WHITEPAPER: WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

Transcription

1 WHITEPAPER: WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

2 CONTENTS Introduction Business Case Findings Proposed Solution Recommendations Appendix

3 Across any industry that utilizes operational staff, standard workforce management practices are implemented to derive the most value from the labor. These practices are used to calculate workload, predict work arrival patterns, and plan and schedule staff to respond to that workload. Introduction RedCloud performed a study for one of our clients, which will be kept confidential. The client strives to organize resources and tools to leverage the most efficient and cost-effective way to act on their core value of delivering an outstanding customer experience, regardless of time of day, region of the world, language spoken, modality chosen, or a consumer vs commercial customer basis. In the most simplistic of terms, workforce management is the calculation of workload, prediction of work patterns, and planning and scheduling staff to respond to that workload. To effectively perform those basic tasks, a WFM program must have accurate data as the foundation. The key data elements to this foundation are: i. Historical work item volume ii. Historical handling time iii. Historical staff availability From these basic data elements, you can arrive at forecasted volume, handling time, and staffing needs at a long-term or short-term basis. To effectively employ these, any successful WFM program would follow a life cycle of events and activities that drive continuous improvement in all areas of the business. We describe these phases below. PHASE FOUR Feedback Reset desired service level goals based on feedback from staff and customers PHASE THREE Historic Dashboard KPIs (Incl. staff adherence); Outlier analysis; Quality improvement 4 3 WFM LIFE CYCLE 1 2 PHASE ONE Forecasting / Planning Intraday volume forecasting; Arrival patterns; What-if scenarios PHASE TWO Operational Threshold, event-driven triggers; Manage +/- staffing; Identify gaps and realtime adjustments 1) FORECASTING / PLANNING During this phase the historic foundational data is used to develop the forecasts at any date hierarchy (yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, interval). These forecasts are produced for both expected work item volume, expected handling time, and any staff availability variations at each of those levels of forecast hierarchy. From these forecasts you can forecast how much workload will be required and when. How many people you need to respond to that workload at various service level targets. 2) OPERATIONAL During this phase, the plan created during the forecast phase is implemented and managed to effectively ensure resources are available when customer demand is expected. This also allows for flexibility as patterns and business needs may change from when the initial plan is put in place. 3) HISTORICAL During this phase the actual values from the operational performance are collected and analyzed to validate the effectiveness of the staffing plan. This data collection and analysis is used to find areas of opportunity that can be used to drive continuous improvement across the operation. 4) FEEDBACK During the final phase of the WFM Life Cycle, the information and analysis completed in the historical phase is feedback into all teams, tools, and groups involved in the planning and forecasting phase. Its the opportunity to fine tune forecasting, make impacting business decisions, and create a highly efficient operating model. 2

4 WFM Maturity Assessment (By LOB) Forecasting / Planning Consumer Commercial WFM PHASE Operational Historical Feedback *red/shaded cell indicates level of maturity Business Case In general, the effective implementation of a WFM program can provide benefits across the organization, as the life cycles ensure the business is finding areas of opportunity for improvement during each cycle, typically monthly. This paper will outline the proposed structure of the WFM team and recommended tools to help drive this life cycle most effectively. As the forecast improves, the staffing plan improves with it, resulting in more effective use of the resources and reduction in overall cost. There should be a single source to collect the data required and drive the WFM life cycle. This source is generally a WFM tool and/or WFM team. Findings We find three foundational gaps driving performance within the organization: 1. Ineffective Forecasting 2. Fragmented Infrastructure 3. Lack of Action on KPIs Forecasting Alignment Today the client has three sources for forecast information. This disparity leads to confusion, inconsistency, and less effective operational performance and without consistent forecasting, the rest of the WFM model (and benefits) becomes ineffective. Those three forecasts are: i. Forecasted Work Volume This is produced at varied levels across different lines of business and should be standardized to be consistent across all. It is also only forecasting new work in the commercial space today and missing out on significant work volume from internal work items. ii. Forecasted Head Count This is produced at a higher level than the operation needs it, and results in discrepancies between operational head count requirements and long term budgetary head count forecasts. iii. Operational Staffing Plan This is produced at a very low level and managed much closer to real time. This operational staffing plan is developed based on the forecasted volume, hours of operation, and expected staffing needs based on shrinkage and other realities of scheduling. This leads to the difference in head count requirements between the operational expectation to respond to customer inquiries within the service goal, and what the long-term headcount forecast planned for the budget. 3

5 What gets measured, gets managed... Findings Infrastructure and Data Collection In addition to the problems that arise around the confusion of the conflicting forecasts, there are needs that arise out of collection of data, consolidation of data, and analysis of the data. The current tool, Aspect Software WFM, is used to house a substantial portion of the data required to complete the WFM Life Cycle. The forecasting team currently produces their forecasted volume and pattern data in a database that exists on a physical server. This server in it s current format is not backed up, and creates risk of potential for loss of data to the business. This server will need to be moved to Azure in the future to support the needs of the business and provide a stable, supported, and backed up archive of essential forecasting information. The client needs to house various other data sources in a standard location where transmission of essential data elements will be much easier, and reduce potential points of failure that exist today. The process to onboard a new area of the business to the existing WFM infrastructure is fragmented and disjointed. The creation of the structure or change in structure in the existing tool is not complicated. However, today, the business will often drive their own continuous improvements and changes autonomously without knowledge of how this might impact downstream data collection, reporting, or forecasting. Lack of Actionable Data In the immortal words of Peter Drucker, What gets measured, gets managed and what doesn t, won t. Today the client collects a great deal of data across the enterprise, but much of it is not actionable due to inaccuracy, constant changes in sourcing, or incompleteness of the dimensions or facts. When we talked first about the pillars of the WFM process, today the client only has truly actionable data on one of those three data elements, historical work item volume, and even that has a fragmented process around how to arrive at this number. Historical handling time and staff availability are simply no where to be found. For instance, in the commercial space, the business did a time study that yielded what is now used as handling time in the WFM processes. In our view, this number is more a Takt time (the time in between when an engineer takes a new work item from a queue and when they take the next work item from the queue). The client considers its takt time to be ninety minutes for almost all Delivery Units across the commercial operation for every interval, or every day of the year. The staff availability is likewise seen as half of each engineer s day (4 hours) spent taking new cases. Again, a wide range of business and customer bases across the globe have the same expectation and plan. Thus, the calculated operational head count will only ever change based on the changes to the forecasted work items since the rest of the variables fed into the Erlang calculator are relatively static. Finally, since there isn t any actionable data regarding AHT and Staff Availability, there is little to no actionable data by which to perform any historical analysis. This means the client is not providing continuous improvement on the staff planning and schedule efficiency side of the WFM Life Cycle. 4

6 Today, the commercial business assumes it takes 90 minutes to respond to a new service request. With that, ~375K new cases in FY18 equates to a forecasted minimum workload of ~16K FTEs. Every 60 second reduction in handling time could reduce the total workload needed by ~180 heads. Proposed Solution Our proposed solution focuses on improvements that can be made to processes, structure and governance, and measurement/action. These are further detailed below: Improve Processes within the Workforce Management Lifecycle iv. Feedback OUTLIER ANALYSIS: Provide list of events that impacted operations to ensure clean forecasting pattern for both volume and handling time STAFFING PERFORMANCE: Consolidate monthly staffing performance reviews, covering all relevant KPIs depending on team or line of business Provide recommendations on allocations of volume to maximize efficiency, QOS, Costs i. Forecasting / Planning FORECASTING: Use Aspect tool to generate intra-day volume forecasts based on forecasting teams locked and/or advisory forecasts Use Aspect tool to generate intra-day patterns based on enterprise level contact arrival patterns COMMUNICATION: In coordination with forecasting team, help guide discussions with SDM and supplier to present locked and advisory forecasts Communicate weekly changes to the enterprise intra-day call arrival pattern to supplier WFM teams 4 1 PLANNING: Generate what-if scenarios to help guide staffing decisions Create required staff forecasts to compare against supplier provided requirements iii. Historic DASHBOARD OF STAFFING PERFORMANCE MEASURES: Used to measure supplier/site performance to originally agreed upon staffing plan Possible involvement of procurement at this phase AD-HOC ANALYSIS : Conduct reviews of staffing performance Drive continuous improvement of staffing utilization and resource deployment Possible involvement of procurement at this phase 3 TECHNOLOGY ENABLEMENT 2 ii. Operational CREATE TRIGGERS & LEVERS: Enable real time interval level management where appropriate DEVELOP INTERVAL LEVEL STAFFING PLAN: Leverage Power BI to illustrate +/- Net Staffing IDENTIFY GAPS AND DRIVE ADJUSTMENTS: Create check-point that sets staffing plan as POR Enables Mission Control or RTA/DMs to Monitor Staffing performance real time 5

7 Standardize across the organization to leverage knowledge and synergies. Consolidate the WFM Team Under a Single Organization The group responsible for the WFM Life Cycle should be standardized across the organization to take advantage of knowledge and synergies that can be realized through this centralization. The centralization of this group will also allow for the standardization of the infrastructure required across the enterprise to support the collection, storage, and implementation of analysis tools for the WFM team. Structure the WFM support organization under the organization to take advantage of existing knowledge base and breakdown barriers between two of the main forecast pain points (Head Count and Operational Plan) that are being at odds with each other. A single leader will have decision making power over both the head count planning and operational planning will give the business a single source for workforce sizing plans. It will also reduce the friction between the business running the operation and the long-term planning of the budgetary headcount. This team should be responsible for all 4 phases of the WFM life cycle, with only the forecasting of volume being completed outside the organization. The forecasted workload volume would be an input to the long-term head count planning and the operational forecast. In the final feedback phase of the WFM life cycle this team would deliver forecast and operational performance reports back to the business and volume forecasting teams to ensure everyone is aligned to the same WFM goals outlined in this is paper around standardization of data collection, storage, and analysis. Proposed WFM Structure: 6

8 Building the Workforce Management team WFM Leader Someone who will provide the visionary guidance around the WFM program and stay abreast of changes in infrastructure and the business that will require adaptation by the WFM team. Creation of this role would address both problems outlined above, by serving as the leader who could ensure the WFM Team has a single, strong voice in the process as the businesses needs change and evolve. This person would help drive improvements to the WFM Infrastructure and tools to ensure all key data elements are available going forward, both as inputs to and outputs from the WFM Life Cycle. WFM Analysts This group of individual contributors would report to the WFM manager and do the day to day work of running the WFM Life Cycle. The number of individuals is dependent on how much of the enterprise was moved to this centralized model. Creation of this role would ensure the organization has the right people in the roles to act on each stage of the WFM Life Cycle. Structuring these roles could be done as either one person acting on all phases of the life cycle for one (or many) line(s) of business, or one person acting on one phase of the life cycle for multiple lines of business. WFM Manager Someone who will oversee the day to day operation of the WFM team from the activities around WFM life cycle. Including, forecasting and planning, scheduling and near real time adjusting of schedules in concert with the business, collecting and analyzing the historical data, and providing guidance back to the business and forecasting groups to help drive the continuous improvement loop of the WFM Life Cycle. Creation of this role would help ensure all aspects of the WFM Life Cycle are being acted upon, and that the vision and guidance of the WFM Leader is being communicated down through the WFM organization, and that the concerns and issues of the WFM Analysts are being communicated up through to the WFM Leader. This person would help ensure that the key data elements of the WFM Life Cycle are being measured, and thus managed across the organization. 7

9 The core Workforce Management team should coordinate closely with the Software & Support and BI Resources. Software & Support Resources The WFM Leader would also need to liaison with individuals in the Services Engineering division to help ensure the tool requirements are met so the WFM Team can continue to deliver on the WFM Life Cycle. Creating this partnership would help ensure there is close coordination between the two teams, and that the needs of the WFM Team are being communicated clearly to the Services Engineering team. BI Resources The WFM Team would have to have close ties to the BI teams for both telephony and to ensure the consolidated data flows are meeting their needs. This liaison role would be filled by the WFM Leader to help organize the WFM reporting structure to meet the needs of the WFM Life Cycle. It is envisioned that once the actionable data is in place, the consolidated WFM Team would leverage data connectivity from the Aspect SQL DB into live Power BI dashboards for consumption by the business and outsourced suppliers. We strongly recommend creating a WFM data cube so that the cube could be used to create standard WFM reports and dashboards across the enterprise. Having a single source of data in the historical data collection and analysis phase of the WFM Life Cycle will ensure consistent, accurate, and timely feedback is delivered in the feedback phase of the WFM Life Cycle. As an example, today in the consumer space, the WFM team needs to consolidate various data sources for telephony data, chat data, and staffing data across platforms, suppliers, and lines of business. This data consolidation invariably leads to delays in delivery cadence. Creating this partnership ensures that the reporting needs of WFM are being met at the same time as the rest of the businesses reporting needs are being discussed. Many of these resources may already exist in one form or another in the organization, and just need to be tasked with taking on these new directions. 8

10 Continuous improvement on staff planning and schedule efficiency Determine how your business progresses towards its business goals by implementing a core set of key performance indicators (KPIs). Implement A Core Set of KPI S The Success of an organization s WFM program as a whole can be measured on five KPIs: SCHEDULE EFFICIENCY - This is the measure of the number of overstaffed periods vs the number of understaffed periods based on the forecasted staffing plan. Overtime, the WFM Life Cycle would seek to drive improvements to this efficiency rating. SCHEDULE ACCURACY - This is the measure of how well the schedules matched up to the expected need. Currently there is no method in place for the client to accurately measure this as a KPI. ENGINEER SCHEDULE ADHERENCE - To be able to accurately measure the Schedule Accuracy, you would also need to know if the engineers actually worked their shift as it was scheduled. This is the measure of an engineer s time in comparison to their schedule. The implementation of the WFM Life Cycle and feedback out of it to the business will aim to drive improvements in Engineer adherence to schedules. FORECAST ACCURACY - Again, to be able hold the WFM Team accountable to the Schedule Accuracy, you need to know how accurate the forecast is. Of course, schedules for a forecast that was inaccurate in the first place, will also be inaccurate. SERVICE LEVEL TARGETS - Finally, knowing if the service level was met for a period of time is key to understanding the impact of the schedule and its adherence on the customer facing operation. In addition to the above KPIs, the WFM team should provide smoothing and maintenance of the incident/call/chat arrival and handling time patterns or trends. The WFM team should maintain these patterns and document and communicate any deviations from past trends that might need to be considered in future scheduling activities. 9

11 Success of the customer support team hinges on successful deployment of workforce management. Recommendations The need to address the lack of WFM practices across the enterprise is clear today. When you consider the sheer size of the client s global support organization, the fact that there is no clear team providing guidance and expertise around collection of required data elements to produce a solid operational staffing plan is staggering. The organization should be set up to ensure the inputs and outputs that need to be measured are in place, and that analysis and reporting on those outputs is being completed on a regular cadence. The overall success of the client s customer support hinges on the successful deployment of workforce management across the enterprise as a discipline ensuring effective and efficient use of resources is a forethought, not an afterthought. Following are actionable next steps that can be taken by an organization. Define the processes required to accurately collect the required data inputs/outputs that are the foundation of the WFM Life Cycle. Standardize WFM infrastructure to maximize tool usage/utility and minimize overhead maintenance costs/work. Consider leveraging the existing Genesys One- Cloud platform across the support team as the known and successfully deployed tool in the consumer space. Organize a team structure that can drive continuous success around the core WFM principles. Iterate on the WFM Life Cycle on a monthly cadence to drive down defects in service delivery, improve forecast accuracy, and reduce infrastructure setup and support costs. Investigate Aspect Back Office Optimizer pilot. 10

12 APPENDICES Appendix A- Tools The current WFM tool market analysis from Gartner in January of 2017 provides good background to the available tools. However, it is important to note the continued shift in this space from a WFM tool to more of workforce optimization or engagement tools. In many cases, the client would not require a tool that is a true workforce engagement tool, since many of the resources are outsourced. For the internal resources, the type of work, mostly commercial support, is different enough from industry standard that the evaluation should be looked at more at the individual supplier basis than simply the magic quadrant results. After reviewing the 2017 Gartner report, we have highlighted the WFM providers below that would be best situated to deliver on the client s specific needs and why. Below is the 2017 WFM Magic Quadrant. It is important to note 5 of the 8 providers in this space are listed as Niche Players, speaking to the transformative nature of this space today from the traditional WFM tools, to more of the WFO or WFE suite of products that many are starting to offer. 11

13 APPENDICES Appendix A - Tools We will cover 5 of the players in this Gartner report, as they are the 5 providers that already have existing integrations with the Genesys routing platform. Aspect Software (Current Client Tool): While Gartner has Aspect in the niche player quadrant, they have the best ability to execute of myriad of niche players in this space and the second most complete vision in this quadrant. Based on Gartner s analysis of Aspect Cautions, there is far less risk here for the client s needs than some other contact center arenas might have. One of the cautions is the lack of ability to deliver tasks to mobile devices. This would not be a concern for the client as the routing of calls, chats, cases, and other back office work is not done using the Aspect tool, and the need to deliver such work items to a mobile device is not currently a requirement for the client. A second caution around contact center infrastructure is also not as much of a concern for the client. They currently have Aspect in place and have integration points in place to match the existing routing tool up to the WFM tool. The third caution for Aspect is around platform maturity. Again, since the client is already using their tool, the concerns around the infrastructure are somewhat mitigated. Much of the caution for their concerns about the platform maturity center around the need to have their full suite of products to gain the most value. Since the client business model doesn t fit the need of a comprehensive workforce engagement suite necessarily, it isn t a major concern. In conclusion, one of the strengths they list for Aspect is the WFM piece of their platform. This is the main piece of functionality that the client would need and use for the purposes of deploying a successful WFM program. So, while Gartner has Aspect as a niche player that niche may closely align with the client s business needs, making them a potentially valued partner going forward. NICE (IEX): They are the clearly the industry leader in the WFO/WFE space from the Gartner analysis. Their strength around personalization down to the agent level may be worth a look as the client considers deploying more workforce management and optimization processes to the frontline engineer workforce. As with anything new, change management will be key to a successful implementation of workforce management / optimization strategy that may be seen as overreach or intrusive by front line engineers. Providing a tool that leverages personalization and customization may go far in getting better acceptance and buy in. From an outsourced provider perspective, a greater number of the current outsourced suppliers use NICE/IEX than use any of the other players. So, if the client chooses to go the route of consolidating onto a single WFM platform, there may be less change and learning required on the supplier side if NICE/IEX was the suite of choice. Gartner outlined their cautions around mobility, as with Aspect. Again, this is not a major focus area for the client, so is not a concern. They also called out some concerns around platform confusion and consolidation as they ve grown their business vastly through acquisition and products are not all yet fully integrated into a single quite. 12

14 APPENDICES Appendix A - Tools Teleopti: Teleopti stands out in this list despite being the lowest score in both completeness of vision and ability to execute. The only reason we wanted to call them out here was due to their strong background in execution in the EMEA space and many features that work out of the box with EU work rules in mind. They also have support for 30 languages built into the tool. With the client s current footprint in EMEA and plans to expand some of that in the consumer space with the support program in Bucharest, this option should not be completely overlooked. They are a WFM product, which again fits with the client s niche business need, but we have concerns if the direction was to consolidate all outsourced employees onto the client s platform of choice that they integrate onto, for all but one BPO, an unknown WFM tool. Verint: Verint is one of the furthest along the path to full WFM/WFM suite of products. They, with NICE, are the only two providers in the magic quadrant. There was nothing in the report that clearly called out any of their strengths or weakness in regards specifically to the workforce management area that the client needs. Having been involved in the integration work with Verint and Genesys, we have seen first hand that some of their calculations differ from Genesys somewhat significantly. These differences do add some complexity, although the Services Engineering team and suppliers that use Verint have already overcome them. Currently very few BPOs use Verint, so if the choice to bring all BPOs onto the client s WFM platform, this change would also drive significant work, learning and training from the BPOs. Genesys: The WFM tool provided by Genesys would give the best integration to the client s routing and agent portal since they are on the same platform. While this is a positive today, it makes it much harder for the client to make changes to the platform in the future, as the Genesys WFM tool only works with Genesys Call Center solutions. Further, the solution is seen as having a very high total cost of ownership due to the complexity of installation, setup, and configuration. Today, to our knowledge, none of the BPOs use the Genesys WFM solution, so this would be a complete overhaul of the WFM systems for the client lines of business. 13