Table of contents
- What is CaptivateIQ?
- What are the primary benefits of the CaptivateIQ solution?
- What are the critical features of a sales compensation solution?
- Common challenges of using a sales compensation solution
- How to get the most out of your sales compensation software
- CaptivateIQ pricing
- CaptivateIQ reviews
- Download A Free CaptivateIQ Case Study
What is CaptivateIQ?
CaptivateIQ is a sales compensation planning solution that makes the process of managing commission plans more efficient, accurate, and transparent. CaptivateIQ keeps commissioned employees motivated and appropriately incentivized.
It is a cloud-based incentive compensation solution that provides access to the administrators who develop and maintain the plans, the commissioned employees that need to see their commission statements, and the sales leaders that need visibility into their team’s performance and resulting compensation. They have built a rapidly growing customer base, bring delight to a sometimes daunting process, and modernize the way companies manage commissions.
CaptivateIQ was ranked the leader in G2’s Summer 2021 Report for Sales Compensation Software out of 16 top solution providers. The report, which is based on real user reviews, called out CaptivateIQ’s high marks in powerful features like CRM integration, compensation statements, commission estimator, and commission splits and overrides.
G2 Grid® for Sales Compensation
What are the primary benefits of the CaptivateIQ solution?
The CaptivateIQ solution handles complex incentive plans while also being flexible enough to make changes in real-time. Relative to the other compensation solutions evaluated by G2, CaptivateIQ earned a top spot across every category including:
- Leader (Overall, Enterprise, and SMB)
- Easiest Setup
- Easiest To Use
- Easiest Admin
- Fastest Implementation
- Best Results
- Best Usability
- Best Estimated ROI
- Highest User Adoption
- Easiest To Do Business With
- Best Relationship
- Best Meets Requirements
- Most Implementable
- High Performer (Enterprise and Europe)
What are the critical features of a sales compensation solution?
The following is a list of key product features that any commissions solution should offer. These features are areas where the CaptivateIQ solution excels.
1. Data integration
Typically, much of the data needed to accurately process sales commissions exists in other applications. This may be a CRM (Salesforce, for example) that contains deal data, including the stage, close date, dollar amount, responsible sales rep, etc. as well as another data warehouse (Snowflake, as an example) that might contain other pertinent information, such as payments related to those deals tracked in a CRM system.
The ability to integrate those data sources directly into a sales compensation solution drastically reduces the amount of manual effort, avoids human errors through such a process, and shortens the turnaround time for period-close to commission statements.
Frequently customers are concerned that their source data in these other systems is not clean and ready for direct use, thereby necessitating manual processes to prepare the data before use. However, using a solution such as CaptivateIQ can help organize and structure the data for use, avoiding the need for manual cleaning each time.
2. Flexibility to customize any plan
The CaptivateIQ sales compensation solution provides a straightforward process to develop, maintain, and even change commission plans. As businesses evolve, it is common for the company’s focus, objectives and priorities to evolve as well. A solution that can adapt and scale with the business rather than the other way around is a huge plus.
3. Automated real-time calculations
Automatically updating data from other data sources such as a CRM and/or data warehouse means that calculations can run in real-time and avoid hours of manual processing. This also reduces human error, helps commissioned employees get paid faster and with better confidence in the results. This allows them to focus on what they are paid to do rather than continually rechecking their commission statements.
For companies that choose to enable forward-looking statements, this automated, real-time process transforms the sales compensation solution into a critical tool used by sales as they focus on what’s ahead of them. It can allow sales employees and management to review earned commissions to-date, and assess their deal pipeline at any moment to understand how that may affect their commission payout for any period.
With this insight, sales teams can better prioritize their efforts to focus on those activities that will maximize their pay, and thereby better achieve the company’s priorities.
4. Multiple reporting formats
The reports that are needed by sales operations versus the finance and legal teams are likely quite different. Creating a variety of reports in different formats is important to help serve multiple needs.
5. Data Security
In this day and age, it is critical for any sales compensation solution to comply with data protection laws and offer robust security features. Some of the most common security requirements are associated with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 compliance.
Common challenges of using a sales compensation solution
Like any sales compensation solution, it requires some time and effort to get up and running. If moving from an existing Excel-based process, time needs to be spent understanding the underlying plan logic that is built into the spreadsheets and then replicating within the solution. Depending upon the breadth and complexity of these existing models, the implementation can take some time, and typically require skilled personnel to develop the initial plans.
Fortunately, CaptivateIQ wins in the area of fastest to implement.
As a premier CaptivateIQ partner, we have the skills and expertise needed to make implementation as pain-free and efficient as possible. We have successfully implemented many such plans for numerous customers quickly and efficiently. All along the way we are sure to include the appropriate client personnel in this process, providing training and helping guide them to build some of their own plans after the initial builds are in place. This ensures that the customer is fully self-sufficient to maintain and update their plans as the needs arise.
How to get the most out of your sales compensation software
The key to getting the most out of any tool is to start out on the right foot. This means working with a highly skilled team like QBIX Analytics to plan and guide the implementation process. Our team will work closely with yours to ensure the requirements are fully understood, the source data is integrated and ready for use, and the plans are developed per the plan details.
It also requires focused attention by the client to ensure they are providing accurate and appropriate inputs to the implementation process, and are getting up to speed on use of the solution so they can run with it once the implementation work has been completed.
CaptivateIQ pricing
You will find CaptivateIQ pricing to be highly competitive – in most cases it will be one of the most affordable options available. This is another area where CaptivateIQ received top scores – being identified as Best Estimated ROI.
Since implementations are faster and easier using CaptivateIQ than the other options, you will also find the initial implementation fees to be pleasantly inexpensive.
To find out more about the software and implementation costs and schedule, feel free to reach out to us here.
CaptivateIQ reviews
CaptivateIQ has been successfully implemented by hundreds of companies. Here is what they have to say.
A great tool that has found the sweet spot between functionality and simplicity. Successfully and intuitively mirrors excel functionality. Simple integration with Salesforce CRM. Wealth of help articles and plan examples made available to customers in the product knowledge base. Pace, quality, and consistency in which the application receives updates.
– Sean E., Sales Operations Analyst, Planview
The best part is that I do not have to wait for a commission statement to come out at the end of the month to see my incentive pay, and can see this cumulatively throughout the month and also as the year progresses.
– Andy C., Territory Sales Manager, Cameron Ashley Building Products
CaptivateIQ takes a novel, table-based approach to commission plan design. Particularly useful is the real-time results calculation that allows for incentive plan admins to quickly integrate, implement, and test new plans. From start to finish, we were able to implement 6 separate plans in 2 months. I am confident that our ramp-up time for new admins has been cut in half from previous solutions.
– Mitch R., Financial Systems Analyst, BenefitMall
Download A Free CaptivateIQ Case Study
Learn about how Gong, a revenue intelligence platform, has benefitted by selecting CaptivateIQ as their sales compensation solution.