Ottobock Accelerates Sales Efficiency and Sales Team Engagement with Xactly
Company Situation and Summary
Ottobock, a global leader in prosthetics and orthotics, operates on a hybrid go-to-market model that combines direct sales, clinical services, and partnerships with healthcare providers. As the U.S. business expanded, Ottobock needed a scalable, automated compensation solution to support a growing and broadening sales team. The team’s existing manual processes couldn’t keep up with the inherent complexity of managing plans and delivering real-time visibility into performance for their sales teams.
With a commercial model driven by innovation and patient outcomes, the need for a centralized, transparent incentive system became critical to driving sales performance and aligning teams around common goals.
Key Results
- 99% of compensation plans are now automated, significantly reducing manual workloads.
- Monthly payroll processing time reduced from weeks to just a few days.
- All North America teams now have real-time visibility into their commissions.
The Challenge
Ottobock’s North America sales teams, which include territory managers, regional directors, and service-focused roles, were compensated through variable incentive plans tied to revenue performance. However, these plans were being managed manually in spreadsheets, creating significant bottlenecks, limited visibility, and inconsistent execution.
Four core challenges Ottobock was experiencing before implementing Xactly:
- Manual, Error-Prone Commission Processes
Compensation was managed using spreadsheets and data from multiple disconnected sources like SAP and distributor files, leading to inaccuracies, overpayments, and underpayments.
It was pretty messy… a lot of copy and pasting, so a lot of room for error.
- Lack of Visibility for Sales Reps
Sales reps had limited insight into how they were performing against quota or what they were earning, which eroded trust and made it difficult to drive behavior. - High Operational Overhead and Risk Exposure
Payroll cycles were time-consuming and audit-prone, with finance teams spending days compiling data and reconciling discrepancies. - Inflexible Credit Rules and Complex Data Mapping
Sales crediting across distributors and regions required complex, manual mapping tied to static territories, limiting agility and increasing the risk of disputes.
There was no alignment, no data flow, and no way for our reps to really understand what they were earning.
Without a centralized platform, Ottobock struggled with late payouts, discrepancies in earnings, and minimal insight into sales rep performance. They needed a solution that would provide transparency, reduce manual errors, and support standardized compensation strategies across business units and geographies.
The Solution
Ottobock selected Xactly to bring consistency, automation, and scalability to its incentive compensation operations. Using Xactly Incent, Ottobock automated the design and execution of their unique compensation plans across multiple roles, while Xactly Connect enabled seamless data flows from SAP. Ottobock also implemented Xactly for CRM to further streamline the connectivity of sales data, commissions data, and visibility for reps to see their potential payouts. Keeping these experiences managed natively within Salesforce was critically important to the Ottobock team.
The fact that we could use it just for visualization was huge... we’re trying to make Salesforce the one-stop shop for everything.
Four critical elements of the solution for Ottobock were;
- Automated Incentive Compensation with Xactly Incent
Ottobock replaced manual spreadsheets with Xactly Incent to automate the end-to-end commission process. This ensured accurate, timely payouts and eliminated the need for error-prone data consolidation across SAP and distributor systems. - Seamless Crediting and Centralized Rules Engine
Xactly enabled Ottobock to establish clear crediting rules based on territory assignments, ensuring every sale—whether direct or through a distributor—was properly credited to the right rep without manual intervention. - Real-Time Visibility for Reps via Salesforce Integration
Sales reps gained real-time access to performance dashboards embedded in Salesforce, showing quota attainment, earnings progress, and goal tracking—all updated weekly. This increased rep engagement and reduced compensation-related inquiries. - Scalable Data Integration and Reporting with Xactly Connect
Xactly Connect facilitated secure data uploads via SFTP, transforming raw SAP files into clean, usable data. This enabled Ottobock to create a repeatable process that significantly accelerated payroll cycles and improved data governance.
Xactly’s implementation approach emphasized hands-on collaboration and change management to ensure successful adoption, especially among U.S.-based commercial teams. The phased rollout began with sales and marketing and then expanded to services and clinical support.
The Results
Post-implementation, Ottobock's U.S. sales organization saw rapid improvements in payout accuracy, plan transparency, and rep confidence. Sales reps now have on-demand access to dashboards that show quota attainment and expected earnings, reducing the volume of compensation inquiries and disputes. Administratively, payroll processing cycles were cut from weeks to days.
It used to take us three weeks to process commissions across countries. Now it’s done in a few days, and the accuracy and transparency have improved dramatically.
The centralized platform also enabled better alignment between business goals and incentive structures, allowing Ottobock to drive strategic initiatives like new product adoption and customer engagement. With Xactly in place, Ottobock is positioned to continue scaling efficiently, with compensation now acting as a lever for performance—not a process burden.
Next Steps for Ottobock
Ottobock’s adoption of Xactly demonstrates the power of automated ICM programs, and the value transparency brings to revenue performance. By leveraging Incent’s prepackaged features and Xactly for CRM’s native Salesforce experiences, Ottobock transformed cumbersome, error-prone processes into an efficient, scalable, and transparent system. As a next step, Ottobock is exploring further projects with Xactly around territory management and , including HR data integration, reinforcing its commitment to digital transformation and operational efficiency.