COMPANIES TO WATCH: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Editors' Choice Awards 2008

Compassoft. With an eye toward identifying material errors and potentially fraudulent activity, Compassoft helps companies discover, interrogate and analyze spreadsheet problems within enterprises large and small.

Merced Systems. It's no easy task boosting call center performance, customer service satisfaction and sales effectiveness, but Merced helps in all three areas with insightful metrics and fact-based decision support. Agents and managers know just what to do to please customers and drive results.

RiverLogic. Enterprise performance management requires the ability to model and understand financial and operational interdependencies. RiverLogic helps enterprises map those linkages and understand current and potential performance.

Symphony Metreo. A true performance management system takes you from planning to execution and then closes the loop, letting you analyze what really happened and collaborate to resolve problems. Symphony-Metreo's SymphonyRPM platform brings together all the required elements, including a modeling framework, what-if scenario planning, analytics and real-time notifications.

Verint. Verint applies analytics to the challenge of contact center optimization. Speech analytics spot customer support issues and measure campaign effectiveness. Data analytics look at call routing and transfers to spot gaps in training and IVR (interactive voice response) loops that frustrate customers. Analysis of surveys (Web and e-mail) is the final piece in improving the total customer experience.

Xactly. Sales compensation and performance applications can supercharge sales, but they're tough to administer. Xactly automates the painful, manual steps involved in managing compensation plans and issuing commission statements with a hosted approach that ensures visibility and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.