In our third edition of “Merced goes Global” we travel south to Singapore and our APAC headquarters which covers our operations throughout APAC but specifically Singapore, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

I am actually writing this posting on a flight between Hong Kong and Mumbai.
On the right are a few shots from of our office in Raffles Place.

Our Singapore headquarters serves not only as a sales office, but also as a development center. We are very excited about our partnership with the IDA and the development center we are establishing in Singapore which will enable us to better develop solutions and support customers across Asia Pacific.

Our Singapore team has been busy, working with prospects and customers, supporting existing customers (we are currently in the process of  deploying our solutions to our fifth customer in the Philippines) and working with partners across the region to enable them and make them self sufficient selling, deploying and supporting both Merced Performance Suite and Merced Incentive Compensation Management.

A couple weeks ago Merced hosted the Singapore CXO Summit where our team presented on the topics of performance management and business execution in today’s ever-changing world of social, mobile and cloud computing. We had some great discussions about these topics with people from leading organizations including Standard Chartered Bank, UOB, OCBC, StarHub, Maxis, Axa and other.

Here are some pictures of Rana Banerji, our regional sales director for ASEAN and India and Varma Vegesana, our Solution Consultant in APAC, at the conference.

A hot topic at the conference was the recent webinar we held with Sprint about coaching and master coaches where Sprint attributed $450Mn in savings to their Merced deployment. You can find a recording of this webinar here.

We are also excited that we were one of the sponsors on the CCAS award gala in Singapore on October 21. You can find the link to the gala dinner here.

My next post will discuss the Asian Carriers' Conference that we sponsored in Cebu, the Philippines. We had great attendance and meetings at this conference.

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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.

In the spirit of Billy Beane, here are examples of "Moneyball Metrics": uncommon and non-obvious metrics which we have found to have a major impact on performance:

• Coaching frequency -- can be tracked using web Forms and is always highly correlated with subsequent agent performance management
• AHT or ASA variation -- permits superior forecasting and scheduling -- which in turn permits smaller shifts -- as a result of separating controllable and random variation
• Supervisor effectiveness indexes -- comparative impact of coaching, agent improvement under their management, and impact of rotating team leaders
• Balanced scores -- indexes of agent or team performance with data from multiple data sources, weighted by importance
• Bonus calculations -- weighted averages, eligibility rules (such as attendance or quality minimums), dollar payouts
• Metric tracking sessions -- frequency with which Supervisors and other managers check and use statistics on their teams to make better, fact-based decisions

Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/
Moneyball white paper on www.mercedsystems.com

In the 2003 bestseller and now major motion picture "Moneyball," (opening nationwide on Sept. 23) we learn how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane used data-driven management to reshape a laggard major league baseball team into a world-class winner.  Instead of focusing on traditional metrics, Beane discovered that winning baseball games was more strongly correlated with lesser-known statistics.  He also focused on elements of the game where success metrics hadn't been developed in the past due to lack of data.  He trained his organization to track new types of statistics to gain a data advantage in recruiting and player development, and, critically, he got his entire organization aligned around the new metrics and philosophy.  As a result, the A's became one of the winningest teams, with one of the lowest cost structures, in major league baseball.

Like the Oakland A's and other baseball teams before "Moneyball," many contact centers use time-honored measures but miss the opportunity to truly redefine and improve performance. 

During the last few years many teams have begun emulating the A's "Moneyball" methods to transform their organizations to better compete.  Given the large financial opportunity for operational savings and customer loyalty impact in the contact center, it's likely that as Performance Management proves itself in this environment, the same competitive ripple effect will take place.

Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/sloan-sports-conference-0308.html
Moneyball white paper on www.mercedsystems.com

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.

At the end of 2010 we decided it was time to build on Merced’s success in North America, Europe and initial success we had in APAC and establish our business in Asia Pacific and Latin America in earnest.

We put together an aggressive plan which we have been executing to in the last eight months. This blog posting is the first in a series entitled: Merced Goes Global, describing the significant progress we have made in our global expansion.

We’ll start by sharing information about the work we have done and are doing in Brazil. For the past 10 years Brazil’s economy has been one of the world’s fastest growing economies. With a population of around 200M and a booming services industry, Brazil represents the largest potential market in Latin America by far. 

Our approach in Brazil has been to find a strong distributor that can represent Merced, sell our solutions, implement them, and provide the ongoing services and support needed for our implementations. We teamed up with CSC Brasil (www.cscbrasil.com.br), a leading provider of contact center, help desk and sales performance management solutions to large enterprises in Brazil. Throughout the year we have conducted intensive sales and service training with the CSC team and have certified them to sell, implement and support our solutions.

The last week of training (conducted in early August in beautiful Rio De Janeiro), included 23 people from CSC who went through rigorous sales and service training. 

The enclosed images were taken during this training.

Participants learned how to introduce and position Merced’s solutions.

They were them provided with mock situations based on real Merced prospects and implementations and asked to come up with sales or support strategies based on the situation and the training they went through.

The training wrapped up with the teams presenting to a panel of judges that represented prospects and customers.

Participants graduated and were certified to sell / implement or support Merced’s solutions based on the role they perform.

In parallel to the training, CSC and Merced are making good progress with a number of prospects and we look forward to expanding the partnership and significantly growing our business in Brazil.

In the next edition of Merced Goes Global we will focus on some of our Asia Pacific successes.

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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.

Our Day Two winner of our second annual “Sales Performance Contest” was announced at the end of the day at Dreamforce 11 (#DF11) - Saleforce.com’s annual user conference and exposition at Moscone Center in San Francisco.  Check out the video to find out just how many steps it took to win an iPad!

Our first winner of our two day “Sales Performance Contest” was announced at the end of Day Two of Dreamforce 11 (#DF11) - Saleforce.com’s annual user conference and exposition at Moscone Center in San Francisco.  Check out the video to find out just how many steps it took to win an iPad!

Sales Performance Management (SPM) is all about empowering, incenting, measuring, and eventually paying the sales force to align its behaviors and tactics with corporate goals.  The compensation plan is a key part of the SPM process.  Ideally, it rewards the payees for doing what the company needs them to do.  If your sales force is focused on doing things for their own benefit that will also benefit your company, it becomes a win-win.

The payees’ perception of the comp program should always be, “If I do this good thing (sell more, sell more profitably, or sell a better product mix), I will earn this reward.”  The value is lost when it turns into, “I did this good thing (at least, I think I did…), now where’s my money?”  At the end of the day, the same good things might be accomplished, the same rewards paid, but the willingness to do the next good thing might well be compromised when the commission or bonus is seen as payment due to be fought for, rather than as something to aspire to.

What this means to Sales Ops and Finance is that a compensation system that is perceived as an impediment to collecting commissions and bonuses will bring the ROI for the whole incentive compensation program into doubt among the very people who should be trying to find ways to earn more rewards.  Every step forward they make will be immediately followed by a look back to see if the comp system is keeping up.
There are many ways an ICM system can become a roadblock in the sales incentive process.

The ones we have seen most commonly include:

• Inaccuracy
• Lack of transparency
• Unnecessary complication

INACCURACY:  Almost any comp system more sophisticated than long-hand calculations on yellow stickies should be able to calculate accurately – assuming it is operating on good data, and assuming it is configured properly, that is, set up in accordance with your business rules.  Of course, these two assumptions can be pretty big “ifs.” And sometimes it takes a data rationalization project to address one or both of these issues.  But either way, if the commission and bonus calculations coming out of your comp system aren’t correct, the payees will spend more time looking back at old deals than looking forward to new ones.

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY:  Even if the comp system calculates properly, if it isn’t clear and explicit about what has been credited and how much is being paid according to what rules, the users will not have confidence in it and will spend an unacceptable percentage of their potential selling time checking up on it.  Thoughtful reporting of meaningful metrics and useful information will go a long way towards redirecting the payees’ attention forward towards selling instead of looking in the rearview mirror.

UNNECESSARY COMPLICATION:  Can your sales force describe in 25-words-or-less exactly what they must do to optimize their commission checks and help your company achieve its goals?  Or do you have so many complex terms and conditions wrapped around the sales compensation process that no one can answer that question?  The most accurate and transparent comp system in the world won’t counteract the negative effects of 15 pages of legalese tacked onto a comp plan, especially when the legalese is all about the reasons why business won’t count towards the payees’ incentive comp.  A system implementation project can be a good time to revisit the language and logic of the plans to get to a simpler model that the payees can understand and work towards, rather than one to be deciphered after each deal is reported.

Compensation systems and processes are all about changing “wrong” behaviors and reinforcing “right” behaviors.  It’s as much a psychological problem as a technical one.  It’s reasonably easy to get the right answer, eventually.  But you have to make it easy for the payees to do the right thing.  Making them fight for what you’ve promised them takes their concentration off the next deal, and this has a direct impact on top line revenue.

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Author: David Kelly

David Kelly is an Incentive Compensation Management (ICM)  Solutions Architect with Merced Systems.  He has more than a decade of experience in translating ICM business requirements into maintainable, high-performing systems for many companies across various industries.  He can be reached at david.kelly@mercedsystems.com.

CSO Insights, an independent 3rd party research firm, is currently in the process of launching its fourth annual Sales Compensation & Performance Management survey. 

CSO Insights specializes in analyzing companies’ sales effectiveness and optimizing the way they attract, acquire and retain customers.  
Merced Systems is proud to again be a survey sponsor this year.  We would like to invite you to take part in this year’s new survey.  In return for your time (less than 15 minutes) you will be able to compare your answers with those of your peers as you begin designing your plans for 2012. This report will be released September 15, 2011.

In appreciation for taking part in this study, you will:

• Be able to immediately download CSO Insights’ recent study:  2011 CRM Sales Effectiveness Key Trends Analysis
• Receive the full 2011 Sales Compensation & Performance Management report when it is released September 15th.

Click here to take the survey.

Thank you for your interest and for participation in this ongoing sales research effort.

Note: If during the course of taking this survey you need to take a break, simply sign off and when you sign back in again later you will be able to pick up right where you left off.