Vendors selected for the "Cool Vendor report" are "innovative" and "impactful"
Lexington, MA, March 10, 2009 - , Makana® Solutions Inc., the leading provider of self-service enterprise incentive management, today announced that it has been recognized as "Cool Vendor" by Gartner Inc. in the March 2009 "Cool Vendors in CRM Sales, 2009 by Michael Dunne, et. al., 4 March 2009".
According to the report, "Many companies are feeling the strain of deteriorating economies, generating greater urgency for new measures to improve sales." Additionally, "new tools in difficult times can appeal to sales, as long as the tools are practical (for example, by demonstrating results within a 12-month time frame) and present tangible benefits, such as greater visibility into revenue-generating activities and the implications of compensation plans in driving sales performance. Gartner has observed that sales analytics are typically too complex for sales organizations to easily exploit, and that tools need to be simplified further to be more usable and attractive to users."
"Over 250 customers now use Makana Motivator to improve sales performance and increase efficiency" said Liz Cobb, CEO and Founder of Makana Solutions. "In today's challenging economic environment, SMB's need an easy way to drive sales productivity and with Makana, they have the sales compensation resources and self-service tools they need."
Makana Motivator provides small and medium businesses a compelling alternative to spreadsheets:
• Self-service solution for small and medium businesses with no costly implementation required
• Incentive planning automation that makes it easy to build great plans with best practice advice built-in
• Easy modeling that accurately predicts incentive cost expense
• Plan documents that clearly and graphically communicate goals and rewards
• Seamless upgrade to automatic incentive payments calculation and generation of web-based performance reports.
About Gartner's Cool Vendor Selection Process
Gartner's listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose. Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn't do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner's interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.
About Makana Solutions Inc.
Makana Solutions' self-service on-demand software helps more than 250 small and mid-sized businesses design and deliver effective sales compensation that supports company goals and motivates sales to deliver results. Makana Motivator Express is the only solution designed specifically for effective sales compensation planning. Makana Motivator Pro includes the planning capabilities, plus the ability to calculate payments and share graphical commission statements and performance reports. Makana has certified integration for salesforce.com sales compensation and is available on the salesforce.com AppExchange. Makana Solutions also offers expert sales compensation consulting and free best-practice resources at www.makanasolutions.com