The common practices for tracking partners' sales statistics are too murky for Chris Cabrera's liking.

The reliance on Excel spreadsheets and sales reports delivered months behind can leave partners in the dark about their performance and thus they could fail to capitalize on incentives, Cabrera said.

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While working for software maker Callidus, which produced sales tracking applications to enterprises such as DirecTV, Cabrera saw how visibility and real-time statistics were able to drive better sales behavior for in-house sales staffs.

Cabrera, now founder and chief executive officer of his own software firm, Xactly, has developed Xactly Incent, an on-demand sales compensation management application able to deliver real-time sales statistics to drive that same behavior across far-flung sales teams and channels.

"You can see where you are and where you have to be while there's still time to do something about it," he said. "What good does it do you to sell your heart out in June and get a commission in check in July … only to find out that it was your March that fell through? If you can see where you are at the end of March, you have time to make five more calls."

Xactly's rules-based and multitenant architecture allows vendors to manage separate compensation and sales models across sales staffs and channels. Partners can access results from anywhere and see real-time results.

The application also allows partners to forecast sales results based on leads they enter themselves.

Cabrera defines his target audience as anyone running a CRM (customer relationship management) program. "Anyone running CRM almost definitely has a sales staff or channel," he said.