Workforce Management Featured Article
Is Your Workforce Management Solution Truly Cloud-Based?
Ensuring the workforce is available to handle the planned activities for the day is generally at the top of the priority list for a call center manager. This means proper forecasting has to be done to anticipate the call volume and schedule according to skillset. That call volume may be live calls, but in today’s market, it may also mean web chat, social media interactions, emails and so much more. With so many variables at play, you need workforce management.
Simply deciding you need insight into the variables that affect the outcomes of the day is not enough, however. You have to determine the best way to deploy workforce management. A number of solutions are available in the cloud or through hosted options. How do you decide which is the best strategy to meet your goals? Fortunately, a recent blog from Monet Software was written to help set the two apart to make the right decision.
The one clear aspect in workforce management is that something available in the cloud and something available from a hosted provider are not the same thing. More often than not, Monet Software has received questions pertaining to the two platforms and whether or not you can simply rebrand a hosted solution as a cloud solution with nothing else changing other than the product description. Such a simple approach to this thinking suggests there are key elements missing in the explanation.
Therefore, it’s time to break it down. As stated by Monet Software, hosted services are technology services offered by a provider that hosts physical servers running that service somewhere else. By contrast, cloud solutions have a distributed delivery model. It is a multi-tenant solution, providing guaranteed service levels, full scalability, guaranteed uptimes and will easily allow for updates whenever needed.
When your workforce management solution is hosted, the vendor controls the product from a facility that is hosted and scalability and virtualization are not possible. If it’s positioned as a cloud solution but does not offer continuous and instant access to the latest product upgrades, it is not a true cloud solution. When workforce management is delivered through the cloud, product upgrades are automatic and free. If upgrades on your solution are handled by the vendor and face delays, you do not have a true cloud solution.
To ensure your workforce management solution is delivered through the cloud, ask a few key questions, including whether or not it uses multi-tenant architecture, allows for automatic upgrades, provides full future support of customizations and integrations, and service levels with uptimes of 99.5 percent or higher are ensured. If the answer to all questions is not in the affirmative, keep looking.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi