REDWOOD SHORES, California, November 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Merced Systems, Inc., the leading provider of Performance Management solutions that drive business execution in sales and service functions, today announced that analyst firm Ventana Research has issued a white paper titled "Aligning Sales and Service To Achieve Business Excellence."  Available now on the Merced Systems website, the report discusses current business trends, challenges associated with tracking and analyzing customer information, and ways that companies can improve business execution.

"Regardless of industry, most companies share a few common goals, including raising sales, increasing customer loyalty, and reducing costs," said Mark Selcow, president of Merced Systems. "In order to achieve those goals, companies need to gain a better understanding of what process changes will have the most impact on performance and then share that insight throughout the entire company. In this educational white paper, Ventana Research has done an outstanding job of helping companies to understand the steps necessary to analyze existing business practices, outline areas of change, and implement new processes to help improve execution."

Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer at Ventana Research who was recently rated the number one software industry analyst in the world by IIAR, noted the report's focus on the growth of social media channels and how these changes have disrupted commonly held corporate operating models. One of the key points is how companies need to think carefully about how and what they measure with regard to performance.

"Our research into customer and contact center analytics shows that companies continue to favor metrics that focus on efficiency and have been slow to adopt new effectiveness metrics such as first-contact-resolution rates, customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores and customer effort scores," said Smith. "This reluctance to change is hindering how individuals behave and how effectively companies perform."

Ventana Research identifies four key areas that companies should consider when designing a performance management framework:

• Pick a realistic initiative, such as improving sales effectiveness, and stay focused on it
• Think across the boundaries of business units, processes and communications channels
• Focus outward on the customer
• Identify all of the data sources required to support your initiative

Merced Systems' award-winning technology has proven to increase sales and customer loyalty for Global 2000 companies such as, Sprint, ING DIRECT USA, Mazda Motors UK, DIRECTV and Dell. With more than 140 customers and 800,000 sales and service users which support millions of customers worldwide, Merced Systems solutions are deployed in more than 20 countries.

About Merced Systems

Merced Systems is the leading provider of Performance Management solutions that drive business execution in Sales and Service functions. Merced Systems' performance management solutions help drive sales effectiveness, superior customer experience and operating efficiency across a range of vertical industries. Merced System' award-winning products serve Global 2000 customers, and include advanced analytics and reporting, incentive compensation management, coaching, and other performance execution applications. With a strong track record of growth and delivering business impact to its customers, Merced Systems has been profitable for the past eight years. Merced Systems is a privately held company headquartered in Silicon Valley and London, and subsidiary offices in Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, with major customers in more than 20 countries worldwide. For more information on Merced Systems, please visit http://www.mercedsystems.com.

SOURCE Merced Systems, Inc.