Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report Reprint Reprinted for:

Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report Reprint Reprinted for: - 1 - DMG Consulting LLC

Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. WFM Market Challenges 1 3. Meeting the Challenge of Intra-Day Management 3 3.1 How Intra-Day Management Should Work 4 3.2 Alternative Solutions 4 4. Intradiem 6 About Intradiem 7 About DMG Consulting LLC 7 - i - DMG Consulting LLC

1. Introduction WFM applications should do a great deal more than just forecast and schedule. They should come with real-time adherence capabilities that track whether or not agents are doing what they are scheduled to do. They should have agent self-service modules that empower and engage the staff by allowing them to submit their schedule preferences, initiate schedule swaps, request vacations, overtime or voluntary time off, and a great deal more. Some of the solutions have strategic planning modules that allow managers to forecast the number of resources they will need by skill up to 5 years into the future, and also project the costs for budgeting purposes. Other solutions come with training and payroll modules, just to mention some of the functionality from this fast-growing WFM sector. All of these capabilities vary in sophistication, and no two systems are the same. One area of major weakness in all of the WFM solutions is intra-day management; this is the ability to change schedules on-the-fly throughout the day, when forecasts for volume, number of available resources, average handle time or other factors differ from what was projected. Currently, with manual intervention, some of the WFM solutions identify the areas of concern. But none of the WFM solutions fully automates the re-scheduling process, which is why a sub-market of vendors, specifically Intradiem and WorkFlex, has emerged to address just this issue. Workforce management is mission-critical for most contact centers with more than 50 agents, because it improves productivity and helps ensure that the right number of resources with the right skills is available to handle the forecasted volume of transactions. Prospects can now purchase a WFM solution on a stand-alone basis, as part of a WFO suite, or from their ACD vendor. There are challenges in implementing and using WFM applications, but more often than not it s more cost effective to use a WFM solution than to do workforce management manually. However, buyers should do a great deal of due diligence before making a WFM selection, as the degree of differentiation in functionality, price, level of integration and benefits has never been greater. 2. WFM Market Challenges End users are no longer as tolerant of limited and outdated WFM solutions as they were in the past. The innovation in the other contact center IT sectors that end users have now come to expect has been noticeably lacking in WFM solutions. Some of the older WFM solutions are built on architecture and code that is more than 20 25 years old. This architecture is causing problems for vendors (and end users) in a number of areas, and makes it costly and time consuming to maintain and enhance. At the presentation layer, some of the WFM UIs are so old and antiquated that they - 1 - DMG Consulting LLC

don t even contain any logic checks, something that has been a standard UI best practice for many years. System navigation in these solutions requires that end users work much too hard to get the information they need to perform their jobs. Intra-day management modules are also attracting much-needed attention, because they do not accomplish what they are intended to do: provide supervisor and resource planners with the actionable insights they need to optimally respond to dynamic real-time conditions. End users are required to perform too many manual steps, including downloading and manipulating the data in Excel, to fully analyze their results. Multi-channel forecasting and scheduling, particularly with regard to blended capabilities, is another area that is under-served by many of the WFM solutions. Some solutions still require each channel to be forecasted independently, and others still schedule outbound and non-phone activities as a block of time. This results in lost efficiencies in multi-skilled agent environments, and requires manual effort to move agents among queues and activities to address volume and staffing requirement variances. Figure 2 provides a list of challenges confronting the WFM market, vendors and buyers. Figure 2: WFM Challenges While there are many new entrants in the WFM market, the solutions are highly variable and the functionality highly differentiated, despite the messaging and claims from the competitors. There is significant disparity in the depth and breadth of functionality in WFM solutions; many are based on the spreadsheet paradigm, limiting their value and benefits for users Some of the more established WFM solutions are built on outdated architectures and code that has not been enhanced substantially in more than 20 years; this impedes the vendor s ability to enhance their offerings and build in new capabilities. While there are advantages to purchasing a WFM solution that is an integrated module in a workforce optimization suite, if the WFM solution is functionally weak, it s important to consider the trade-offs between the impact of the lost functionality over a period of many years and the cost of building the necessary integrations to fill the gaps. WFM vendors who want to compete in global markets have to substantially modify their solutions to be relevant in countries with highly complex and diverse work rules. - 2 - DMG Consulting LLC

Figure 2: WFM Challenges WFM remains a black-box solution; the vendors do not have an effective way of proving that their solution is more accurate than another. Many of the newer algorithms being introduced to the market to handle non-phone channels are new and, as yet, unproven. While most of the vendors claim to support multi-channel contact center environments, few can accommodate a truly blended omni-channel model. Intra-day management capabilities in all of the WFM solutions vendors are either weak, non-existent, or ineffective; they do not give end users what they need. End users are asking their WFM vendors to greatly enhance their WFM reporting environments; reporting remains a major area of dissatisfaction. End users are fed up with outdated user interfaces; ease of use has become a primary decision criterion in the selection process. Source: DMG Consulting LLC, March 2014 3. Meeting the Challenge of Intra-Day Management No matter how good a forecast is, there is a great chance that the actual call volume will vary from what was projected. It s not a question of whether or not this will happen, but rather the degree to which it will occur. Even if the variance is as little as 5%, this can represent thousands of dollars to companies with many agents. For this reason, enterprises need intra-day management modules to help them cope with unplanned variances. The challenge for the market is that the functional capabilities of the intra-day management modules offered by all of the WFM vendors are poor. The best of the WFM intra-day management modules will show managers where the forecast has been off and where it is expected to vary for the rest of the day based on what has already occurred. Some of the solutions will also show the WFM administrator or intra-day management specialist where they will be over or understaffed, but none of these modules automates the process of fixing the problem. This means that the WFM specialist then has to do whatever it takes to make the necessary changes to schedules manually, which is a difficult and time-consuming task. Two vendors, Intradiem and WorkFlex, have emerged to address the intra-day management challenge. - 3 - DMG Consulting LLC

3.1 How Intra-Day Management Should Work In an ideal world, a contact center intra-day management module should do the following: Continuously monitor activity in 15-minute increments, reflecting the actual volume and comparing it to what was forecasted, and showing the variance Find trends in the earlier part of the day, and re-forecast volume accordingly Automatically identify and notify the WFM administrator or intra-day management specialist when they are going to be over and understaffed for every 15-minute increment (or whatever increment is required by the department) for the rest of the day Enable the WFM administrator or intra-day management specialist to automatically re-forecast their staffing needs for the rest of the day or just a period of the day Once the reforecast is created, automatically make changes to optimize the schedules e.g., eliminating breaks, shortening lunches or cancelling meetings, etc. when extra volume is expected, or scheduling training sessions or offering voluntary time off when the volume is lower than projected. (To handle variances, the system will follow a process based on work rules defined by the WFM administrator, department management, etc.) Once options are identified to rectify the staffing issue, present them to the WFM resource and ask them if they want them to be applied; if approval is given, the WFM application should then automate the process of rescheduling in order to identify the optimal approach for the department In short, the system should automate the process of identifying when the forecast is off, as well as how to fix it. Managers should not have to spend time trying to figure out which schedules to change to optimize staffing; automation driven by business rules will do a better job. As importantly, a system can ensure fairness in the handling of schedules which is important when giving overtime or asking for agents to leave early. 3.2 Alternative Solutions Intradiem and WorkFlex Solutions are two US-based vendors who offer intra-day staffing and scheduling optimization solutions. (Intradiem was previously known as Knowlagent, a provider of elearning solutions.) Though each of these solutions performs different functions, both Intradiem and WorkFlex offer stand-alone solutions - 4 - DMG Consulting LLC

to augment the intra-day management capabilities of traditional WFM solutions, while at the same time improving agent satisfaction and productivity. Both Work-Flex and Intradiem are offered in the cloud. Intradiem s go-to-market strategy is to provide businesses with the reflexes needed to automatically respond to unforeseen changes in business conditions. They target organizations with 200-plus agents. Intradiem is a task/activity management application designed to deliver work tasks and training activities in real time to agents during idle periods. Intradiem integrates with the ACD and WFM solution to monitor call volumes and agent activity, and to identify instances of idle time. This time is aggregated into blocks and converted into productive time by automatically assigning non-phone work activities to agents. Intradiem uses four key concepts to facilitate its process: users anyone in the system; tasks any activity a user can work on; assignments the joining of tasks with users; and delivery rules-based definitions and parameters for when tasks should be pushed to agents. - 5 - DMG Consulting LLC

Company Overview Founded: 1994 Headquarters: Mansell Two 3650 Mansell Road Suite 500 Alpharetta, GA 30022 Website: www.intradiem.com Ownership: Private WFM Product Profile 4. Intradiem Intradiem, formerly known as Knowlagent, is a privately held company headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, with approximately 50 US-based employees and another 20 developers in India. Intradiem is the provider of an intra-day management application that goes by the same name. The product leverages a rules-based decision engine to enhance intra-day management capabilities in five areas: Task management enables users to create, assign and deliver tasks during idle periods, based on agent performance metrics or work volumes Intra-day staffing enables business rules to be created based on service level thresholds and trends, to trigger voluntary time off or voluntary overtime offers Channel balancing automatically updates queue and channel assignments when volumes fluctuate, allowing a group of agents to begin handling the excess volume Reskilling automatically updates skill and queue assignments when agents complete training and certifications or meet/exceed performance thresholds Alerts and notifications enables triggering of alerts and notifications based on contact center and agent performance metric thresholds Future Intradiem has out-of-the-box integrations to contact center infrastructure and workforce management vendors, including Aspect, Avaya, incontact and NICE IEX Workforce Management. The integrations allow Intradiem to monitor servicing channel volumes, agent activity, agent proficiency and intra-day staffing levels. Based on near-real-time feeds from ACDs and WFM solutions, Intradiem identifies and aggregates the idle or down time when agents are not taking calls or handling other types of interactions. It systemically assigns performance-based tasks such as coaching or elearning, or non-phone or back-office work activities during these slower periods, based on work rules and parameters. Upon completion of coaching and/or elearning sessions, or based on proficiency scores, Intradiem can dynamically update agent skill profiles and/or queue assignments (reskilling). Agents assigned to multiple work queues can be alerted to switch work types (channel balancing) when volumes in any queue exceed defined parameters, or service levels are in jeopardy. Intradiem can also automatically solicit voluntary overtime or voluntary time-off, via real-time alerts and notifications based on user-defined criteria. Intradiem is continuing to add R&D resources, and is moving some of their development work back to the US. During 2014, they plan to enhance their real-time work allocation tools and enhance their user interfaces to make it easier for business managers to set up and modify rules to address their specific business needs. - 6 - DMG Consulting LLC

About Intradiem Intradiem is the leader in intraday management solutions for multi-channel contact centers. Intradiem s customers achieve an invincible customer experience with a real-time workforce by automating manual processes such as intraday task management, intraday staffing, reskilling, channel balancing, and real-time alerts. Intradiem empowers an immediate and consistent response to unpredictable events and changing conditions, resulting in labor savings, improved employee performance and a better overall customer experience. About DMG Consulting LLC DMG Consulting LLC is a leading independent research, advisory and consulting firm specializing in contact centers, back-office and real-time analytics. DMG provides insight and strategic guidance and tactical advice to end users, vendors and the financial community. Each year, DMG devotes more than 10,000 hours to producing primary research on IT sectors, including workforce optimization (quality management/liability recording), speech analytics, workforce management, performance management, desktop analytics, surveying/voice of the customer, text analytics, cloud-based contact center infrastructure, dialing, interactive voice response systems and proactive customer care. Our actionable solutions are proven to deliver a lasting competitive advantage, and often pay for themselves in as little as three months. This reprint is excerpted from the 2014 2015 Workforce Management Market Report, which was released in March 2014 with the permission of DMG Consulting LLC. More information about this Report and DMG Consulting is available at www.dmgconsult.com - 7 - DMG Consulting LLC

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