Workforce Management Featured Article
Companies of All Sizes See the Benefits of Workforce Management in the Cloud
While companies of all sizes and in all industries are taking advantage of cloud-based solutions today, the call center has seen some of the most startling benefits from this model of solution delivery. There is good reason for this: today, many contact centers are operating multiple locations (or even using home-based agents) and often need to scale up and down according to seasonal variances in call volume. This makes the contact center ideally suited for cloud-based solutions, particularly when it comes to workforce management.
Multi-site management. The call center was once a physical place. Today, contact centers are really more of an idea that a location. They may be a series of facilities all around the state, the country or the world. They may be dozens, hundreds or even thousands of agents working from their homes over high-speed Internet connections. Whatever the case, a cloud-based workforce management solution allows the contact center to tie everyone together into one cohesive whole, according to a recent white paper by workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software.
“Since enterprise contact centers often operate out of more than one facility, cloud solutions such as Monet’s WFO Live make it easy to operate multiple centers around the world through one system,” wrote the company.
Scalability. Few businesses experience more seasonal and cyclical variances in business volume than call centers (except, perhaps, apparel and electronics gift retailers). Depending on the business, call volume may be high in the summer or the winter holiday season. When this happens, contact centers often take on additional temporary help in order to keep hold times from becoming too long. When this happens, these organizations find it necessary to bring far more agents online with the workforce management system on a temporary basis. With a premise-based solution, contact centers must let those extra licenses languish during the year, which is a waste of money. With a cloud solution, the company can scale up and back down again as necessary, paying for only what it needs.
“The same capability could not be accomplished through an on-premise solution without a significant investment of time and planning, as well as costly changes to existing IT systems,” according to the white paper’s authors. “In this scenario, additional staffing would also be required to maintain the ability to scale efficiently. Technicians would be required to monitor, administer, and manage fast growth and rapidly scaling systems. With the cloud, these tasks are completed by the cloud provider.”
The additional benefits of cloud-based workforce management include advanced features such as monitoring, report and alerts, automated schedule and over-time bidding and schedule swapping. These benefits can improve the quality of the work experience for agents by making the time-off process more fair and transparent for agents.
While there are benefits to switching nearly all contact center applications to the cloud, companies of all sizes may find they can reap the largest benefits by starting with workforce management. They may find it pays for itself almost literally before it’s even operational.