Why is this announcement so important? Verint^® Systems Inc.  announced substantial enhancements to its Verint Workforce Optimization^™ software designed to help contact center, back-office and branch operations better manage the performance of employees and operations.Armed with a brand new user experience and analytics, this latest release includes innovations in performance management to help organizations gain even greater insight into how employees are performing, how well goals are being met and how to better engage and take action on these insights.

This technology release comes at a time when market adoption for performance management software is projected to rise, according to research conducted by Saddletree Research. In a recent survey 22 percent of respondents identified performance management as the “most likely” solutions to be replaced in 2016.  

Why Is It Important to Balance Cost, Quality and Customer Service? Managing performance and productivity in a typical enterprise is no easy task, given disparate systems, complex processes and the differences in performance metrics between roles and functions. Performance management is a practice and culture that applies to individuals, teams and departments. It requires organizational buy-in, transparency, regular measurement and a focus on business-oriented goals. To help companies master these dynamics, Verint Performance Management^™ features a unified set of dashboards, scorecards, coaching, e-learning and gamification capabilities that enable a closed-loop cycle and advanced approach to performance management.

What Does This Latest Release Feature? This latest release features a new state-of-the-art user interface that supports advanced visualization, data exploration, and analysis of employee and company-wide performance, providing critical executive insights that support time-sensitive decision making and actions. The enhancements also enable managers to work more effectively with the addition of new flexible scorecard widgets and dashboards. Likewise, employees benefit from a more intuitive performance scorecard and greater visibility into their individual metrics and achievement of goals. 

What Does the Scorecard Include? The solution also features scorecard workspaces that offer performance summaries and overviews, heat mapping, performance comparisons and multiple views of key performance indicators (KPIs). Using these scorecard workspaces, users can visually and automatically identify answers to employee engagement questions, such as: Which employees are meeting and exceeding goals and which areas need improvement? Is the performance of employees consistent across time? Where is performance improving and declining? How do peer comparisons map and trend? And how does the performance of individual employees change over time?

How Can Companies Benefit from Advanced Analytics? In addition, a new improvement opportunities widget has been added to Verint Performance Management, enabling organizations to automatically surface KPIs that represent opportunity and improvement areas based on user-definable criteria and data analysis. With this capability, managers can quickly identify the employees and KPIs that need attention based on their scores or recent trends.

What Does Gamification Have To Do With Performance? Also embedded in this latest release is the ability to leverage Verint Gamification^™, a solution that applies game mechanics and behavioral science “game thinking” in a business setting. Using gamification, organizations can engage employees, motivate them to improve skills and knowledge and solve problems, as well as enable them to take action and immediate control over their performance. The latest version of Verint Performance Management became generally available in November 2015.

For more information about Verint Workforce Optimization solutions, click here.

@DrNatalie Petouhoff, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research