Sales Performance Management (SPM)

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• SPM Introduction
  
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An Introduction to SPM

 

The market demand for SPM (Sales Performance Management) is growing beyond
the Global 2000 into the mid-market and widening in scope to include
compensation, training.

 

Driven by SaaS adoption, variable compensation, and the need for businesses to
connect sales with other business processes and functions, SPM now takes into
account a portfolio of revenue processes.

 

Sales Performance Management trends:

1. Portfolio Approach to Growth and Expansion. Firms are now offering a portfolio of products and services across the entire client lifecycle.
2. Making the most out of technology investments is and will continue to be of utmost importance. This includes connecting sales to operations and account management and crossing over traditional silos to employ customer service representatives with tools to drive revenues.
3. By 2014, Garter predicts that 60 percent of implementations will address online communities, mobile users, and Internet-enabled devices.

Managing sales performance including forecasting, compensation, and performance management across distribution channels is a real challenge and the majority of organizations believe there is significant improvements to be made.

 

Sales performance management (SPM) solutions provide executives and sales management with a clear view of critical sales data, such as what products were sold where, by whom and to whom, that enable quick and informed course correction to ensure the alignment of sales strategies to desired business outcomes. In the future, SPM is becoming more holistic, farther reaching and may become RPM (revenue performance management).

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The State of SPM: Market Landscape and Overview

The market for SPM remains diverse, with software-as-a-service and hosted models gaining more attention. Callidus Software, Synygy and Varicent Software lead shortlists for large and complex projects, Oracle is accumulating a sizeable clientele, and Xactly leads in mind share in SaaS evaluations.

 

The market for SPM (sales performance management) has come a long way over the years with the evolution of technology improving operational processes and workforce analytics resulting in increased performance.  Another constant has been that the technology capabilities have outpaced the adoption and use thereby creating a significant opportunity. 

The utilization failure is in part due to overhyped promises on the part of providers and poor business processes by the buyers.  In fact, the majority of implementations deployed have failed to fully utilize the capabilities of SPM.

The market for SPM, was historically focused on the Global 2000.  With the widespread adoption of CRM, PRM, ERP and other major line of business systems over the past few years largely driven by SaaS adoption; the mid-market will continue to adopt SPM with the worldwide market reaching approximately 100k organizations with 1,000 to 10,000 full-time employees  by 2015.

The current SPM budget priorities by buyers include:

1. a move towards variable compensation tied to performance,
2. overall improvement in workforce performance based on the organizational model, i.e. team selling, matrix organizations, etc, and
3. being able forecast, monitor, report and drive workforce performance improvement.

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SPM Outsourcing Trends

Employers are looking at outsourcing SPM to better control costs and retain flexible costs structures.

Prevalent SPM outsourcing trends:

1. An opportunity for mid-market niche providers to emerge as major consolidation among the larger providers continues.
2. Buyer adoption will continue to prefer a “Phased” over a “Big-Bang” approach.
3. The demand for analytics will continue to increase.
4. Industry specialization will continue especially from services-oriented and labor-demanding industries.
5. Mid-market adoption will continue and more demand from financial related industries, healthcare, and services sectors.
6. SaaS adoption.
7. Shift towards more strategic projects, add-on services.

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