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Merced Systems Goes Global....in Hong Kong

Posted by: Gadi Bashvitz on Sep 14, 2011

In this, the second edition of “Merced goes Global” we’ll start discussing our activities in Asia Pacific. I am writing this blog entry from my hotel room in Hong Kong.


 
I wish that this was my view from the hotel, it is actually the view from a client we visited earlier this week.


The Merced office in Hong Kong was the first office we opened earlier this year. We have both Sales and technical people in Hong Kong and it is the HQ for our North APAC operations,  and covers: Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.


Our office is in the Entertainment building in Central HK and is easily accessible from anywhere in HK. It also has a pretty good view of the bay and other famous HK landmarks.

Throughout 2011 we have been making significant progress working with a number customers and prospects on both Sales Performance Management (Incentive Compensation Management) projects and Service Performance Management implementations in the region.


Earlier this week we presented at the Hong Kong CIO Summit where the key topics were the proliferation of data, social and mobile in large organizations customer facing organizations.

 

We discussed the necessity of implementing Business Execution solutions across the front-line operations for these organizations in order to better manage customer experience, profitability and drive operational efficiency. People who participated in the discussion included current customers including Dell and other leading organizations including Coca Cola APAC, Standard Chartered Bank, Cathay Pacific, PCCW, HSBC and others. The discussion was based on the theme of the presentation given by Rob Strickland, the previous CIO of T-Mobile and Dish Networks that was given in HK a few months ago and was followed up by a webinar titled “ Transforming Your Contact Center into a Strategic Asset” the recording of which can be found here.


I will continue updating as we make more progress in North APAC. 


The next post will discuss our ASEAN and India operation headquartered in Singapore and the CXO leadership conference in Singapore which Merced sponsored on September 9, 2011.


BTW, this is how I looked as the courier, bringing all the printed material and posters for the event from Hong Kong to Singapore. Pretty bad for a guy who has perfected the art of spending 3 weeks on the road with no more than a 15 pound trolly…

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Author: Gadi Bashvitz

Gadi Bashvitz is Merced’s VP for Asia Pacific and Latin America, he has been with Merced for almost five years and held multiple senior positions in Product Management, Product Marketing, Business Development and Sales.

What is Employee Segmentation?

Posted by: Diana Leccese on Aug 25, 2010

 In consumer marketing research there are 4 P’s, with the first “P” being People.  Marketers segment consumers by income, geography, gender, age, etc. in order to prescribe the right “treatment” or create the right message to the population.  We are now taking that same segmentation concept and applying it to employee development. 

All employees are not created equal.  We suggest that team leaders and managers segment their employees and then target each segment specifically to get the most from that population.  Segmentation will help the team leaders and managers determine how much time they should spend in meetings, coaching and training with each segment.  Since their time is always tight, we want to make sure we can maximize the benefit team leaders deliver while minimizing time constraints. 

What does employee segmentation mean?  Segmentation is just a way to divide up the team based on performance.  The team can be divided in to:

• Quadrants
• Stack Ranked
• Outliers
• Statistical or Mean-based
• Or divided up manually by the team leader


Not all segments need to be equal in size, as not all segments will need the same coaching or meeting time from the team leader.  For example, I can easily divide a team in to four categories:

• Top Performers
• Solid Performers
• Weak Performers
• Bottom Performers


Depending on the priorities of your business, whether in Sales, Productivity, or Customer Experience, the best way to start employee segmentation is to select one key metric or a balanced score to stack rank the employees; use a metric that is well aligned to your business initiatives.  From there you can decide how to divide up the population, keeping in mind this division will also dictate the team leader’s meeting, coaching and training time for each population group.  Employee segmentation can also address some of the common questions you answer in your organization today, such as, “Who are your top performers, who are your bottom performers, who is struggling?”

For a typical team leader in a Call Center, their team of 21 agents might look something like the graph below:





From the segmentation above, I can easily see I have:
3 Bottom Performers
5 Weak Performers
10 Solid Performers
3 Top Performers


Where would a team leader in your organization likely spend their management and coaching time? Do they get the results your company needs from the current time management decisions (or ‘formula’)?

What we do with these Employee Segments will be covered in my next post – "Where do Team Leaders spend most of their time?"

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Author: Diana Leccese
Diana Leccese is Principal Business Consultant with Merced Systems.  Diana has over 15 years experience in Sales and Service Performance Management as both pre and post sales consultant.  She has worked with Fortune 1000 companies in Telco, Finance, Insurance, and Travel industries.  Diana can be reached at diana.leccese@mercedsystems.com

The World Cup through Merced’s Performance Management Eyes

Posted by: Suzanne Congdon on Jul 22, 2010

 

So the World Cup has come and gone for another four years and all the pundits have analysed it to death. Everyone says the best team won and they were always the favourites, so it ran to plan. One thing that does stick out loud and clear though is that apart from the winners it very much didn’t run to plan for any other team.

All the ‘big’ teams went out earlier than anticipated, some badly. Less established and fancied teams did substantially better. Why? and what comparisons can we draw?

If you condense all the punditry right down, each team brought three factors to the party, rather like a company brings a strategy to the market.  Management,  Ability,  Game Plan.

Those that did well blended these three factors and executed against them superbly.  They understood their competitive advantages and made full use of them.

We can all see how England, France and Italy failed against several of these factors, whilst Brazil and Argentina just simply failed to execute. ‘Surprise’ teams such as Uruguay, Paraguay, Holland, even Germany had all these factors and executed well.

So what about in the performance management world?

 
Can you manage your resources well?

Smart, nimble teams, properly motivated can beat much bigger competition, just look at Holland. 

The goals aren't always scored by the players with the biggest pay checks, proving that incentives are important but they’re not the only way to motivate behavior and drive results.  Coaching, team support and competitive comparison drives strong performance.


What about the ability of your team and its individuals?

Who are your best team members and do they know who they are?  Find the metrics that matter and make them count.


What's your game plan ?

Are your team able to play according to the plan or do the processes and systems unempower them? Just how agile are you to adjust your plan mid-game?


Can you execute well? 

With the right performance management on the team helping you drive your competitive advantages you can.


The best team won, it wasn’t a fluke. Have you got the winning team?

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Author: Suzanne Congdon

Suzanne Congdon is EMEA Marketing Manager with Merced Systems.  Suzanne has over 15 years experience working for enterprise software providers delivering solutions and services to the contact centre industry and can be contacted at suzanne.congdon@mercedsystems.com

How to drive End User Adoption & Success with your brand new Performance Management Solution? (Part Two of Three)

Posted by: Aparna Fernandes on Jul 20, 2010

This entry is part two of three on the topic of “How to drive End User Adoption & Success with your brand new Performance Management Solution?” In my previous post, I introduced the first of seven essentials for adoption success which states that the System will be accepted by users if it promotes the “What’s in it for me?” Today, I will introduce essentials 2-4:

2. The system will be accepted if you explain to me why it is important? Once again, make it simple & tell me “What’s in it for me?  Translate for me how it helps me achieve my goals?
Communication is highly underrated, and often poorly executed! Be organized, plan methodically & clearly determine who is the audience, what kind of communication is needed to them about this solution, what should the vehicle of this communication be, when should it go out to them?  The more informed I have about the new system, the more personalized the message is to me, the more I feel part of the process, the more likely I am to use the system!

3. If I am thoroughly educated on the solution, I am more likely to use it in the way you intended for me to use it!
Yes I want to be trained on the product, but I also want to be trained on the concept of Performance Management. The system is vehicle for Performance Management, but if I don’t understand what Performance Management really means, to me, in my world, how am I supposed to apply it, via this system to appropriately to drive results?  Training around not just the ‘How’ but also the ‘What’ will make me a well educated, effective user!

4. If it is not an additional burden in my day – I am more likely to use it! Weave the usage of the system, and adherence of performance management into my daily fabric. Help me create daily rituals that this solution is part and parcel of. Help make performance management a ‘mindset’ not an extra process: where this is THE way I conduct myself and where system references become part of my daily language! It becomes our culture!

Read my next entry when I share Essentials 5 – 7.

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Author: Aparna Fernandes

Aparna Fernandes is Sr. Director, Customer Success with Merced Systems.  She has more than a decade of experience in fields of performance management, reporting, and strategic planning across various industries, with key focus on developing models for sustained success & business impact with SSPM solutions. She can be reached at aparna.fernandes@mercedsystems.com.

 

What Performance Metrics are Right for my Business? (Part Three of Four)

Posted by: James Burr on Jun 23, 2010

This entry is a continuation of my previous post: What Performance Metrics are Right for my Business? (Part Two of Four).  In my previous post I discussed how the first tier of the return on investment from performance management is improved efficiency. In this post I’d like to introduce the 2nd tier: Focus on your Customers.

Now that you have the foundations in place and have started the process of enabling managers to become effective coaches you can start to introduce metrics that focus more on the customer interactions.

The metrics on this tier are more complex to capture and will often involve combining information from multiple departments and channels.


        1. Can you resolve the Customer requirement on the first interaction?

             Metric: FCR or Right First Time

        2. How do the Customers rate your service?

              Metric: Customer Satisfaction (Surveys, Complaints, Door to Door)

        3. How much does it cost to resolve the customer requirement?

              Metric: Cost per Call Resolution

               

The key to getting the most benefit in this tier is understanding the balance between the Cost Per Call and resolving the customers requirement. Moving to First Call Resolution should include an understanding of the current costs involved in resolving each customer interaction. Customer surveys should be in the context of the product and department being discussed and should be linked back to the original employee.


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Author: James Burr

James Burr is the Business Consulting Manager with Merced Systems. He has over 7 years experience implementing Sales Performance Management systems in a broad range of industries including Telco, Finance and Automotive. He can be reached at james.burr@mercedsystems.com 

How to drive End User Adoption & Success with your brand new Performance Management Solution? (Part One of Three)

Posted by: Aparna Fernandes on May 13, 2010

So, you’ve rolled out a performance management system but after an initial spike, usage starts to drop and productivity is not improving.  You wonder, why?
Has System Adoption been an afterthought?
Myth – “I can start to think about system adoption once I have launched my system!” 

This kind of thinking is akin to swinging too late at a fastball you knew was coming. Time it right and you can hit a homerun!

ROI impact will automatically come once I have launched the new tool?
….Only if the launch has been successful in making this system & Performance Management part of your daily DNA – not ‘that extra thing’ to do.

How to make a system “a solution”?
It is as much science as it is art. It is a science, because of the straightforward logical thought process that can be applied in this space; it is an art because it involves people and important words like culture transformation! 

So where do you start?  Start with the end in mind! -  Plan your Launch with End-User Adoption in mind.
7 Essentials for Success…..
1. The System will be accepted by users if it promotes the “What’s in it for me?”
The new system content needs to be relevant, accurate and complete.  If it includes Key performance indicators users are incentivized/ paid on, they are more likely to go there and use it. If the data is reliable and trustworthy, they are also likely to go there.  And if it has everything important in one place, they are even more likely to go there. 

Finally, if you take away all other alternate sources of the same data/content – they will surely go there! I know a friend who once turned down the most prime location for her coffee shop business because they would not guarantee her the “non-compete” clause in her contract. In other words, they would allow a competitive coffee shop to exist right next to her business in the same strip mall. Odds are her user base would be split in half before she even had a chance! I think you get the point….

Read my next entry when I share Essentials 2 – 4.

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Author: Aparna Fernandes
Aparna Fernandes is Sr. Director, Customer Success with Merced Systems.  She has more than a decade of experience in fields of performance management, reporting, and strategic planning across various industries, with key focus on developing models for sustained success & business impact with SSPM solutions. She can be reached at aparna.fernandes@mercedsystems.com.

What Performance Metrics are Right for my Business? (Part Two of Four)

Posted by: James Burr on Apr 01, 2010

Today I will build on my previous post: What Performance Metrics are Right for my Business? (Part One of Four). 
We've seen that when looking at an organisation and the return on investment in Performance Management there are typically 3 tiers that a company will transition through. In this post I’d like to discuss the 1st tier: Improving Efficiency.

In the first tier the focus is on improving the efficiency of your employees by removing common barriers to their day to day activities and freeing up time to focus on your customers and receive the coaching they require to improve their own performance. Managers are the key to this improvement and understanding whether they are putting time into improving employee performance or instead are spending that time on reporting, data capture or dispute management. When choosing metrics and KPI's to measure performance in this tier it is imperative you give yourself a clear understanding of the following:
 
 1. How much is every contact with the customer costing you?   Metric: Cost Per Contact
 2. How much time are your managers spending coaching?   Metric: Coaching Time
 3. How often do your managers coach your frontline staff?   Metric: Coaching Cadence
 4. Can you identify whether employees are using best practice in their calls?
  Metric: Quality Management (Call Monitoring)

Getting the basic coaching principles right in this tier is crucial and your reporting should be geared towards measuring the correlation between coaching and performance, for example does AHT (employee metric) reduce when Coaching Cadence (manager metric) increases?

In my next post, I will discuss tier 2: Focusing on your customers.

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Author: James Burr

James Burr is the Business Consulting Manager with Merced Systems. He has over 7 years experience implementing Sales Performance Management systems in a broad range of industries including Telco, Finance and Automotive. He can be reached at james.burr@mercedsystems.com 

What Performance Metrics are Right for my Business? (Part One of Four)

Posted by: James Burr on Mar 11, 2010


When looking at Performance Management, a question that gets asked a lot is "What metrics should my company be using to measure performance". The answer given is often a convoluted one involving many caveats, "ifs" and "buts". In this entry, I want to present a different take on how to tell if a metric is meaningful to your organisation and some suggestions for getting the most out of the metrics you already have. This will be part one of a four part series.

The first question to look at is "What is Performance Management" and perhaps the best way to answer this is to look at the answers to two other questions: "What do you expect of your employees?" and "What do your customers expect of you?” The cornerstone of Performance Management lies in exceeding your customers’ expectations during every interaction that they have with your company. Your contact centres and frontline employees are at the heart of this strategy. Performance Management can be defined as: the process of ensuring all levels of your organisation have accurate and timely visibility into the metrics that define your strategy and have the tools available to improve their performance. It's clear that for your company to be successful and meet the two goals of exceeding customer expectations and improving the performance of your employees, your metrics have to reflect where you are as a company. There is no point diving straight to complex KPI's if you haven't laid the foundation stones in your performance management strategy.

When looking at an organisation and the return on investment in Performance Management there are typically 3 tiers that a company will transition through, gaining further benefits at each tier. The tiers are:

1.      Improving Efficiency

2.      Focusing on your Customers

3.      Contributing back to the organization 


The key is to figure out how your company ranks against this structure. In the next couple of weeks, I will delve into each one of these tiers and discuss how to choose metrics and KPIs to measure performance in each tier.




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Author: James Burr


James Burr is the Business Consulting Manager with Merced Systems. He has over 7 years experience implementing Sales Performance Management systems in a broad range of industries including Telco, Finance and Automotive. He can be reached at james.burr@mercedsystems.com

Neuroscience Research Supports the Value of Performance Management

Posted by: Andy Elkind on Jul 22, 2009

Are you feeling up-to-date with the latest research on effective performance management?  Try this simple quiz.


True or false?  To perform at their best, employees . . .

  1. Need to understand the dynamics of their industry and their company's strategy and competitive positioning within that industry.
  2. Need to know the specific behaviors that they have to demonstrate on the job in order to implement their company's strategy.
  3. Need real-time information about how well their company is doing.
  4. Need timely and specific feedback about how well they are performing and where they have opportunities to improve.
  5. Should get their feedback from their immediate manager.

All Done?  Check Your Answers

The correct answers are: 1) True.  2) True.  3) True.  4) True.  5) False. 

Wait a minute - number 5 is false?  Feedback from management is practically a sacred principle of modern management practice.  How can this be? 

It turns out that each of us has a self-image that we've created and refined over a lifetime of experience.  When we experience something that conflicts with this self-image - for example, negative feedback from our manager - it creates internal conflict which psychologists call cognitive dissonance.  In response to this feedback, we could learn new skills or change our behavior.  But we usually don't.  Instead, we maintain our self-image by "rationalizing away the feedback, and either attributing the cause of the performance failure to external factors out of our control or discounting the source of the feedback."

That's the conclusion of Charles S. Jacobs in his new book Management Rewired - Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science. 

Jacobs emphasizes that employees do need timely and specific feedback.  "It just can't come from the manager.  Instead, managers will need to install systems to provide employees with an objective source of feedback."

Hmmm.  An objective source of feedback - sounds like Performance Management applications will continue to be one of the most important applications in the Enterprise!

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Author: Andy Elkind

Andy Elkind is Vice President of The Elkind Group, a San Francisco-based firm that provides training, coaching, and consulting services to transform organizations.  The Elkind Group aligns strategy and performance so that the front-line makes a greater contribution to the bottom line.

Think More Strategically for the Long-term

Posted by: Matt Katz on Jun 18, 2009

As the initial shock over the receding economy has started to fade, smart companies are starting to think more strategically for the long-term - not just what the end of the quarter will bring.  With long-term business plans in mind, what are some of the guiding principles companies should follow?

1. Alignment - What really matters to your business - to your customers, employees, and shareholders?  What are the measures and metrics that align with those stakeholders' values?  And most importantly, what actions must be taken to make progress against these measures?  Doesyour operation have the integrated coaching and workflow to close the performance gap?  Are there effective public recognition or incentive programs to reward both performance and progress toward goal?  Can your organization focus and align your employees' activities on the 3-5 critical measures they can impact, empowering them to act appropriately to attain both personal and company goals?  Giving front-line employees and managers the power to track their KPI's daily and their rank among peers helps bolster self-correction.  Giving supervisors the information and tools they need to improve their coaching drives accountability for the alignment of staff with results.

2. Reducing Variability - Variability limits an organizations' ability to improve performance and attain business goals. By identifying sources of both rep performance and business process variation, and then defining initiatives to reduce the occurrence of variability, operations can significantly improve customer experience while reducing operational expense. Where does your organization see variation in performance? What approaches have you taken to reduce this variation? Most organizations focus on the "outliers," or invest too much time singling out bottom performers. Instead, try to identify the employee segments where improvement can have the biggest impact (often mid-performers), and develop the necessary coaching and employee development processes around the needs of this group.

3. Accountability - Accountability within an organization is what makes a strategic plan stick.  But where does accountability come from?  When front-line employees have visibility into their current and past performance, and can see the business impact they and their team are having on the organization, strategic initiatives can mature from a "flavor of the month" program to an embedded or ritualized aspect of the business.  Engagement and accountability at the executive level is critical to developing the organizational infrastructure needed to succeed.  And without buy-in and program commitment at the top, any strategic initiative can prove to be a dead end.

Taking action on all of these principles simultaneously may appear daunting, but attempting to answer any of these questions will yield progress. What would it take to answer only 1-2 of these questions in your organization this week?

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