Call Center Magazine: What is Workforce Management? Is workforce management software more than just fancy scheduling software?

Michael Williams, director of marketing, GMT: The definition of Workforce Management (WFM) in the eyes of contact centers, and for GMT, has changed dramatically over the years. Today, a WFM solution can provide automated labor forecasting, labor scheduling, budgeting, employee self service, web access, time and attendance integration, task management, performance management, quality monitoring and real-time enterprise-wide reporting. All of these advanced features have enabled contact centers to reduce labor costs, improve service and achieve real-time visibility with workforce management.

Call Center Magazine: Who needs it?

Michael Williams, GMT: GMT believes that almost any contact center can realize tremendous value in WFM. For example, every day we hear from small & medium sized contact centers that are using spreadsheets and paper-intensive processes to manage their forecasting and scheduling. They have a misconception that WFM is exclusive privilege of larger contact centers.

However, at GMT, we like to show our small and medium sized clients that “Just because you’re small, don’t mean you can’t think big!” And “big” doesn’t mean “big budget”! All contact centers face the constant challenge of delivering great customer service while reducing costs, regardless of size. We feel that with today's unprecedented competition, rising labor costs, global economy and rapid employee turnover, meeting this challenge has become more urgent than ever—for any size contact center.

Call Center Magazine: What's new in WFM? Any trends? What are clients/users/managers asking for?

Michael Williams, GMT:: GMT has noticed a recent trend in that many contact center clients are now asking for a workforce management solution not only for their contact centers, but one they can deploy enterprise-wide—from administration and back-office to logistics and order fulfillment. Our flagship product, GMT Planet replaces the need for multiple software products to run the scheduling and forecasting functions of an enterprise’s back-office, so there is a cost-savings that can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars for Tier 1 businesses who standardize their operations and contact centers around our enterprise-wide WFM solution. In addition to the cost savings, we find these clients are assured a more holistic and strategically aligned approach to workforce optimization and performance monitoring than they could ever obtain with a stand-alone contact center WFM product.

We also find that performance management and quality monitoring in the contact center has become an important factor in workforce optimization. In response to this client need, our latest versions of GMT Planet offer granular and high-level insight into performance metrics through GMT Mission Control, a component that pulls in data from forecasts, queues, staffing requirements, scheduled activities, employee adherence, and proprietary GMT technologies to present a near real-time, unified view of key performance metrics.

Call Center Magazine: How different are small-center workforce management tools from those for bigger centers?

Michael Williams, GMT: Contact centers with fewer agents have the same opportunities and challenges as larger contact centers, but until recently, traditional workforce management solutions have been too costly or cumbersome for their specific needs. However several WFM vendors, including GMT, are addressing the needs of this market with solutions like:

ASP/Hosted Solutions: Hosted WFM can be ideal for smaller contact centers because the software runs at GMT’s data center, connects to the contact center’s ACD remotely to collect contact history data and it is securely accessed via the Internet with a browser to perform the forecasting, scheduling and assignment functions. A hosted ASP model streamlines the process of implementing workforce management and smaller contact centers can implement the application easier, faster, and less expensively than otherwise possible with a traditional server-based WFM solution.

Express or “Light” Versions: Today’s smaller contact centers need WFM solutions that can grow with them. GMT has met this challenge with affordable solutions that, as their business grows and WFM needs evolve, make it easy to migrate to our full-fledged Workforce Management offering. GMT’s Planet Express is the ideal starting point for the SMB contact center seeking a fast, easy route to workforce management. It provides best-of-breed functionality at a fraction of the cost. Advanced features combined with an easy-to-manage subscription service and the fact that implementation requires minimal IT resources; GMT’s solution gets smaller contact centers started quickly. As the contact center and their needs grow, GMT Planet Express is an easy step up to a full-featured version, opening up new opportunities for and cost savings and operational excellence. With GMT Planet Express small and medium-sized contact centers can finally realize the full potential of workforce management without having to be experts in these areas or make large investments in expensive software.

Call Center Magazine: How well integrated are workforce management tools with other agent-based applications, like training delivery and quality assurance systems? Should they be integrated?

Michael Williams, GMT: Some larger WFM vendors have incorporated these tools into their products by acquiring other companies or their technology. Customers complain that the result has been a product that isn’t tightly integrated, requires much more user training and lacks the level of support they need from a WFM vendor.

GMT’s approach is unique in that we developed an integrated suite, built internally--from the ground up. With GMT Planet, all key WFM-related functions are handled in one, completely integrated product. That means no more re-keying of data, no more delays from the consolidation of information, no more buying "integration" software or hiring third-party consultants to deliver integration projects, no more worrying about whether version changes will work, no more training people on the interfaces and quirks of multiple systems, no more wondering if the data from one application will be able to be integrated in reports with the data from another.

In the event a client has unique requirements, leveraging the GMT data into other financial, payroll, T&A or other applications, is also a straight-forward business, thanks to the our unique web-architecture, centralized data set, and flexible interface support. In essence, GMT Planet is a complete, closed-loop workforce management system that’s an integrated, sophisticated-but-easy-to-use solution.