Centive History
Founded in 1997, Centive (previously known as Incentive Systems) is a pioneer in the sales incentive compensation management industry. Centive helps businesses not only to automate sales incentive management but also to elevate it to a strategic level so they can drive peak sales performance. Centive’s easy to use, secure solutions have been consistently delivering a compelling return on investment for about a decade now.
Centive Compel® is the leading strategic on-demand sales compensation management solution focused on the needs of mid-market companies.
In 1999, Incentive Systems shipped its flagship product, INCENTIVE™, and named a new market category, Enterprise Incentive Management. The following year, industry analysts AMR Research and Aberdeen Group adopted this new software category name and issued reports recognizing the large market size. Soon thereafter, META Group, Gartner, Hurwitz Group and other thought leaders adopted the EIM category name and began promoting EIM as a critical component of business strategy.
In 2001, Incentive Systems received the first EIM product award from Customer Interaction Solutions magazine. In 2002, Incentive Systems was named in the prestigious Upside Hot 100 company list. In July of 2002, Incentive Systems launched Centive CompCentral™, the industry’s first EIM platform to be deployed on a true Internet architecture (J2EE, thin client, n-tier). As part of this launch, the company changed its brand from Incentive Systems to Centive.
In January 2002, Gartner issued its first “magic quadrant” chart for vendors in this category. Centive was one of only two vendors named in the “Leadership” quadrant. Leadership was awarded “based on competitive wins that drove new client growth…continued development of its software… competitively superior functionality…and strong sales execution.” This recognition was repeated in 2003, with a repeated placement in the “Leadership” quadrant.
In 2004, Centive completed the largest implementation of a commercial EIM system at AIG Sun America (with more than 80,000 payees).
Also in 2004, recognizing the need for automated sales compensation management in the mid-market and the potential of the “Software as a Service” delivery model, Centive began development of a new sales compensation system. That system was designed to meet the budget and functional requirements of the mid-market, targeting customers with fewer than 4,000 payees. This new on-demand, multi-tenant solution, Centive Compel®, was launched as a BETA version in 2004 and in full-production in May of 2005.
In 2006, Compel became the first and only on-demand sales compensation management system to win the industry’s most prestigious awards; the 2006 Codie Award in the “Best Financial Software” category and the CIS Magazine “CRM Excellence” Award. In fact, Centive was so successful with Compel that in September 2006 Centive successfully divested its CompCentral business unit to focus 100% on its vision for on-demand sales compensation management.
From the beginning, Centive has been recognized for its vision to transform sales compensation into a strategic tool for driving sales performance. This vision, combined with Centive’s innovative approach to meeting market requirements, has resulted in creating the success Centive enjoys today in terms of customer satisfaction and financial stability.
