Sales Performance Management
Software – Vulki by Akeron
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Vulki by Akeron · Featured in Gartner's SPM Market Guide · Cloud or on-premises · Implemented by Inulta
Our solutions
Sales Performance Management
Plan goals and manage incentives, quotas and territories
assigned to your sales force
Drive your business towards achieving all its sales targets. With this solution you can now manage all commercial levers available to guarantee a profitable growth of your company revenues, in a unified way that allows all the teams involved to remain effective in any market context.
Why Sales Compensation Breaks Down at Scale
Every sales organization starts with a compensation plan that fits on one page and a spreadsheet that calculates it. Both work – until the business grows.
Then the plan acquires tiers, accelerators, split credit across teams, product-specific rates, regional adjustments and mid-year changes. The spreadsheet acquires tabs, lookups and someone who is the only person who understands it. And the monthly calculation cycle acquires days: extracting sales data, applying rules, handling exceptions, producing statements, then investigating the disputes that follow.
The cost is rarely just the finance team’s time. Compensation that arrives late, or that a salesperson cannot verify, damages exactly the behaviour it was designed to encourage. When commission statements are questioned every month, the plan stops being an incentive and becomes an argument.
Sales performance management software addresses the mechanics: rules configured once and applied consistently, calculations that run without manual intervention, statements each salesperson can trace to their own deals, and an audit trail that resolves disputes in minutes rather than days.
What Sales Performance Management Software Delivers
Sales performance management covers four connected processes. Most organizations start with the one that hurts most – usually incentive calculation – and extend from there.
Incentive compensation management (ICM)
Compensation plans are configured as rules rather than formulas: tiers, accelerators, thresholds, split credit, clawbacks, multi-currency payouts and plan variations by role or region. Calculations run automatically against sales data, with exceptions routed for approval rather than handled offline. Each payee receives a statement showing exactly which transactions contributed to their payout and how each amount was derived.
Quota planning and allocation
Targets are set at company level and distributed down through regions, teams and individuals – with the totals reconciling back to the revenue plan rather than drifting from it. Allocation methods can account for territory potential, historical performance and headcount changes, so quotas are defensible when questioned.
Territory design and management
Coverage is defined and assigned: which accounts, geographies or segments belong to which team. Balanced territories matter beyond fairness – when coverage is uneven, quota attainment reflects territory quality rather than individual performance, which undermines the credibility of the entire compensation plan.
Sales performance analytics
Attainment, payout cost, plan effectiveness and performance distribution across the sales organization – visible during the period rather than after it closes. The practical question this answers: is the compensation plan producing the commercial behaviour it was designed to produce, and what is it costing?
What Is Sales Performance Management?
Sales performance management is the set of processes and systems used to plan, execute and measure the commercial performance of a sales organization. It covers quota setting, territory design, incentive compensation calculation, and the analytics that tell sales leadership and finance whether the commercial plan is working.
SPM sits between two systems most organizations already have. The CRM records what the sales team does – accounts, opportunities, closed deals. The financial plan records what the business has committed to deliver. Sales performance management is the layer that connects them: translating targets into individual quotas, converting results into compensation, and reporting whether the commercial engine is on track.
Why Vulki by Akeron
Inulta implements Vulki by Akeron, a sales performance and incentive compensation management platform developed by Akeron, headquartered in Lucca, Italy, with offices in New York, London and Paris.
Four connected solution areas
Vulki covers the full incentive lifecycle rather than commission calculation alone:
- Territory and quota planning – territory design by geography, customer segment or product line, balanced against revenue potential, with quotas set from historical performance and market forecasts
- Incentive compensation for sales – commissions, bonuses, contests and spiffs, including plans for external distribution channels and third-party teams
- Incentive compensation for non-sales – MBO frameworks and KPI scorecards extending variable pay to finance, operations, HR and customer success
- Influencer and loyalty programs – gamified engagement for partners, dealers and external ecosystems
What distinguishes the platform
Variable pay beyond the sales team. Most SPM platforms are built for sales commissions only. Vulki treats the whole variable pay structure – commissions, MBOs, bonuses, KPI-based incentives – as one system of record, which matters for organizations where finance, operations and HR also carry variable components.
Transparency for the sales team. The mobile app gives representatives pre-deal simulation (what a deal will earn before it closes), real-time earnings after closing, and full visibility into plan logic – tiers, accelerators, KPI weights. This addresses the most expensive problem in incentive administration: disputes born from opacity.
Cloud or on-premises deployment. Relevant for regulated industries – banking and insurance in particular, where data residency requirements can rule out cloud-only platforms.
Open AI architecture. Akyba, the platform’s agent layer, includes agents for compensation plan setup, dispute triage, performance analysis and user guidance. Unlike most vendors, Akeron allows organizations to connect their own LLM subscription – GPT, Claude, Gemini – rather than paying for a proprietary model.
Integration layer. Vulki DataFlow provides pre-built connectors to ERP, CRM, HCM and payroll systems, with transformations visible and modifiable by business users rather than only by engineers.
Reported outcomes
Akeron reports the following averages from customer interviews: a 20% increase in sales and revenue, 30% improvement in employee retention, 99% payout accuracy, and a 90% reduction in time spent on calculations.
Recognized by Gartner and ISG
Vulki by Akeron is featured in Gartner’s Market Guide for Sales Performance Management and in ISG’s Buyers Guide for SPM and ICM.
Faster processes, smarter decisions
Thanks to Akeron, the company is ready to pursue de development objectives of its employees. Today with Akeron, processes have been significantly simplified, with an almost total cancellation of the need for manual processing and interventions during the monthly calculations of the incentives of all collaborators.
Alessandro D’Auria, Country HR Administration at Decathlon Italy
Choosing a sales performance management platform is a decision you live with for the next 5 – 10 years
Varicent, Xactly, SAP, Salesforce, Anaplan – on a demo, they all calculate a commission. The real differences appear when your plans meet the platform: how exceptions are handled, what happens when a plan changes mid-period, how quickly a disputed statement can be traced back to source transactions, and how much of the ongoing administration lands back on your team.
Platform Selection
Compensation Process Design
Project Management
Data Integration
Before you commit to a platform, you should know exactly how it will handle your compensation plans – including the exceptions nobody documented. We help you find out – with proof, not promises.
Sales Performance Management Across Industries
Insurance
commission structures across agents, brokers and distribution channels, with regulatory requirements on disclosure
Banking
variable compensation across retail networks, with regulatory constraints on risk-taking incentives
Retail
incentive schemes across large store networks, with high payee volumes and frequent plan changes
Energy &
Utilities
sales compensation across direct and indirect channels in regulated markets
Manufacturing
sales compensation across direct teams, distributors and channel partners
Frequently Asked Questions
What is sales performance management (SPM)?
Sales performance management is the set of processes and systems used to plan, execute and measure the commercial performance of a sales organization. It covers quota setting, territory design, incentive compensation calculation, and the reporting that tells sales leaders and finance whether the commercial plan is working. SPM sits between the CRM, where sales activity is recorded, and the financial plan, where its results land.
What is incentive compensation management (ICM)?
Incentive compensation management is the calculation and administration of variable pay for sales teams: commissions, bonuses, accelerators and multi-tier plans. It involves applying compensation rules to sales results, handling exceptions and adjustments, producing statements for each salesperson, and reconciling the total variable cost against the financial plan. In organizations with several hundred payees or complex plan rules, doing this manually every month becomes both slow and error-prone.
What is the difference between sales performance management software and a CRM?
A CRM records commercial activity: accounts, opportunities, pipeline and closed deals. SPM software uses that data to run the commercial management processes around it – assigning quotas and territories, calculating what each salesperson has earned, and analysing whether the compensation plan is producing the intended behaviour. Most organizations run both, with the SPM platform taking sales data from the CRM as an input.
What is quota planning?
Quota planning is the process of setting sales targets and distributing them across the sales organization – by region, team, product line and individual. Good quota planning ties the totals back to the company’s revenue plan, so the sum of individual targets is consistent with what finance has committed to, and applies a defensible method for allocation rather than a uniform percentage increase.
What is territory management?
Territory management is the design and assignment of sales coverage: which accounts, geographies or segments belong to which salesperson or team. It affects both fairness of opportunity and revenue coverage – poorly balanced territories produce quota attainment differences that have nothing to do with individual performance, which in turn undermines the credibility of the compensation plan.
Can sales commissions be calculated in spreadsheets?
For a small team with a simple plan, yes. The approach breaks down as the number of payees grows and plan rules become more complex – tiered accelerators, split credit, clawbacks, multi-currency, mid-period changes. The typical symptoms are a monthly calculation cycle that takes days, disputes from the sales team that take further days to investigate, and no reliable audit trail explaining how a given payment was derived.
What should you look for in sales performance management software?
Beyond the calculation engine itself, four things determine whether an SPM platform works in practice: how it handles exceptions and mid-period plan changes, whether a salesperson can trace a payout back to the underlying transactions without asking finance, how much ongoing administration falls to the internal team versus the platform, and how well it integrates with the CRM and payroll systems already in place.
What are the main sales performance management vendors?
The established vendors in the category include Varicent, Xactly, SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, Anaplan and Akeron, alongside a number of newer entrants. Gartner publishes periodic evaluations of the market, which is why searches combining vendor names with Gartner analysis are common at the evaluation stage. The right choice depends less on feature comparison than on how each platform handles the specific complexity of your compensation plans.
What is Akeron?
Akeron is a European sales performance management vendor headquartered in Lucca, Italy, with offices in New York, London and Paris. Its platform covers incentive compensation management, quota and territory planning, and sales performance analytics, with deployments across consumer goods, insurance, retail banking, utilities, telecommunications and retail.
What is Vulki?
Vulki is the sales performance and incentive compensation management platform developed by Akeron. It covers four connected areas: territory and quota planning, incentive compensation for sales teams, incentive compensation for non-sales roles through MBO and KPI scorecards, and gamified loyalty programs for partners and external channels. Vulki is available in cloud and on-premises deployments, and is featured in Gartner’s Market Guide for Sales Performance Management.
Is Inulta an Akeron implementation partner?
Yes. Inulta is an Akeron implementation partner, listed in Akeron’s business partner network. Our consultants handle the full implementation cycle – documenting existing compensation plans, configuring the platform, running parallel calculation cycles and supporting the transition to production.
How long does a sales performance management implementation take?
Timelines depend mainly on the complexity of the compensation plans and the state of the source data. A focused implementation covering incentive calculation for a defined population typically runs over several months, with the first cycles calculated in parallel with the existing process before switching over. Plan complexity – the number of rules, exceptions and historical variations – drives the effort more than the number of payees.
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