IBM Acquires Sales Performance Management Solutions Provider, Varicent Software

IBM announced its intent to acquire Varicent Software Inc. earlier today, a recognized leader in sales performance management software. Varicent Software strengthens IBM's "smarter analytics" solutions and addesses a growing opportunity in sales performance management. IBM's performance management solutions help customers outperform by seeing, predicting, and shaping business outcomes across finance, operations, customer relations and now sales organizations.

IBM just announced a definitive agreement to acquire Varicent Software Incorporated, a leading provider of analytics software for compensation and sales performance management.

Varicent is a privately held company, with headquarters in Toronto, Canada. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Varicent software automates and analyzes the collection and reporting of sales data across finance, sales, human resources and IT departments to gain efficiencies, uncover trends andimprove sales performance.

This acquisition accelerates IBM’s “smarter analytics” capabilities across line of business operations in all industries, and will be combined with IBM’s existing software offerings that are delivered to clients through on-premise or cloud computing models.

With growing volumes of data, companies are increasingly looking for ways to automate and gain faster, more accurate intelligence on sales and financial management data in order to increase competitiveness.

According to Gartner, organizations that adopt compensation management solutions can expect to reduce errors by more than 90 percent and reduce processing times by more than 40 percent.

Varicent’s software automates and integrates all aspects of sales, client and financial performance management across the enterprise, which is traditionally a labor intensive process. Unlike traditional tools, Varicent provides a single management system that relies on a sophisticated calculation engine to model and analyze the effectiveness of incentive spend.

The software allows clients such as banks, insurance companies, retailers, information technology and telecommunications providers to more accurately determine compensation, streamline territory assignments, manage quotas, and report and analyze sales activities.  The software also strengthens audit and compliance readiness and provides transparency for all aspects of incentive compensation.

Varicent was founded in 2003 and has more than 180 customers using its software, including Starwood Hotels, Covidien, Dex One, Manpower, Hertz, Office Depot and Farmers, among many others.

IBM will combine Varicent with its R&D and prior acquisitions including Algorithmics, Clarity Systems, OpenPages, Cognos and SPSS, to expand IBM capabilities in business analytics and optimization across finance, sales, and customer service operations.

These acquisitions are part of IBM’s larger focus on analytics, which spans hardware, software, services and research. IBM has established the world’s deepest portfolio of analytics solutions, business and industry expertise.

This includes almost 9,000 dedicated business analytics and optimization consultants and 400 researchers. IBM secures hundreds of patents a year in analytics, and continues to expand its ecosystem, which consists of more than 27,000 IBM business partners. IBM has also created eight global analytics solution centers in Berlin, Beijing, Dallas, London, New York, Tokyo, Washington and Zurich.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012. With the closing of this acquisition, it is expected that all of Varicent’s employees will join IBM’s Software Group.