Key Figures in Workforce Management

From WFM Labs

Workforce management as a discipline was shaped by a small number of individuals whose contributions—mathematical, technological, organizational, and educational—built the field from first principles. This page profiles the foundational figures, focusing on their professional contributions rather than personal biography.

Agner Krarup Erlang (1878–1929)

Role: Father of Queueing Theory

Erlang was a Danish mathematician, statistician, and engineer whose work at the Copenhagen Telephone Company created the mathematical foundations of workforce management.

Key Contributions

  • 1909 — Published "The Theory of Probabilities and Telephone Conversations," proving that random telephone traffic follows the Poisson distribution. This paper established the probabilistic framework that all contact center forecasting relies upon.
  • 1917 — Published Solution of Some Problems in the Theory of Probabilities of Significance in Automatic Telephone Exchanges, containing what became known as the Erlang B and Erlang C formulas. Erlang B calculates call blocking probability in a loss system; Erlang C calculates wait probability in a queueing system.
  • Unit of traffic measurement — The erlang (symbol E) was named in his honor as the dimensionless unit of telecommunications traffic intensity. One erlang represents one circuit occupied continuously.

Impact on WFM

Every WFM software system in commercial use incorporates Erlang's formulas or their derivatives. The Erlang C formula remains the standard method for calculating staffing requirements in contact centers, despite being over a century old. Extensions like Erlang A (which accounts for caller abandonment) and WFM Labs Erlang-O™ (which models outbound blending) build directly on his mathematical framework.

Erlang died in 1929 at age 51 in Copenhagen. He never saw a contact center, never encountered a workforce management system, and could not have imagined that his telephone traffic formulas would determine the staffing levels of millions of agents worldwide. His intellectual legacy is arguably the most consequential in the history of customer operations.

Gordon F. MacPherson Jr.

Role: Founder of ICMI

MacPherson founded the Incoming Calls Management Institute (ICMI) in 1985, creating the first organization dedicated to professionalizing call center management.

Key Contributions

  • Founded ICMI (1985) — At a time when call center management was not recognized as a distinct profession, MacPherson created an institute for education, research, and best practice development. ICMI provided the first structured training programs for call center managers and supervisors.
  • Industry legitimization — By establishing ICMI as a credible educational institution, MacPherson helped transform call center management from an ad-hoc operational function into a recognized professional discipline.
  • Knowledge infrastructure — ICMI's publications, conferences, and certification programs created the shared vocabulary and frameworks that the call center industry uses today.

MacPherson recruited Brad Cleveland as a partner in 1991, and their collaboration expanded ICMI into the globally recognized institution it became.

Brad Cleveland

Role: Co-builder of ICMI; Author of the Field's Definitive Text

Cleveland is an author, consultant, and organizational leader who did more than any single individual to codify call center management as a professional discipline.

Key Contributions

  • ICMI leadership (1991–2008) — Cleveland joined Gordon MacPherson as one of two initial partners at ICMI in 1991. He served as president and CEO from 1996 through 2008, during which ICMI expanded its international presence, launched industry membership programs, and developed management-level certification.
  • Call Center Management on the Fast Track (later Contact Center Management on Fast Forward) — Cleveland's book became the definitive reference for contact center management, used in university programs and corporate training worldwide across multiple editions. It systematically documented the planning, staffing, and management processes that constitute modern workforce management.
  • Global influence — Cleveland has worked across 45 U.S. states and over 60 countries, consulting for organizations including American Express, Apple, USAA, and the governments of Australia, the United States, and Canada.
  • Continuing role — Cleveland serves as Senior Advisor to ICMI, contributing to the organization's ongoing evolution.

Impact on WFM

Cleveland's work bridged the gap between Erlang's mathematics and operational practice. His books and training programs taught generations of WFM practitioners how to apply forecasting, scheduling, and real-time management concepts. The WFM process framework used across the industry reflects structures that Cleveland helped codify.

Stu Hammer

Role: Founder of IEX Corporation

Hammer founded IEX Corporation in Richardson, Texas in 1988, building what would become the most widely deployed workforce management software in the contact center industry.

Key Contributions

  • Founded IEX Corporation (1988) — Hammer created a company focused exclusively on workforce management for contact centers at a time when the market barely existed.
  • TotalView — IEX's flagship product became the industry standard for enterprise WFM, offering forecasting, scheduling, intraday management, and adherence tracking in a unified platform.
  • Market creation — Under Hammer's leadership, IEX expanded to over 2,900 sites in 45+ countries, managing more than 840,000 agents. IEX did not just participate in the WFM software market—it largely created the enterprise segment.
  • Acquisition by NICE (2006) — NICE Systems acquired IEX for $200 million, validating WFM as a strategic technology category and ensuring the TotalView platform's continued development within the NICE ecosystem.

Impact on WFM

IEX TotalView defined what a WFM system is. Its feature set—multi-skill forecasting, automated schedule generation, real-time adherence, intraday reforecasting—established the product category template that every subsequent WFM vendor has followed. When practitioners refer to WFM software, they are describing a product category that IEX largely invented.

Dr. James Pipkins

Role: Early WFM Software Pioneer

Dr. Pipkins brought scientific rigor to workforce scheduling through his unique background in physics and applied mathematics.

Key Contributions

  • Founded Pipkins, Inc. (1983) — A former plasma physicist with a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Dr. Pipkins developed interest in workforce scheduling while at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Division. He left to found one of the earliest WFM software companies.
  • British Telecom partnership — Pipkins' early work with British Telecom mechanized scheduling for operator services across more than 200 locations, demonstrating that mathematical optimization could replace manual shift planning at scale.
  • Vantage Point — The Pipkins WFM product has remained in continuous development since the 1980s, making it one of the longest-lived WFM software platforms.
  • Scientific approach — Dr. Pipkins' physics and engineering background brought optimization algorithms and simulation techniques to WFM scheduling before such approaches were common.

Cliff Moore and the COPC Founders

Role: Performance Standards for Contact Center Operations

Key Contributions

  • Founded COPC Inc. (1996) — Cliff Moore co-chaired the founding of COPC Inc. (Customer Operations Performance Center), joined by leaders from American Express, Dell, Motorola, Microsoft, and other major organizations.
  • COPC CSP Standard (now COPC CX Standard) — The founders created the first structured performance management framework for contact center operations. Modeled on manufacturing quality standards, the COPC Standard defined measurable requirements for forecasting accuracy, scheduling efficiency, service level achievement, and operational consistency.
  • Global certification — COPC certification became a mark of operational excellence, adopted by contact centers and BPOs worldwide across automotive, financial services, healthcare, retail, telecom, and technology industries.
  • Consulting and training — COPC expanded beyond auditing to provide consulting, training, benchmarking, and research services, helping hundreds of organizations improve operational performance.

Impact on WFM

The COPC Standard gave WFM practitioners an external benchmark for forecasting accuracy, schedule adherence, and service level performance. By defining what good looks like with measurable criteria, COPC provided the accountability framework that transformed WFM from an art into a measurable discipline. The WFM Assessment framework on this wiki reflects COPC's legacy of structured performance evaluation.

Penny Reynolds

Role: WFM Education Pioneer

Key Contributions

  • Co-founded The Call Center School — Reynolds co-founded The Call Center School (with Maggie Klenke), developing the first dedicated curriculum for workforce management education.
  • Author of Call Center Staffing — Reynolds' book Call Center Staffing: The Complete, Practical Guide to Workforce Management became a standard training resource, teaching practitioners the mathematical and operational foundations of WFM.
  • SWPP education director — Reynolds directed educational activities for the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals, shaping the professional development of thousands of WFM practitioners.
  • Author of The Power of One — Reynolds popularized the concept that a single agent's behavior affects entire service outcomes, a principle codified on this wiki as Power of One.

Maggie Klenke

Role: WFM Training and Professional Community Builder

Key Contributions

  • Co-founded The Call Center School — Alongside Penny Reynolds, Klenke built the educational infrastructure for workforce management training.
  • SWPP co-director — Klenke helped direct the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals, building the professional community specifically for WFM practitioners.
  • Call Center Training Associates — Klenke continued developing and delivering WFM training programs, contributing to workforce management education over multiple decades.

Jim Carreker

Role: ACD Technology Innovator

Key Contributions

  • Founded Aspect Telecommunications (1985) — Carreker founded Aspect with the mission to prove that the clunky ACDs and PBXs of the era could be replaced by software-driven call processing.
  • Software-defined call processing — Aspect's approach anticipated the industry's eventual migration from hardware-based to software-based contact center infrastructure by decades.
  • Aspect's WFM entry — Through Aspect Telecommunications' acquisition of TCS Management Group, Carreker's company combined ACD technology with workforce management software, foreshadowing the integrated platforms that dominate today.

Robert Hirvela

Role: ACD Technology Inventor

Key Contributions

  • Rockwell Galaxy ACD (1973) — Hirvela developed and patented the technology behind the Rockwell Galaxy Automatic Call Distributor, deployed at Continental Airlines. The Galaxy enabled the first large-scale automated call distribution operation, handling millions of calls annually for over 20 years.
  • Enabling technology — The ACD was the prerequisite technology for workforce management as a discipline. Without automated call distribution generating structured data on volumes, handle times, and service levels, there was nothing to forecast and nothing to schedule against.

See Also

References

  1. "Agner Krarup Erlang." Wikipedia, accessed 2026.
  2. "Agner Erlang and the Mathematics of Telecommunication Traffic." SciHi Blog.
  3. "Agner Erlang (1878–1929)." MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews.
  4. "Brad Cleveland." Wikipedia, accessed 2026.
  5. Cleveland, Brad. Contact Center Management on Fast Forward. ICMI Press.
  6. "COPC Inc. — Our History." https://www.copc.com/about-copc-inc/our-history/
  7. Reynolds, Penny. Call Center Staffing: The Complete, Practical Guide to Workforce Management. The Call Center School Press, 2003.
  8. Reynolds, Penny. The Power of One. The Call Center School Press.
  9. "About SWPP." https://swpp.org/about/
  10. "Pipkins, Inc. — About." https://www.pipkins.com/about/
  11. NICE Systems. "NICE Completes Acquisition of IEX Corporation." Press release, 2006.
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