Playground for Innovation: A Q&A with Shivram Jayakumar
In the complex world of sales compensation, large enterprises are constantly seeking ways to enhance accuracy, efficiency, and strategic alignment. We sat down with Shivram Jayakumar, Senior Principal Systems Architect at LinkedIn, to discuss how his team is tackling these challenges through a powerful combination of technology and partnership. In this interview, Shivram shares his firsthand experience using the Xactly Extend platform as a "playground for innovation" to build custom solutions that reduce risk and create a seamless experience for the sales team. He details the unique value of Extend’s tight integration with core compensation data and highlights the collaborative partnership with Xactly, praising their engineering and product teams for being receptive to new ideas and essential to delivering on LinkedIn's vision.
Q: Can you please introduce yourself and your role?
A: Shivram Jayakumar is a senior principal systems architect at LinkedIn. In his role, he is responsible for systems architecture and solution design. He also leads a development team that focuses on creating automation, integrations, and custom applications for LinkedIn's global sales compensation team.
Q: How have you used Xactly Extend at LinkedIn?
A: Over the last year and a half, Shivram’s team has used Xactly Extend to build various utility applications, data automations, and backend services. He highlights a specific application named "Moab," which was developed to reduce risk in the manual adjustment process. This tool improved efficiency and the overall experience for compensation analysts. Moab was highly impactful, processing 20% of all orders at LinkedIn and significantly improving data quality and pay accuracy by catching errors from manual inputs.
Q: How would you compare Xactly Extend to other similar systems you've used previously?
A: Instead of a direct comparison, Shivram describes a strategic shift in how they approached the tool. Initially, they considered using it for small, isolated issues. However, they decided to take a step back and use it more broadly to solve for the future by focusing on the core business process. Shivram recommends that others should view Extend as a tool for driving innovation.
Q: What makes Xactly Extend unique for your business needs?
A: Shivram shares that Extend's unique advantage is its tight integration with compensation data, as it sits directly on top of the existing Xactly infrastructure. This creates a seamless experience for the sales team by consolidating custom apps, reports, and dashboards into a single interface. This prevents sales representatives from being distracted by switching between different applications, allowing them to focus on selling.
Q: What new Xactly features or solutions are you most excited about?
A: Shivram is most excited about the future possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within Xactly's product roadmap. He is curious about how AI will reshape the sales compensation world, posing questions about whether AI will calculate commissions, respond to the sales field, and how it will ultimately impact sales behavior.
Q: What do you love about your partnership with Xactly?
A: Shivram describes the partnership as a very collaborative experience. He gives credit to Xactly for being able to reframe their solutions and remain deeply engaged with their customers' day-to-day challenges. He also commends them for being open to new ideas and praises their engineering and product teams for being receptive and helping deliver on LinkedIn's vision.
Q: What advice would you give to those interested in Xactly Extend?
A: Shivram addresses the common "build versus buy" debate regarding sales compensation tools. His advice is to leverage tools like Extend where they best fit a specific business case. He recommends thinking in a modular way, planning for future scale, and building an integrated ecosystem where all applications can thrive together.
Please note: The questions and answers above have been edited and condensed for clarity and reading ease. To hear Shivram Jayakumar tell his full story in his own words, with even more detail and context, be sure to watch the complete video interview.