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It’s clear that sales organizations need to be efficient, but many are unaware of critical applications they could deploy to establish sales excellence. In my recent analysis, “Sales Organizations Need a Swift Technology Kick”, I outlined why sales departments have to look beyond using sales force automation (SFA) and spreadsheets and
examine dedicated applications for improving productivity and effectiveness. Our benchmark research in sales applications found a new set of application priorities in sales organizations that you should assess to determine how well your sales efforts match up to others’. Also, in most cases, we found the prioritization and needs of sales organizations are not aligned, resulting in wasted time and likely creating a lack of access to accurate information for sales management and operations.
The top application priority in 68 percent of sales organizations is forecasting and pipeline management. This should be no surprise, as the pipeline and forecast determine the volume and velocity of sales activities and impact the potential revenue from those activities. But in most organizations, Sales is not efficient in creating the sales pipeline from the sales opportunity records in the SFA application, which can help manage sales on a daily and weekly basis. Managers need to monitor and coach against a pipeline but also protect against bloating or leakage of deals in the pipeline, which can indicate higher than actual revenue potential. From the pipeline, managers can consolidate and analyze a sales forecast for the entire sales organization to determine the potential revenue from sales territories and across customers and products; this is critical information to determine the demand and potential value of customer relationships. We will be benchmarking sales forecasting again in 2012 to update what we have done in past years, evaluating the importance of having a process and dedicated applications to support it, not only for Sales but for Operations and Finance, too.
After the pipeline, the next application priority is sales 
analytics (in 47 percent of sales organizations), which can provide better insight into sales activities. It requires having the data, metrics and indicators to guide the right actions. Unfortunately, almost half of organizations use spreadsheets for sales analytics, though they admit that the use of them makes it difficult to manage sales. It should be no surprise that 64 percent of sales organizations plan to improve their existing processes to correct the current high level of manual effort. Our benchmark research on sales analytics found that data-related activities are the most time-consuming. Deploying sales analytics applications that reduce the time it takes to get analytics ready is critical, and so is using tools that provide the right types of visualization and interactivity. Many such applications provide a library of performance metrics; but few are advancing to true sales analytics including people, process and risk metrics that can help you perform root-cause analysis and diagnostics. Just having performance metrics and indicators is insufficient to reduce the risk of not achieving your sales potential. Every sales organization should build and use a library of key sales indicators.
As you consider sales analytics, you should also address planning and tracking, which is a priority in 39 percent of sales organizations. What-if and scenario analyses can help determine best paths forward for optimizing sales resources and results which requires some deeper level of modeling and analytic sophistication. And as sales organizations get smarter, they can start to apply advanced methods such as predictive analytics to give better foresight into the future based on current and past behavior.
Collaboration is a priority for 63 percent of sales organizations. This technology has evolved to 
include social media capabilities, encouraging interaction and knowledge sharing across the Internet. This social collaboration is a way to bring the people and process of sales forecasting and analytics together in a team-based effort. Our benchmark research found that broadcasting, wall posting and application sharing are a few of the top priorities in social collaboration for sales. Collaborative methods can also bring disparate applications to a common point of dialogue across sales forecasting and analytics, involving SFA data that might be used for creating and tracking accounts, contacts and opportunities. Since the forecast and pipeline are potential places for dialogue on ideas for improvement or exploration of new revenue opportunities, social collaboration can help reduce the time to determine the path forward.
If you have not examined the advancements in sales pipeline and forecasting or what is possible with sales analytics, you better get started as your competition is mostly likely already doing so. In my next analysis on sales applications, I will assess the need for key applications such as sales compensation and commissions, territory and coaching. These applications can further increase the confidence of your sales team when they see your organization is committed to help them achieve their full potential. If you are focused on sales excellence and use applications and technology to do so, I look forward to hearing about your efforts, and hearing your suggestions about how our best practices and research can help you be smarter and more engaged with your sales organization!
Regards,
Mark Smith – CEO & Chief Research Officer
Businesses aim to make their sales function as productive as possible, but they don’t always support that goal with investment in technology. I recently wrote about sales needing a swift technology kick. Sales application
vendor Xactly provides a boot with the release of Xactly Incent 8 and will make parts of the application suite available from the Apple App Store for the iPad in the coming weeks.
According to our benchmark research on sales applications, 40 percent of sales organizations plan to deploy tablets initially or deploy them further. Since sales is already one of the largest adopters of tablets and smartphones, vendors that provide relevant applications will have a ready market. On the iPad, Xactly is providing sales analytics, easy access to quota and commission metrics and specifics of compensation plan performance by product and customer. Users can quickly determine sales performance and interact with the analytics. In addition to the native iPad app, Xactly offers a browser-based version that can work across a variety of smartphones, including those running Android. These advancements in sales analytics are smart as sales is one of the fastest growing adopters of using mobile tablets and smartphones for getting to applications and information. The new Xactly Explorer provides drill down and ad-hoc analytics needed by a range of sales roles. But beyond analytics they now provide the ability to set objectives to address the larger scope of sales performance that can be monitored and scored for integrating into a sales review for providing any additional compensation.
Along with the advances in mobility, Incent 8 helps administrators and sales operations team communicate within the application through its announcements, which can provide immediate notification for reviewing plans or when payments are ready to be made.
I like Xactly’s eDocs and Approvals module, which automates workflow for compensation documents and plans and integrates them within the system. This saves time and hassle by bringing all the components of a compensation plan into one application. Another module, Xactly Territories, lets users manage and optimize territories and define crediting rules and assignments, which is an area where mistakes often occur in manual and spreadsheet-based approaches. Xactly Sandbox provides users with a copy of their production data they can use to experiment as they deal with the changes that are constant in sales and strive to achieve their goals.
Almost half (49%) of sales organizations in our research admitted that the use of spreadsheets impedes the management of sales. Xactly can integrate data from sources such as sales force automation (SFA) and accounting applications and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with its enhanced data integration service Xactly Express Connect, which uses technology from Informatica Cloud. This helps organizations bring data into the application and send it out to payroll and other systems that need commission and quota information. This application is built using Force.com, so it already integrates with Salesforce.com’s SFA environment.
Incent 8 shows sales administrators the state of their data and documents. To expedite access to the many applications that sales people might need to sign in for, Xactly has added SAML integration for easier single sign-on across applications. This release provides all the core capabilities for compensation and planning and management of sales commission payments. If you need analytics, modeling, territories and other capabilities, you can upgrade to other packages, which Xactly facilitates through its support services.
Xactly provides its applications on demand via software as a service (SaaS), which has
become the preferred choice of 41 percent of sales organizations. By operating in the cloud Xactly can provide benchmark metrics that aggregate above and across its customers, providing broad insights into sales operations.
In addition to Incent 8, there is a new version of Xactly Express for small and midsize businesses; it also includes a tablet-based application that helps users ascertain their teams’ reps performance toward quota, which tops the list of concerns in our sales analytics research. Express also empowers sales teams to review their progress at any time without resorting to spreadsheets. The new version provides the drill-down and ad-hoc analytics needed by a range of sales roles, but beyond analytics, Xactly can set objectives and so monitor and score the complete scope of sales performance as part of reviews and for compensation purposes.
Xactly has supercharged its applications with analytics, which our research has found is the number-one technology trend for sales organizations, and now offering internal
communication within its products that will hopefully evolve to further collaboration which is the second most desired technology trend in sales. Xactly goes well beyond sales compensation to provide a suite of applications for the needs of sales operations and the overall sales organization. Xactly understands the role of sales operations in supporting both management and account representatives, which is a major reason its business continues to grow. With Incent 8 it offers more sophisticated mobile and sales analytics support while addressing many of the core sales process and efficiency needs of organizations. I expect Xactly to continue to expand and support more needs of sales teams and impact not just the pipeline and forecast, but commissions and incentives. Xactly has advanced significantly since my last written analysis and continues to deliver incremental value to its customers and the industry. If you have not looked at Xactly recently, now might be the time to learn about the latest version.
Regards,
Mark Smith
CEO & Chief Research Officer
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