LeapComp - Sales Performance Management Blog

Before I left on vacation, I wrote a few posts on Management by Objectives (MBO), but I didn’t have time to post the solution reviews before leaving. I will now resume this series by posting a quick review of one of Callidus Software’s latest on-demand offering called TrueMBO.

As I mentioned in the previous posts, administering the MBO process can be very time consuming. TrueMBO eliminates the need for back and forth e-mails between employees and managers when objectives are being decided upon, and also later when employees are assigned a performance achievement for each objective. It can also be used as a central point to administer MBOs company-wide.

When a manager logs in TrueMBO, he or she will see 3 sections; one section displays the MBO programs currently setup, another is the Inbox section where managers and employees can exchange messages related to MBOs, and the last section is for the many pre-configured and customized reports.

Clicking on the name of the MBO Program opens up a new tab with additional information and options. In this tab, a manager will be able to set objectives for the program, to score these objectives, and to notify the team of their performance. The Organization Hierarchy panel shows the manager’s subordinates. Finally, the Team Status provides the most useful information to the manager by illustrating the MBO phase in which each team member is.

Setting up objectives is also a very intuitive task, where objectives are being given a name and a weight (which must total 100%), and a target payout (how much money is earned if the objective is met). These objectives can also be picked from previously used objectives, or from a library which can be defined by an administrator.

The employee’s interface is even simpler than the manager’s, and provides the employee with the ability to exchange messages with his or her manager, to participate to setting up and accepting their objectives, to approve the ‘scores’ and associated bonus received, and to view various reports related to their performance.

If you are looking for a simple on-demand solution to administer your performance evaluation process, TrueMBO could be the right solution for you. TrueMBO will appeal in particular to companies already using Callidus Software’s solutions because of the possible synergies with the Callidus Sales Performance on-demand applications (hierarchy maintenance, performance calculations, etc), but it can also be used as a standalone MBO solution. TrueMBO is available for 5$ per employee per month until the end of June 2009.