IBM Invests in Sales Performance Management

IBM announced today an agreement to acquire Varicent Software, a leader in Sales Performance Management. We were one of the first to recognize Varicent and its important role in expanding the operational analytics capabilities of performance management.They took incentive compensation management, and elevated it to a new level of importance and value in the organization by embracing the core concepts of performance management: strategic focus, planning, monitoring, and analyzing. More and more of our clients today are seeking to expand their performance management systems beyond finance, and sales is often  the first area they target. We view this acquisition as very positive for IBM. This is a growing area of focus, and not just for the big guys. Just last year Adaptive Planning introduced its own sales performance management offering targeted at midmarket companies. We look forward to more vendors providing their own pre-packaged capabilities in this area.