How Does Xactly Plan to Grow Average Revenue Per Customer?

According to a MarketsandMarkets report, the global sales performance management market that includes software and services is projected to grow 18% annually to $5.6 billion by the year 2020. North America is the biggest market in terms of market size, but APAC and Europe are expected to drive the biggest growth in the coming years.

Xactly’s Offerings

San Jose-based Xactly was founded in 2005 by Christopher Cabrera and Satish Palvai, alumnus of Callidus. Christopher initially wanted Callidus to build a SaaS model instead of the traditional license-based model. Xactly came about because Callidus refused to see things the SaaS way.

Today Xactly provides an aligned incentive compensation that provides decision-makers with the data insights needed to tap the motivational power of their incentive compensation. It is a leading provider of enterprise-class, cloud-based, incentive compensation solutions for employee and sales performance management. Its solution helps organizations align employee incentives with their behavior and with company goals. Organizations using Xactly’s solutions are able to make better strategic decisions, improve employee behavior, and drive improved sales and employee performance while designing better incentive plans and reducing error rates in incentive compensation calculations.

Xactly’s Financials

Xactly’s product has been received well in the market. Revenues have climbed steadily from $36.3 million in 2013 to $47.2 million in 2014 to $61.1 million in 2015. Significant investments in growth have impacted its profitability. Net losses have widened from $9.4 million in 2013 to $14.5 million in 2014 to $18.5 million in 2015. More recently, the company recorded revenues of $95.5 million for fiscal year 2017 with a net loss of $16.9 million for the year.

Xactly was initially venture funded, having raised $90 million from investors including Illuminate Ventures, Bridgescale Partners, Rembrandt Venture Partners, Outlook Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Glynn Capital Management, Alloy Ventures, Bay Partners, Cheyenne Capital, and Spinner Asset Management. In the summer of 2015, the company listed on the NYSE under the ticker XTLY by raising $56 million at a valuation of $304 million. Then, early last year, Xactly was bought by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for an estimated $564 million.

Xactly’s Acquisitions

Under Vista’s guidance, Xactly continues to make big movements within the space. Last year, it completed the acquisition of territory and management software maker AlignStar. Xactly will be able to leverage AlignStar’s territory management and optimization solutions to deliver an end-to-end sales performance management solution. Xactly already offers solutions for quota management, incentive management, analytics, and insights. The addition of territory planning tools from AlignStar will allow companies of all sizes to visualize potential, analyze performance, optimize territory design, and manage field resources to maximize results. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Earlier last week, Xactly also announced the acquisition of another sales performance management company Obero. According to the new ASC 606 / IFRS 15 revenue recognition public companies will need to focus more on the recording and reporting of standard incentive compensation. Obero will offer Xactly the capabilities to comply with these standards and integrate commission data with existing financial systems. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Questions for Xactly’s Board

As I mentioned earlier, successful SaaS Companies have an unprecedented opportunity these days due to a hyperactive startup market. What are the vectors along which Xactly wants to develop or acquire additional products with which to increase their average revenue per customer?