Workforce optimization

Last updated

Workforce optimization (WFO) is a business strategy that integrates business performance considerations with workforce management. The strategy involves automating processes, data visibility, compliance on legislation and solving business problems related to staffing. [1] It is used by call centers to improve workforce management and agent performance. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Description

Workforce optimization uses all aspects of the complete workforce management life-cycle and provides key insights into how its workforce is performing, with a focus on customer experience. Workforce optimization includes automating entire processes, making key data more visible to support better decision-making, ensuring compliance on relevant legislation and solving business problems related to staff. [1] It is used by contact centers to make convenient communication with customers, such as text messaging support.[ citation needed ]

The strategy ties together the human resources, operations and IT departments of a business. Workforce optimization manages the performance of staff to understand the impact on both operational efficiency and the customer experience. [5] Companies use VoC insights to improve customer experience, which increases the effectiveness of its agents and builds customer loyalty. [1]

Development

DMG Consulting's 2014 "Contact Center Workforce Optimization Market Share Report" documented an increase in workforce optimization revenue over the 2013 fiscal year. It noted an increase in investments to improve core solutions as well as improvements in back-office and branch workforce optimization solutions. [6] In 2015, DMG Consulting found a resurgence in workforce management due to innovation in usability and functionality through speech and text analytics, desktop analytics and customer journey analytics applications. It also considered a shift in the workforce optimization market to emphasize enterprise analytics that personalize customer interaction. [7]

To make strategic decisions in the modern and complex business landscape, organizations are also using Big Data and Analytics for workforce planning. 80 percent of executives say their big data investments have been successful, and almost half say their organizations can measure the benefits from their projects. What’s more, according to Harvard Business Review, organizations that excel in data-driven decision-making are more productive and more profitable than their competitors on average. [8] Maximizing workforce utilization for Access control systems in presence of security constraints has been explored. [9]

Related Research Articles

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.

Management science is a wide and interdisciplinary study of solving complex problems and making strategic decisions as it pertains to institutions, corporations, governments and other types of organizational entities. It is closely related to management, economics, business, engineering, management consulting, and other fields. It uses various scientific research-based principles, strategies, and analytical methods including mathematical modeling, statistics and numerical algorithms and aims to improve an organization's ability to enact rational and accurate management decisions by arriving at optimal or near optimal solutions to complex decision problems.

Business intelligence comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, dashboard development, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics.

A management information system (MIS) is an information system used for decision-making, and for the coordination, control, analysis, and visualization of information in an organization. The study of the management information systems involves people, processes and technology in an organizational context.

Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It can be valuable in areas rich with recorded information; analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming, and operations research to quantify performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NICE Ltd.</span> Surveillence and data analytics company in Israel

NICE is an Israeli technology company specializing in customer relations management software, artificial intelligence, digital and workforce engagement management solutions. The company serves various industries, such as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, outsourcers, retail, media, travel, service providers, and utilities.

Field service management (FSM) refers to the management of a company's resources employed at or en route to the property of clients, rather than on company property. Examples include locating vehicles, managing worker activity, scheduling and dispatching work, ensuring driver safety, and integrating the management of such activities with inventory, billing, accounting and other back-office systems. FSM most commonly refers to companies who need to manage installation, service, or repairs of systems or equipment. It can also refer to software and cloud-based platforms that aid in field service management.

Workforce management (WFM) is an institutional process that maximizes performance levels and competency for an organization. The process includes all the activities needed to maintain a productive workforce, such as field service management, human resource management, performance and training management, data collection, recruiting, budgeting, forecasting, scheduling and analytics.

Speech analytics is the process of analyzing recorded calls to gather customer information to improve communication and future interaction. The process is primarily used by customer contact centers to extract information buried in client interactions with an enterprise. Although speech analytics includes elements of automatic speech recognition, it is known for analyzing the topic being discussed, which is weighed against the emotional character of the speech and the amount and locations of speech versus non-speech during the interaction. Speech analytics in contact centers can be used to mine recorded customer interactions to surface the intelligence essential for building effective cost containment and customer service strategies. The technology can pinpoint cost drivers, trend analysis, identify strengths and weaknesses with processes and products, and help understand how the marketplace perceives offerings.

Enterprise feedback management (EFM) is a system of processes and software that enables organizations to centrally manage deployment of surveys while dispersing authoring and analysis throughout an organization. EFM systems typically provide different roles and permission levels for different types of users, such as novice survey authors, professional survey authors, survey reporters and translators. EFM can help an organization establish a dialogue with employees, partners, and customers regarding key issues and concerns and potentially make customer-specific real time interventions. EFM consists of data collection, analysis and reporting.

Verint Systems is a Melville, New York–based analytics company which was founded in 2002. The company sells software and hardware products for customer engagement management and business intelligence. Their products are designed to assist clients in data analysis, specifically large data sets.

Customer intelligence (CI) as part of business intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing information regarding customers, and their details and activities, to build deeper and more effective customer relationships and improve decision-making by vendors.

Revenue management is the application of disciplined analytics that predict consumer behaviour at the micro-market levels and optimize product availability, leveraging price elasticity to maximize revenue growth and thereby, profit. The primary aim of revenue management is selling the right product to the right customer at the right time for the right price and with the right pack. The essence of this discipline is in understanding customers' perception of product value and accurately aligning product prices, placement and availability with each customer segment.

Business analytics (BA) refers to the skills, technologies, and practices for iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. Business analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business performance based on data and statistical methods. In contrast, business intelligence traditionally focuses on using a consistent set of metrics to both measure past performance and guide business planning. In other words, business intelligence focusses on description, while business analytics focusses on prediction and prescription.

Customer analytics is a process by which data from customer behavior is used to help make key business decisions via market segmentation and predictive analytics. This information is used by businesses for direct marketing, site selection, and customer relationship management. Marketing provides services in order to satisfy customers. With that in mind, the productive system is considered from its beginning at the production level, to the end of the cycle at the consumer. Customer analytics plays an important role in the prediction of customer behavior.

HP Information Management Software is a software from the HP Software Division, used to organize, protect, retrieve, acquire, manage, and maintain information. The HP Software Division also offers information analytics software. The amount of data that companies have to deal with has grown tremendously over the past decade, making the management of this information more difficult. The University of California at Berkeley claims the amount of information produced globally increases by 30 percent annually. An April 2010 Information Management article cited a survey in which nearly 90 percent of businesses blame poor performance on data growth. The survey concluded that for many businesses their applications and databases are growing by 50 percent or more annually, making it difficult to manage the rapid expansion of information.

Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online and automate repetitive tasks.

Help desk software is a computer program that enables customer-care operators to keep track of user requests and deal with other customer-care-related issues.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a set of enterprise accounting and sales software products offered by Microsoft. Its flagship product, Dynamics GP, was founded in 1981.

Data-driven marketing is a process used by marketers to gain insights and identify trends about consumers and how they behave — what they buy, the effectiveness of ads, and how they browse. Modern solutions rely on big data strategies and collect information about consumer interactions and engagements to generate predictions about future behaviors. This kind of analysis involves understanding the data that is already present, the data that can be acquired, and how to organize, analyze, and apply that data to better marketing efforts. The intended goal is generally to enhance and personalize the customer experience. The market research allows for a comprehensive study of preferences.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Jason Napierski (27 June 2014). "3 Keys to Workforce Optimization in the Call Center". Call Miner Eureka. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  2. ↑ "Learning Tree Launches IT Workforce Optimization Solutions". Business Wire. 18 November 2015. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  3. ↑ "Continuous Workforce Optimization". Genesys. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  4. ↑ David Myron (July 2004). "Market Watch: Making Sense of Workforce Optimization". DestinationCRM. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  5. ↑ Oren Smilansky (March 2016). "The 2016 CRM Service Leaders: Workforce Optimization". DestinationCRM. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  6. ↑ "2015 Workforce Optimization Market Share Report". DMG Consulting. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  7. ↑ "2015 Workforce Optimization (WFO) Mid-Year Market Share Report". DMG Consulting. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
  8. ↑ "Workforce Planning: Leveraging Workforce Analytics for Deeper Insights". 29 June 2018.
  9. ↑ Roy, Arindam; Sural, Shamik; Majumdar, Arun Kumar; Vaidya, Jaideep; Atluri, Vijayalakshmi (2017). "On Optimal Employee Assignment in Constrained Role-Based Access Control Systems". ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems. 7 (4): 1–24. doi:10.1145/2996470.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.