Enterprise revenue and sales teams are being pressed from both sides: do more with fewer people, and prove impact quarter by quarter; all while weathering 2025’s volatile market. Realistically, growing revenue under these conditions is an uphill battle. However, with the right strategy and tools in place, it is possible. So with this in mind, let’s explore how, moving into 2026, sales leaders can leverage AI in a way that actually delivers value.

There’s an enduring idea that Xactly Corp isn’t ideal for enterprise organizations, yet the product is not the same one you remember from a few years ago. Xactly has quietly built a genuinely AI-forward platform, Xactly Intelligence, on top of decades of incentive and performance data. For large organizations, that combination (enterprise guardrails,  agentic AI, a comp-grade data backbone) is exactly what you want to power critical functions like plan design, quota setting, forecasting, and day-to-day Sales Performance Management (SPM) operations.

What’s New: Xactly Intelligence in plain English

Xactly Intelligence is the AI layer across Xactly’s Intelligent Revenue Platform. It blends predictive models (trained on 20 years of pay/performance history) with newer generative and agentic capabilities. This way, you don’t just get insights, you can turn them into governed workflows, sales forecasting capabilities, and apps your teams actually use. Think: design a plan, simulate outcomes, operationalize it, and monitor compliance—without ten handoffs.

Recent launches round this out:

• AI Agents that automate chunks of the revenue lifecycle (from modeling to administration), with controls that keep practitioners in charge.
• Xactly Design & Reporting for data-driven plan design and enterprise-grade analytics tied to your historical benchmarks.
• Copilot-style assistance to surface context and speed through repetitive admin.

Behind the scenes, these enterprise-ready functions are what make the AI useful: unified data model, governance built for sales performance management, and composability to integrate your CRM/ERP stack without brittle point-to-point work.

The difference this makes for enterprise sales leaders

1) Scale and control without the drag. Xactly Intelligence provides AI tools that can be orchestrated and governed as enterprise-grade. Xactly’s approach lets RevOps and Comp teams compose agents and apps while preserving auditability and approvals without requiring IT assistance.

2) Better plans, faster. With Xactly Design and Intelligence, you can simulate plan changes against years of benchmarked performance data before rollout, reducing costly mid-year resets.

3) Tighter forecasting and course-correction. Revenue intelligence features aggregate operational data and apply predictive models to spot risk/change early—so quota relief, SPIFs, or territory tweaks are proactive, not reactive.

4) A real data advantage. Most “AI” systems in revenue ops struggle because they’re trained on thin, messy data. Xactly’s models are informed by nearly two decades of proprietary pay/performance history—arguably the richest training signal in SPM.

The business case for sales leaders: estimating the ROI

Independent TEI analysis by Forrester found organizations using Xactly Incent achieved a 328% ROI over three years, before you add the incremental benefits of the newer Intelligence/agentic features. The compounding impact of these hyper-intelligent and efficient new features only builds on this foundational figure. For finance and RevOps leaders, that’s a credible baseline for building an internal case.

High-impact enterprise sales performance use cases to pilot first

Enterprises considering Xactly can realize the most value in the shortest timeframe by pinpointing their unique challenges and developing an individualized implementation plan to target them. But, to get you started, here are a few highly impactful targeted areas of improvement that enterprises can target to see quick value:

• Plan redesign with simulation: Use historic and benchmark data to model three plan variants, then roll out built-in monitoring and exception handling for your sales teams.
• Quota & coverage optimization: Blend revenue intelligence signals with agentic workflows to formalize quarterly adjustments.
• Administration at scale: Let AI Agents handle routine crediting, adjustments, and approvals; keep humans in the loop for thresholds and policy exceptions.
• Explainable analytics for compliance: Enterprise reporting packs provide traceability from plan rule → transaction → payout—critical for audit.

Risks and how to mitigate them

When you layer advanced AI capabilities on top of complex enterprise revenue operations, the risk isn’t in the technology itself; it’s in how people and processes interact with it. In other words, so long as you invest in the right AI tools (integrated with the right sales data), the success of the project depends on how well they are deployed and utilized.

For enterprise organizations, overlooking these foundational areas can lead to inconsistent outputs, compliance headaches, or technical debt that compounds over time.

1. Model Trust & Governance

AI can accelerate decision-making, but if you can’t explain why a model made a recommendation, your finance, audit, and compliance teams will slow everything back down. That’s why establishing a model governance framework is critical from day one.

• Why it matters: Unmonitored models can drift over time, leading to inaccurate quota allocations, biased recommendations, or unexpected payout impacts. In regulated industries, this can create audit exposure and erode stakeholder trust.
• Mitigation strategy: Implement a quarterly model review cadence with defined owners in RevOps and Finance. Document the scope and boundaries of each agent (what it can and cannot do), and keep approval chains inside Xactly, not buried in someone’s inbox. Xactly’s native governance tooling makes this visible, traceable, and auditable.

2. Change Management

AI won’t fix broken processes; it will amplify them. If your sales team's territories are inconsistent, crediting rules unclear, or roles not well-defined, adding automation can create faster chaos rather than efficiency.

• Why it matters: Poorly defined sales performance management processes can lead to conflicting outputs from AI agents, frustrated users who stop trusting the system, and time wasted reconciling discrepancies instead of driving revenue.
• Mitigation strategy: Stabilize data contracts and clarify who owns what in your revenue process before scaling AI. Leverage Xactly Corp's unified data model to create a single source of truth. Then roll out automation in phases, starting with low-risk, well-understood workflows like approvals or adjustments, so you can course-correct early.

3. Integration Debt

Enterprises often have years of custom point-to-point integrations stitched together with spreadsheets, APIs, and manual workarounds. AI layers magnify this fragility: if one connection breaks, entire agent workflows can fail.

• Why it matters: Technical debt slows agility. If every new agent or analytics feature requires a development sprint to rewire integrations, you lose the very speed AI promised. Worse, critical revenue and sales team operations can grind to a halt if brittle integrations fail mid-cycle.
• Mitigation strategy: Adopt Xactly’s composable integration architecture. Instead of bespoke, one-off connections, use reusable integration components and centralized data flows. This transforms future changes into configuration, not costly rewrites, ensuring your AI roadmap scales sustainably.

How Canidium helps you get sales performance value faster

Xactly Intelligence is most effective when it’s anchored to your operating model. Canidium’s enterprise workshops align plan design, governance, and data readiness with your fiscal calendar; only then do we stand up the initial agents, reporting packs, and change-management playbooks. That way your teams inherit a working system, not a toolbox.

A pragmatic rollout sequence we recommend

1. 90-day foundations: connect systems, cleanse comp/credit histories, deploy core Xactly Incent + Reporting.
2. Design & simulate: run “what-ifs” for next-period plans with Design and set monitoring KPIs
3. Operationalize agents: start with low-risk automations (adjustments, approvals) before moving into coverage and quota ops.
4. Quarterly tune-ups: review model drift, user feedback, and policy exceptions; adjust with RevOps and Finance in one governance forum.

Is Xactly Incent right for you?

For enterprises, the question isn’t “Does AI belong in SPM?”, it’s “Can we get AI that’s secure, governed, and tied to sales data that actually predicts pay and performance?” Xactly’s Intelligence layer, backed by years of comp data and hardened by enterprise workflows, might be the perfect fit for your organization, and it’s moving quickly (Design, Reporting, Extend, Copilot, and now AI Agents). If you’re planning next year’s comp and coverage now, it’s a good time to pilot where Intelligence can remove friction and improve outcomes, without adding headcount.

Want an expert to weigh in on what Xactly sales performance management would look like at your enterprise? Our Xactly team offers free consultations to enterprise organizations with no strings attached. We’ll help you evaluate your options and determine what’s best for your organization, even if that doesn’t include us.