Profit growth results from retaining valuable customers and cost-optimizing customer service.  Valued customers are acquired by the Sales process and enhanced and retained in the ongoing Service process.

Until now, these outcomes could only be measured after the fact, after the actions, often too late in the workflow to improve behaviors and performance.

But, that is finally changing…   Read more

That being said, let’s state the obvious: using Excel to do anything is computer-enabled manual processing, but it is not automation.  Nor is using fragmented and dis-integrated tools for all of the elements related to sales and selling.  Just as the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, automated Sales Operations management is only as useful and effective as its weakest element.

The goal of selling is to generate more revenue and profits by acquiring, retaining and enhancing profitable customer relationships.  The goal of Sales Operations is to…  Read more

What goes around, comes around. Once again, in an evolving post-downturn business climate, different relationship and performance expectations begin to re-emerge: “new” to some, “back to the future” for others.

Across every sector, the one-dimensional focus on workforce Sales Performance Management (SPM) is again beginning to reveal…  Read more

Once people have goals and targets, to keep them quickly adaptable to Plan changes and evolution over time, and to clearly communicate actual performance results, you need a comprehensive automated performance measurement system.

The Truth that “What Gets Measured Gets Done” is evident because measurement systems are explicit and overt statements from the enterprise to its workforce on how Success is happening, or not.   Read more

It is not a software program or SaaS application that stores workforce performance appraisal results, competencies, and work histories.

It is not Business Intelligence, Analytics or Data Administration software or processes. 

It is also not administration, record-keeping, file management, or accounting about results.

We all tend to understand what we mean by “performance”, the work of getting something done.  The problem seems to be that some in the strategy, consulting, and software realms have inaccurately defined what “management” means.  Read more

Sustained economic downturns cut deeper into workforce reductions, into the realm of top-performers that missed cutbacks in earlier rounds. These downturns also reduce competitors, and reduce customer service levels of the surviving enterprises.

This chain of events sets up more on-the-ground bad news for unprepared enterprises when…   Read more

Without good blueprints, the house you build will be ugly and sub-functional, maybe dangerous (sounds like too many enterprises we all know, right?).  With good blueprints but bad construction, the house you build may be nice looking, but certainly sub-functional and definitely dangerous. 

Practically speaking, while both Strategy Formulation and Execution have their challenges and difficulties, we’ve seen…   Read more

From that vantage point, we discovered a fundamental standard that has since unfailingly defined, and predicted, the extent to which human organizations succeed. It was, is, a profoundly powerful concept. We didn’t invent or innovate it, we observed and realized it during a client engagement in the early 1980’s.

Since then, we’ve seen similar organizations, implementing the same strategies, using the same processes, vendors and technologies, in exactly the same markets—each remarkably parallel enterprises in virtually all internal and external aspects—achieving diametrically opposite levels of success: one a market-crushing juggernaut, the other a market-crushed disaster. Why?   Read more

Too many organizations, however, both in and outside of the commercial arena, take far too much for granted when it comes to the management of workforce performance. The facts are that when it comes to the workforce, most organizations implement broad-based yet highly fragmented and ineffective initiatives, or invest the minimum required by regulation and law, or both.

Since there are no “Generally Accepted Performance Management Principles”, each enterprise is left to its own devices to imagine, construct, implement, sustain, and evolve its own ‘unique’ approach. They do so with the participation of stakeholders, subject matter specialists, consultants, technologists and governments who have not agreed on any standards.

Sadly, that’s the world within which most workforce members perceive they live and work.  The fundamental consequence is the under-performance of most human enterprises.

Employee/Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is an approach that applies the same process, procedure and technology rigor, consistency, and universality to workforce performance as organizations now apply to Financial Resource Management; at least within an organization.   Read more