3 Key IT Considerations for Sales Performance Management (SPM) Solutions

Anytime a company implements a new technology solution, it’s important to get it integrated into existing infrastructure and ramped up quickly in order to start realizing return-on-investment (ROI) quickly, for both the sales and IT teams. A fast integration means your existing IT infrastructure stays more secure and you can begin harnessing internal data more quickly.

When organizations are looking to deploy SaaS-based sales performance management (SPM) solutions today, IT teams continue to emphasize the need to integrate within their existing infrastructure, maintain the latest security standards, and provide scalability for growth.

The Evolution of SPM Solutions

Today’s top sales organizations have transitioned, or are in the process of transitioning, from automated homegrown and legacy sales performance management (SPM) solutions to implementing data-driven end-to-end SPM platforms.

New SPM solutions encompass much more than just incentive compensation management (ICM). They help companies with all areas of their sales strategy–planning, execution, and optimization. Each solution is different, which is why it’s important to bring IT into the conversation early. In fact, IT leaders should have a main role in selecting the right tool.

Each role has specific needs for SPM solutions. For example, sales can benefit from real-time data and mobility, while sales operations benefits from integrated data for benchmarking and intelligent planning. So what exactly should IT consider in an SPM solution? There are three key things–integration capability, security, and scalability.

Integrating Systems Quickly and Seamlessly

IT leaders need visibility for their data integration to run smoothly. Manual, homegrown, and legacy sales performance management solutions often take away data control from IT by moving data outside of IT’s database. This can slow down integration time, delaying ROI impact.

With Xactly Connect, data integration is seamless between technology solutions. This provides IT teams with more visibility and insights, giving them more flexibility and control as well as a faster implementation process. Connect also helps create a central source of data by seamlessly integrating and compiling data from multiple sources.

The Need for Security

Security is always a key priority for IT teams, and because of this it is a must-have component of SPM solutions. It’s important for organizations to find a solution that utilizes and is compliant with the latest security standards such as PCI-DSS, HiPAA and more, thus safeguarding the security and privacy of sensitive sales pay and performance information.

Xactly’s SPM solutions are built on a Sales Performance AI platform that leverages the latest security standards in the industry to provide a safe, secure way to transfer data seamlessly across disparate systems, including the web, existing ETL applications, legacy on-premise applications, or any mobile device (see a full list of our support of latest security standards, please visit our Trust site here).

Scalability for Continued Growth

When it comes to new technologies, scalability and performance go hand-in-hand. As companies grow, so do their product lines and sales teams, which ultimately means that compensation plans must transform and scale with the company. Xactly’s SPM solutions are built on the cloud, using carrier-grade multi-tenant architecture. Leveraging this architecture, Xactly manages over one billion transactions a month with minimal impact on performance.

Final Thoughts

The moral of the story is: IT plays an important role in any technology implementation, and they are also critical players for finding and implementing the right SPM solution. Bring IT leaders in early to help find an SPM solution that optimizes the entire sales planning process and aid in company security, growth, and using data as an asset.

For organizations looking to replace their current ICM/SPM solutions, evaluate how the new solutions fit into existing infrastructure, performance and scale and compliance with latest security standards.