The 2009 MarketScope for Insurance Incentive Compensation Management Applications report has given a “positive” rating to Callidus Software.

The report, issued by Gartner, Inc., evaluated nine principal vendor applications for the global insurance market based on five criteria:

• overall viability (business unit, financial, strategy, and organization)
• product/service
• sales execution/pricing
• customer experience
• vertical/industry strategy

“In my opinion,” said Lorna Heynike, senior vice president of marketing at Callidus Software, “Gartner’s ‘positive’ rating underscores our success in working with 40-plus insurance customers to realize significant hard dollar savings with better control and flexibility of incentive plans and payments to producers and to rapidly on-board new producers, grow producer revenue and mindshare, and ensure long-term producer loyalty.”

The MarketScope report, authored by Steven Leigh, notes that insurers should use incentive compensation management (ICM) applications to improve the timeliness, accuracy, and transparency of commissions, bonuses, and other payments to brokers, as well as associated data management capabilities for managing producers.

Leigh also wrote that the interest insurers have in ICM applications is “driven by increasing risks of legacy systems, incorrectly calculated commissions, the need to better manage complex distribution channels and hierarchies, a need for greater flexibility to meet changing business needs, and a need to keep up with competing compensation strategies.”