Tweet this: Ariba taps Xactly to enable better #salescomp management and visibility http://ow.ly/8HSlA
Follow Xactly on Twitter, Facebook and the Xactly Blog

About Xactly Corporation

Xactly Corporation is the market leader in on-demand sales compensation and sales performance management. The company’s SPM Suite of products enables sales and finance executives to design, implement, manage, audit and optimize sales compensation management programs easily and affordably. Xactly’s solutions automate the process of aggregating data from disparate systems into a secure, hosted repository and enable companies to leverage this business data, the lifeblood of sales performance management. Xactly helps companies improve operational performance, optimize sales effectiveness, proactively manage risk and compliance and maximize profits. The Xactly family of products is used by sales and finance executives, compensation analysts, sales operations and sales professionals across a variety of industries, ranging from SMBs to large enterprises. For more information, visit /or call 1-866-GO-XACTLY (469-2285).

# # #

Kristin Reeves

Blanc & Otus Public Relations

Tel: 415-856-5145

Email: kreeves@blancandotus.com