Integrated Strategic Planner
The AWO Strategic Planner develops comprehensive strategic plans using long range forecasts, performance targets, budget limits, current workforce, expected attrition rates, and skills requirements. It provides detailed plans with forecasts of service performance, resource requirements, and financial information.
Lacking strategic planning capabilities, traditional WFM systems are supplemented by deploying strategic planning modules from other vendors using different forecasting and scheduling technologies. This is one of the critical limitations of the traditional strategic planning add-ons. They develop strategic plans using forecasting and scheduling technologies with accuracy and schedule efficiency levels different than that of the forecasting and scheduling technologies used in the traditional WFM systems. The AWO Strategic Planner uses the same NEXT Generation forecasting, skills planning, and scheduling technologies used in the AWO Portal. The NEXT Generation technologies address the limitations of the separate add-on approach in four areas.
- Integrated strategic planning uses the same advanced forecasting and scheduling technologies with the AWO Portal. This results in accurate strategic plans that are consistent with the technologies used in the AWO Portal. Using the same forecasting and scheduling technologies is critical to the success of your strategic plans since your WFM system operationalizes them.
- Phased-strategic planning and re-forecasting/re-planning improves the accuracy of strategic plans. The AWO Strategic Planner develops alternative weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, or multi-year scenarios and alternative plans. It also provides for multiple phases so that all resource decisions don’t need to be made based on a plan with only one phase.
- Constrained and unconstrained strategic planning provides realistic analysis of resource needs, service performance, and financial information. Constraints in strategic planning may include limits on budget, resource levels, full-time/part-time agent numbers and mix at different centers, work patterns, alternative scheduling policies, AHT reduction, shrinkage level, etc.
- Tracking the accuracy of long-range forecasts used in developing strategic plans is an important input for planning. The AWO Forecaster tracks forecast accuracy weeks, months, and years into the future and provides it as an input to your strategic planning process.
