ARMONK, NY - 25 Jan 2016: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Gartner has positioned IBM in the leaders quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for Sales Performance Management (SPM) report by analyst Tad Travis published on January 21, 2016. IBM was positioned the furthest for completeness of vision.

IBM’s Sales Performance Management (SPM) portfolio improves sales results and operational efficiencies with better management of incentive compensation plans, and smarter administration of sales territories and quotas. Managers and administrators can take control of their operations, eliminate surprises and make better strategic choices for their variable incentive programs.

According to the report, “Leaders demonstrate a market-defining vision of how technology can help top sales executives achieve business objectives. Leaders have the ability to execute against that vision through products, services and demonstrated solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings. Leaders have significant successful customer deployments in North America, EMEA and Asia/Pacific in a wide variety of industries, with proofs of organizational deployments above 500 users. Leaders are often what other providers in the market measure themselves against. Gartner estimates that the software-only portion of the market, to which the largest SPM vendors contribute, came to over $715 million, and that it will grow to $1.54 billion in 2019.”[1]

“IBM's Sales Performance Management is the foundation for how we translate business strategy into actionable goals for our sales people,” said David Waterfall, Director of Global Sales Compensation at Applied Materials.  "The solution has enabled us to get more targeted in our sales strategies and increase executive confidence in our sales compensation planning and execution process.”

"We believe this latest evaluation from Gartner is a reflection of the value our sales performance management solutions bring to our clients,” said Alistair Rennie, General Manager, Industry Solutions at IBM.  “Our solutions drive the right employee behavior and improve sales results and operational efficiencies, enabling our clients to eliminate surprises and make better strategic choices for their variable incentive programs.”

Companies worldwide are using IBM SPM to close the gap between business strategy and sales performance by:

• Reducing commission overpayments
• Automating and streamlining compensation processing times
• Developing sales analytics metrics and insight
• Planning, setting and managing sales quota targets
• Assigning and managing sales territory coverage and sales capacity
• Meeting regulators audit and compliance requirements

IBM's SPM software supports the company's analytics and cognitive computing initiative, which helps organizations find insights in new and emerging types of data to be more agile and competitive.

For more information on IBM Sales Performance Management, visit www.ibm.com/spm.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

[1] Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Sales Performance Management, Tad Travis, January 21, 2016