INTRODUCTION

For this 3-part article, we’re using a Climbing Mt. Everest metaphor to explore the business, operational, and economic gains that can be achieved through your struggle, understanding, and use of 3rd party assistance (the Sherpas, in this case of Mt. Everest) to reach your WFM optimization and ROI goals. The three segments in this article are entitled “The Uphill Struggle”, “Reaching the Summit”, and “On the Mountaintop”.

THE UPHILL STRUGGLE

Vendor-Provided Value Propositions
If you have that gnawing feeling that your workforce management solution is not living up to its hype, again, you are not alone. Workforce management technology is positioned in the market today to generate impressive returns on investment, and when contact centers invest in WFM technology today, they "buy" and expect benefits, like:

These benefits are the basis for the ROI business case that might state, in simplified terms from the limited improved productivity perspective, that if you can generate schedules that are five percent more efficient than current methodologies, then you can do the same amount of work with X less number of agents or do X more work with the same number of resources while maintaining service level objectives.

This fundamental operational efficiency benefit can be achieved from purchasing just about any of the WFM technologies sold today…but it does not happen by magic! The successful use of workforce management technologies to create these and other critical operational efficiencies will only come from effective pre-deployment planning and best-practice post-deployment optimization.

Traditional Deployment Models
So, buying and getting are two different things, right? What contact centers buy are features and benefits. What you get is software and some training, and it is up to the center’s management and the resource planning teams to develop a plan for adopting and applying the WFM technology effectively to deliver on the ROI business case. This is the fundamental challenge to all contact centers that are attempting to increase performance, improve operational efficiencies, and reduce costs through the effective application of industry-standard WFM practices. While it may feel like the most frustrating project ever conceived, getting the WFM solution installed and integrated is the easy part of the process. Without solid pre-deployment planning, the hard work comes afterwards when you have to link this new technology platform to your operational and business environment. Without front-end business migration and change management planning, and a solid back-end WFM optimization plan, the actual utilization you get from “some software and little bit of training” just will not do the job of ensuring that the promises made in the ROI business case are fulfilled.

Something to Think About
Some software and little bit of training, huh? Yeah. Let’s use a software/training-based analogy here. If you were trained on how to use Microsoft Word, would it be your expectation that you would immediately be a best-selling author? Of course not. Well this leap in logic is the same as the traditional WFM vendor approach to quantifying your WFM business and operational success. In the case of Microsoft Word - yes, you could be a successful author someday…but only after getting an education in journalism, then applying your knowledge, expertise, creativity, and many, many months of hard work. That’s not what I call “immediate returns”. It’s the same in the WFM “install and train” scenario; yes, you can reach business and operational success – but only after many months (years!) of trial and error, and in the long run, it’s ROI that takes the biggest hit!

The Downward Spiral of the Upsell Cycle
All of us have heard of contact centers that have deployed workforce management technology that is used to minimal effectiveness, or even worse, the application has become "shelf-ware." Since the ROI was obviously never realized in this case, the WFM system appears to be more investment than return, and the centers are caught up in an expensive cycle of maintaining solutions, upgrading to new modules, and training and retraining users…just to get the business, operational, and economic returns they expected in the first place. This downward spiral sometimes hits the bottom, and the center either goes looking to invest in another WFM application, incurring the new costs of repurchase, reinstallation, and retraining…in most cases just to get back to where they started in the first place. And in extreme cases, the center abandons software-driven WFM practices altogether, and goes back to the “brothers Excel and Erlang” model. Oh boy.

Filters to ROI Achievement
But it’s not the software folks. Traditional deployment approaches simply do not equip WFM technology users today to be able to identify and capture the realistic opportunities that effective WFM practices can help realize. Why? Because the standard vendor deployment model fails to recognize the user’s unique operational processes and business drivers (“filters”) that will ultimately serve to affect ROI realization for that specific user. When it comes to tactical operational processes and strategic business objectives, every call center is different!

These “filters” to ROI achievement include:

In Part 2 of the series, “What’s Eating Your ROI – A Business Case for Workforce Management Optimization”, we’ll transition to “Reaching the Summit”. In this segment we’ll review a few of the business, operational, and technology-related filters shown above, and discuss how they can negatively-impact (e.g. - "filter out") the potential business, operational, and economic ROI gains that are associated with WFM ROI business cases. We’ll also explore how a better understanding of “the psychology of active and passive technologies”, WFM deployment cycles, and best-practice WFM processes and practices can help you plan for your post-deployment WFM optimization needs. Stay tuned.