RealNumbers
RealNumbers (styled Real Numbers) is a United States–based contact center planning firm specializing in strategic and long-range capacity planning. It applies forecasting, simulation, and optimization to help contact center operations make staffing and budget decisions over multi-month and multi-year horizons, positioning itself in the strategic-planning niche that complements operational WFM platforms rather than replacing them.[1]
Background
RealNumbers was co-founded by Ric Kosiba and his son Chris Kosiba, the latter bringing an industrial-engineering and operations-research background (Purdue) and working actively on the product. Ric Kosiba, the firm's managing partner, is an engineer with a Ph.D. in operations research and engineering from Purdue University and roughly 25 years in the contact center industry. Kosiba previously founded the contact center planning company Bay Bridge Decision Technologies in 2000 and subsequently held roles at CCaaS vendors including Interactive Intelligence, Genesys, and Sharpen before establishing RealNumbers.[2] The firm's work is rooted in long-term planning practice, with Kosiba a frequent contributor to industry bodies such as the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals.
Strategies
RealNumbers' platform, Strategies, launched in April 2025, applies advanced analytics and simulation to strategic contact center planning.[3] Reported capabilities include:
- Simulation and what-if analysis — custom simulation models per operation, with what-if and sensitivity analysis on cost drivers and the probability and impact of over- and under-staffing.
- Least-cost optimization — linear-programming optimization of hiring, overtime, and leave plans against service-level targets, producing least-cost staffing plans.
- Seasonal and budget planning — capacity planning across seasonal peaks and valleys, with budget plans built under constraints such as overtime caps.
- Scenario comparison — side-by-side comparison of conservative, aggressive, and worst-case plans.
- Conversational interface (Mackey) — an agentic AI assistant that runs simulations from natural-language queries through a function-calling architecture, with explicit user confirmation and an audit trail of decisions.
Positioning
RealNumbers occupies the strategic / long-range end of the planning spectrum, working alongside the operational WFM systems that handle scheduling and intraday execution. Its emphasis on simulation, least-cost optimization, and scenario analysis reflects an operations-research approach to the hiring-and-budget questions that strategic planning addresses. For the broader category and alternatives, see Strategic Workforce Planning.
See also
- Strategic Workforce Planning
- AI as a Usability Layer
- Ric Kosiba
- Cinareo
- Anaplan
- Long-Range Forecasting
- Capacity Planning Methods
