Information Filled Under 'Outsourcing Humor' Category
ActekSoft ACom3 Review Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
ActekSoft was founded in 1999 and currently supports over 30 clients (mostly in the insurance industry). I talked about them earlier this year when they got acquired by Callidus Software . Acteksoft’s flagship product is called ACom3 and can be deployed On-Premise or On-Demand. Approximately one third of ActekSoft’s clients are currently hosted. As I’ve discussed in a previous post , Gartner recently released their 2009 ICM MarketScope for the insurance industry
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ActekSoft ACom3 Review
Last Wednesday we held our monthly Influence Insiders radio show where we discussed several books. You can listen to the show here: I reviewed two books: Talk Less, Say More and Covert Persuasion . In today’s post, I will provide additional details about Talk Less, Say More by Connie Dieken, which I haven’t had enough time to cover in details during the show
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Influence Insiders Radio and Review of Talk Less, Say More: 3 Habits to Influence Others and Make Things Happen
I was a bit puzzled regarding the reasons why my blog has seen a significant increase in traffic over the past few days. Upon reviewing the keywords used by my readers to find LeapComp, I realized that there were 3 old posts in particular that were getting a lot of attention. Super Bowl XLIV: I wrote my first Super Bowl post last year with an analysis of how much football players participating to the Super Bowl received in bonus ever since the first Super Bowl.
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Super Bowl, Oscars and Olympics
Yesterday, CSO Insights released a summary of the results of their 16th annual Sales Performance Optimization study. The survey of 2,800 companies revealed that the number of reps making quota in 2009 dropped to 51.8% from 58.8% in 2008. This caused plan attainment to drop to 77.9% from 85.9%… And this is after 86% of the firms surveyed increased quotas for 2009
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Percentage of reps making quota in 2009 dropped to 51.8% from 58.8% in 2008
For February, Influence Insiders are going to have a good old fashioned book club. Tune in to hear from our group on the books that influenced the way we influence. I’m sure with our group the selections will be diverse and interesting. Tune in today (Wednesday at noon EST) by following this link , or dial in: (646) 381-4430. I will talk about two books that I read recently: Talk Less, Say More by Connie Dieken and Covert Persuasion by Kevin Hogan and James Speakman.
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Influence Insiders’ Book Club Edition – Tune In Today
Gartner released a market overview specific to the insurance incentive compensation industry. For those who haven’t seen it or don’t have access to it, here is a summary of what I found to be the most interesting facts: There are 9 main ICM vendors in the life, property and casuality (P&C), and health insurance industry: ActekSoft, Callidus Software, CSC, CSSI, MajescoMastek, SAP, SunGard, Synygy and Versata
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Insurance ICM Industry Market Overview
As my position offers a unique opportunity to work with companies at the early stages of an SPM selection process, I always amazed at the perceptions companies have as it relates to what the various systems will cost them from a ‘licensing’ standpoint all the way through and including implementation.
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Pricing Expectations for SPM Solutions; When ‘Expensive Solutions’ End Up Being ‘Cheap’
I talked about Actek (recently rebranded as ActekSoft) before, and I was actually just getting ready to post a review I did of their software before the holidays. If you are not familiar with ActekSoft, it is another company with an incentive compensation software called ACom3, focusing on the insurance industry and gaining quite a bit of momentum and popularity in that vertical.
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Callidus Software Acquires ActekSoft
This is my first post of the year, and it’s not even about incentive compensation… But I thought that a quick talk about a first hand account of my experience with the new airport security measures for Canadians planning a trip to the US could benefit fellow flyers. We remember that in 2001, the failed shoe bombing attempt, resulted in having to remove our shoes for screening.
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Temporary Emergency Measures Include NO Carry-on Bags to U.S.A.
Two weeks already, and no time to talk about our latest Influence Insiders webcast about incentives ( listen to recording here ). Fortunately, Paul took the time to write a good recap on his blog .
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Influence Insiders on Incentives, and Can More Work be an Incentive?
I was talking with a colleague about a client for which we both worked earlier this year. This client is a large health insurance company. They recently moved into a new headquarter, and along with the new building came a new cafeteria and a new health incentive program
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Cafeteria Health Incentive Program or Fat Tax?
[ed. note: repost of a 2006 Iowahawk bit made strangely relevant by this bizarre news bite . Hat tip to reader Mike Miles] Green Bay, WI – Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny’s and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.
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Seething Midwest Explodes Over Lombardi Cartoons
I’ve been too busy to write regularly on this blog and now I’m getting in ‘another thing’. I can’t believe I’m taking on anymore ‘work’, but I think this one could actually be really fun. Paul Hebert of I2I brought together a group of thought leaders in different areas of business and influence and started the Influence Insiders. The Influence Insiders BlogTalkRadio show will be the first Wednesday of every month, 12:00-1:00 pm eastern time. Our first show will be this coming Wednesday, so don’t miss it! We’ve set up our station at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/i2i The call in number will be the same for every episode: (646) 381-4430 Influence Insiders is a core group of experts, bloggers, thought leaders and smart folks who will be getting together monthly to talk about the things that challenge them and their clients associated with engaging audiences
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Influence Insiders on BlogTalkRadio
I am in the process of studying for the ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt exam . For those not familiar with Six Sigma, it is a framework and tool set to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects and variability in business processes – which is also relevant to incentive compensation related processes. One of the study book I am using had the question from yesterday’s poll. When I read it, I was thinking exactly what Paul pointed out in his comment; it doesn’t seem like there’s a best answer here. On one hand I want to reward everyone on the team for their work, but at the same time I want to reward individuals for their performance
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Team Performance Poll
The Eastern Ontario Economic Showcase on September 24th had several outstanding speakers including Donald Trump, Terry Matthews (our own Ottawa technology billionaire enthusiast, and Brett Wilson , another successful Canadian entrepreneur. I went to the event, not because I expected them to ‘teach’ me to become rich and more successful; I went because I wanted to see them in person, and Trump in particular. So here are some of my first impressions.
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I went to see Donald Trump and I left remembering Brett Wilson
Like a robust flu virus that just won’t go away, the federal government continues to propose new, vague regulations over banking industry pay practices. Last week, a source from the Fed said the agency would propose guidelines aimed at curbing the “culture of excessive risk-taking” at the nations over 5,000 federally-insured banks. Such rules apparently apply to any employee, such as lending officers, able to take risks that could impact the institution.
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Guest Post: Big Brother’s Latest Attempt to Regulate Bankers’ Pay……And What to Do About It
It’s hard to break some news about your own company without sounding maybe a bit opportunistic, and not completely ‘independent’. However, I thought it was still worth mentioning that OpenSymmetry – which is one of the major consulting company in the SPM space – is adding to its arsenal of services and departing from being primarily focused on system integration. OpenSymmetry has been offering strategy services for a while – mostly activities leading to an implementation. Some of these services included evaluating the compensation system’s current state, helping out developing a business case, documenting requirements, writing RFPs, performing readiness assessments, evaluating proposals, etc. A few months ago they also created a small ‘Business Transformation’ unit responsible for everything process related (process optimization, process reengineering, process reviews, change management, etc). This seems like a reasonable offering considering that most compensation problems arise from process issues more than technology issues! Coincidentally, my next challenge at OpenSymmetry is to lead and grow this new strategy business unit (anyone needs any help?).
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What’s new at OpenSymmetry – Business Transformation Consulting and Sales Compensation Design Services
Guest Opinion by Professor John Evans Evans-John Harvard School of Harvard Faculty Asshole Studies Harvard University When I first learned of the arrest of my colleague Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates after he stood up to the fascist jackboots of a declasse, ill-educated Cambridge police officer, I was of course angered — but scarcely shocked. L'Affaire Gates simply aired, in public, the dirty 100-thread-count table linen of an American culture where Harvard faculty assholes still face a daily struggle against profiling, abuse, and insolence. It will come as no surprise that Skip's arrest was the talk of the Douchebag Room at the Harvard Faculty Club last Friday.
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Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty Assholes
Special Guest Commentary by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) The statistics are sobering: the cost of American heath care is rising almost as fast as the cold, briny water bubbling up from our floorboards. So far we have already lost the 8-track player and several Vic Damone tapes, and if allowed to continue these trends threaten to engulf all of us within the Oldsmobile.
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You Stay Here While I Swim and Get Us Some Universal Health Care
I have a close friend named Norm who is a great photographer and a great person in general … recently he was telling me that all he does is work. That might sound familiar to some of you — I’ve certainly been there at different points in my life, although these days I have to say that I’ve found a pretty good balance between all the important things in my life, including work, family, and other things I’m interested in. Norm asked me to write a post about work-life balance, because althou
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Balance Between Work and Life
In most cases, an SPM implementation leverages several consultants (as I posted before , either from a 3rd party consulting company specialized in Sales Performance Management like OpenSymmetry , a large IT consulting firm like Accenture , or directly from the solution supplier). With a very aggressive implementation schedule, and a significant investment in time and money, it only makes sense to want the consultants to perform at their maximum efficiency. That’s why several ‘things’ should be ready before the clients arrive on site.
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Ready, Set, Go!
Iowahawk Guest Commentary by Judge Sonia Sotamayor Nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court There has been a great deal written in recent weeks about an old extemporaneous quote of mine in which I stated that “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” One needn't read the prophetic entrails of my culture's colorful Santeria chicken sacrifice ceremonies to realize this out-of-context quote has caused some public concern and confusion. I would like to take this opportunity to clear up any lingering questions, and reassure the American public I will bring to the Supreme Court a jurisprudence borne of the intellect of Louis Brandeis, along with the spicy salsa rhythms of Tito Puente and Celia Cruz.
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A Wise Latina Will Add Spice to the Menudo of Justice
“Money related issues in marriage can draw a husband and wife closer together.” F ollowing this phrase a laugh typically ensues. People think someone is obviously trying to humor them by speaking such ridiculous words. Money brings about intimacy in marriage? I want to plead with you to accept this premise – all married couples have the potential to a healthy and intimate financial relationship. Here are some of the common complaints about money in marriage: “My husband and I are never
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Ten Ways To Improve Financial Intimacy In Marriage
Good riddance to bad Rattner! Now get on the stick and tell Washington you support the one man who can lead the American auto industry back to greatness. Send me a link to your official endorsement, and let's get Detroit rolling again! ENDORSED BY: Johnny Pazzesco, Sono Annoiato Sidemeat Moe Lane , Red State Rand Simberg, Transterrestrial Musings Exblogitate Robert Belvedere , Camp of Saints Tom the Impaler Moogie Dr.
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Start the Groundswell
LOS ANGELES – Millions of fans from around the globe gathered along Sunset Boulevard to pay final respects to California today, as a slow moving funeral procession transported the eccentric superstar state's remains to its final resting place in a Winchell's Donuts dumpster in Van Nuys. The self-proclaimed 'King of Pop Culture' died last week at 160, in what coroners ruled an accidental case of financial autoerotic asphyxiation
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Fans Flock to Mourn California, 1849-2009
Yesterday, a friend was laughing at me because I was eating my pizza with a fork and a knife. For the record, I usually only use them when my pizza is too hot to hold with my bare hands. We started to talk about pizza eating habits, and she started talking about a person she knows who eats pizza with chopsticks. The points I want to make today is that there are usually many tools to perform the same job, and that the choice of ’solution’ is often a matter of opinion and personal preference, as long as the solution (chopsticks) can meet the requirements (eating the pizza)
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Pizza and Chopsticks
Virgin sacrifice amendment: sports trivia experts, Trekkies, medieval re-enacters fear worst WASHINGTON – The President's landmark 'Cap and Trade' bill faces an uncertain fate this week, as congressional backers of the carbon-limiting legislation face mounting opposition from a myriad of interest groups angered by its controversial ritual virgin sacrifice provision. “We are asking our members to send a strong message to Washington that this bill is wrong for America's energy future, and wrong for the virgin community,” said Bret 'Aslan' Crawford, a spokesman for the Action Figure Collectors of America
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Virgin-Americans Vow Fight Against Cap-and-Trade’s Blood Sacrifice Amendment