Varicent Buy Boosts IBM's Sales Compensation Analysis Offerings

The move will help IBM expand its already-extensive business analytics software offerings, especially its Smarter Analytics products geared toward line-of-business applications.

IBM expects to complete the acquisition of privately held Varicent by the end of this quarter, after which all of Varicent's employees will become part of the IBM Software Group. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.

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Varicent's applications are used to collect and analyze sales data across finance, sales, human resource and IT departments "to gain efficiencies, uncover trends and improve sales performance," according to an IBM statement. They help businesses improve their sales-related processes "and strategically align incentive compensation with profitable growth," said Dan Shimmerman, Varicent president and CEO, in the statement.

IBM will combine Varicent's software with other business analytics software it has acquired in recent years, including Algorithmics, Clarity Systems, OpenPages, Cognos and SPSS. IBM also said Varicent fits its model of delivering both on-premise and cloud computing business analytics applications.

"The acquisition of Varicent advances IBM's efforts to drive analytics capabilities into the hands of front-line employees to transform business operations and ultimately improve the bottom line," said Les Rechan, general manager of IBM business analytics, in a statement.

"For the thousands of sales organizations still relying on silos of data, spreadsheets and e-mail to manage sales, there is an enormous opportunity to apply analytics to this vital area of business and uncover new, untapped growth opportunities."