Consider Extending Workforce Management to Back-Office Functions for Improved Efficiency

While most contact centers employ some type of workforce management (WFM) today, many of them are finding that their systems have limitations. Their home-grown solutions may be difficult to administer, or they may be incapable of supporting intraday changes. For some contact centers that do have comprehensive workforce management solutions however, it’s about the unknown factors that crop up in back-office operations that can really put a kink into the contact center’s operations.

For this reason, many progressive companies are finding that it’s worth their while to use workforce management outside the contact center, too, in functions such as accounting, according to a recent blog post by Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo, who writes that the same workforce management solution that has made a company’s front office more efficient can have the same impact on back office tasks.

“Back-office tasks are often manual and complex, making it difficult to automate, manage and forecast workload,” writes Ciarlo. “With WFM, contact centers can improve service levels. And with WFM in the cloud, the company further reduces both costs and headaches, as it avoids the upfront expenses and IT requirements of traditional workforce management software.”

The result is the same as the results found in the contact center with good workforce management: to better align and manage their resources so that service levels continue to be met, while costs are controlled. Companies can improve forecast accuracy of manual back-office tasks and activities, improve resource planning functions and employee productivity, and track and analyze key metrics to optimize service quality and back-office performance. Like the contact center, these back-office departments can also plan for the unexpected better by engaging in exception planning and intraday management.

“Visibility into backlogs, workforce availability, employee activities and efficiencies throughout the day makes it easier for a contact center manager to take a proactive approach in managing back-office activities,” writes Ciarlo.

By using a cloud-based solution, companies can keep upfront costs down and configure the solution to the precise parameters they require. Organizations can also use and administer the solution remotely, and allow remote offices and home-based workers to use the solution. While premise-based workforce management may have been too cost-prohibitive for companies in the past looking to improve efficiency and automate back-office work, the cloud has made it possible for organizations today to extend the same benefits beyond the immediate confines of the contact center.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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