Gartner is pleased to announce the latest version of the Magic Quadrant for Sales Performance Management. The Magic Quadrant examines qualifying vendors for sales performance management including: incentive compensation, quota management, and territory management. This annual report evaluates vendors based on both vision and execution strength.
The SPM market continued to grow in 2016. While Gartner estimates the growth at 5% to $753 million, it should not be compared to the previous two years as the definition of the market was change for 2016. The definition for 2016 considers the core definition of SPM to include incentive compensation, territory and quota management, gamification, territory and quota planning, and advanced analytics techniques (benchmarking, predictive/prescriptive, machine learning). Gartner made this change to reflect and focus on the SPM capabilities that are most important to buyers.
It should be noted that Gartner will continue to cover sales training, coaching, and appraisals which are no longer included in the SPM definition as part of sales enablement research.
As my colleague, Tad Travis, noted in his blog, “Gartner finds that vendors’ incentive compensation capabilities, particularly for rule definition and crediting, are maturing rapidly. This means that the core ICM capabilities are approaching commodity status.” Additional capabilities such as planning and advanced analytics techniques are available and help organizations improve effectiveness of the execution process, connecting planning through to optimization.
Gartner has also released a new piece of research for SPM, a companion to the magic quadrant, SPM Critical Capabilities. Gartner clients should use the Critical Capabilities to further evaluate critical SPM functions such as calculations, rule definitions, modeling, scalability and advanced analytics. Both the Critical Capabilities and Magic Quadrant are available in online and interactive as well as printable formats.
Contact Gartner to learn more about SPM.
The Gartner Blog Network provides an opportunity for Gartner analysts to test ideas and move research forward. Because the content posted by Gartner analysts on this site does not undergo our standard editorial review, all comments or opinions expressed hereunder are those of the individual contributors and do not represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management.