Every year at our customer Executive Summit, I'm continually impressed with the innovative and impactful ways our clients are using our solution, but this year, I got some feedback that really stuck out.  I kept hearing, "Wow - I thought I knew a lot about Merced and performance management.  But I had no idea how much more there is out there."  I believe this was in response to the myriad of Merced customer presenters at the conference who are using Merced's performance management solutions outside of the contact center - in field sales, retail sales, partner operations, tele-sales, field service, and back office functions - and to our new products such as Merced Incentive Management and Analyst Workbench.

What's clear is that to enterprising companies, performance management is a simple, universal concept.  It's measuring and managing and improving performance in a broad array of customer-facing functions.  At Merced, we call this Sales and Service Performance Management (SSPM).  This simple concept of aligning and changing the behaviors of front-line employees can be applied in any type of operation in any industry to help companies to hit their performance targets and thrive in their respective markets.

At this year's Executive Summit, we presented a few of our customers, Dell, Embarq, T-Mobile, Vonage, and WellPoint with Summit Awards for distinctive Performance Management implementations.  The interesting thing is that each of these companies has a very different business in a very different industry.  Yet each has harnessed the power of performance management to improve their respective people and processes.  Some have used coaching to effectively deliver customer feedback to front-line employees.  Others have taken complicated metrics and incentive concepts and made them simple enough so that employees can calculate their commission or bonus as they walk across the parking lot. 

We were also fortunate to have a Bain & Co. partner present at the Executive Summit.  He focused on how to apply the principals of performance management directly to improve customer satisfaction with Net Promoter® Score.  When organizations use Net Promoter® Score as both a metric and an internal organizational discipline, companies can not only calibrate the health of their customer relationships, but can also drive improved customer loyalty and nurture the lifetime value of that relationship in their sales and service organizations.  Regardless of the initiative - whether it's improving customer service or increasing cross-sales - performance management is relevant in many different operational environments.

The Sales and Service Performance Management industry is still young, but one thing is certain - it's growing rapidly.  At the Executive Summit this year, as in years past, for every good idea that surfaced, everyone present knew there were ten more even better ideas bubbling to the surface.  I continue to be impressed with the performance improvement efforts of our customers, as well as their sense of commitment and willingness to innovate with performance management in different areas of their businesses.  I can only imagine the possibilities that lie ahead for next year's Executive Summit.