Varicent

About Varicent

Varicent has lived three corporate lives: founded in Toronto in 2005, acquired by IBM in 2012 — where its engine ran the Cognos Incentive Compensation Management business for seven years — then bought back and relaunched as an independent company in January 2020 under founder and CEO Marc Altshuller, with backing from Great Hill Partners and Spectrum Equity. The team has grown past 700 employees since the divestiture, and Gartner named Varicent a Leader in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for Sales Performance Management — a fair signal of the tier it competes in: banks, insurers, telecoms, and other large organizations with complex payee populations.

The platform spans three pillars. Incentives pairs AI-guided plan modeling with a calculation engine that runs complex commission structures at scale and keeps a full audit trail behind every calculation — the requirement that separates enterprise ICM from everything below it. Sales Planning covers territory, quota, and capacity planning. Seller Insights gives reps real-time earnings and attainment visibility, including through native iOS and Android apps, still not a given at this end of the market. Underneath, a built-in ELT layer connects, cleanses, and governs the sales data feeding the plans, and public REST APIs plus pre-built CRM, database, eCommerce, and HCM connectors handle integration. Procurement follows enterprise convention: no published tiers, no free trial, third-party listings showing only 'pricing available upon request', and every contract a negotiated quote. Smaller teams should look downmarket before starting an evaluation here; for the organizations Varicent actually targets, the seven years running IBM’s ICM business read less like corporate trivia than a stress test the calculation engine already passed.

Pricing

Model

Paid

Starting price

Custom quote

Notes

Enterprise quote-based pricing only; no published tiers, no free trial, and no free version. Third-party listings show 'pricing available upon request.'

Key Features

• Incentive plan design with AI-guided modeling and plan simulation
• Commission calculation engine for complex structures at enterprise scale, with a full audit trail behind every calculation
• Sales Planning module for territory, quota, and capacity planning
• Seller Insights dashboards with real-time earnings and quota-attainment visibility for reps
• Built-in ELT data layer that connects, cleanses, and governs sales data
• REST APIs plus pre-built CRM, database, eCommerce, and HCM connectors
• Native iOS and Android mobile apps for sellers

Platforms

• Web
• iOS
• Android
• API

Alternatives to Varicent

• Xactly Incent
• CaptivateIQ
• Salesforce Spiff
• Performio
• Everstage
• Forma.ai