WFM Roles

This WFM standard outlines the following organizational roles.  The roles are the high-level activities managed by the WFM organization. The following section, provides additional information about the functions or tasks that make up each role. This standard acknowledges each organization will likely map roles back to their appropriate respective job classification design, but does recommend new processes (Monte Carlo simulation, the application of risk-rating systems, and the management of WFM automation) be aligned appropriately with traditional functions.

To align to the lifecycle of WFM functions, roles are segmented between three primary areas:

1. Forecasting Roles
2. Scheduling Roles
3. Real-Time Roles

These roles should roll up to a common WFM organizational leader. Depending on the size of the organizations, each function may have supervisors or managers who are aligned to one or more of the three segments.

Organizational Roles

Functions are then mapped to the roles:

WFM Organizational Roles

Forecasting Role

Forecasting functions aligned to a forecaster's role: Budgeting / Capacity Plans Model Simulation & Risk Rating Long, Midrange & Short-Term Forecasting Vacation Allotments Attrition Modeling

Scheduling Role

Scheduling functions aligned to a schedulers's role: Schedule generation, optimization & maintenance Shift design & Shift bids Schedule optimization Activity management (manual & automated) Vacation bidding

Real-Time Role

Real-time functions aligned to a real-time analyst's role: Intraday reforecasting Incident management Intraday traffic management Automation rules management

Other Roles

Additional roles may considered with the three core areas above, depending on an organization's design. These roles may be fully integrated, partially connected or partner with the WFM roles. Examples include:

• WFM & Automation Platform Management
• Call Routing & Administration
• Third Party Management / Outsourced Vendor
• Reporting & Analytics

WFM & Automation Platform Management

The platforms leveraged for running the WFM software application and WFM automation application require administrators. Depending on the size and structure of a contact center, this may be a dedicated role within the WFM team, or it may be a shared responsibility. Whether dedicated or shared, governance around these two platforms should remain the responsibility of an employee under the WFM function.

Call Routing & Administration

Within the real-time role, intraday traffic management is defined as a function to by aligned to the real-time role. Often, real-time analysts will have the responsibility to alter or adjust call routing & agent skill assignment, to respond to real-time changes in the environment. The degree to which this team manages skill template designs or routing logic will vary by organization, in that many organizations will have a Telephony Management / IT department that has overall responsibility for the phone system. Regardless of the demarcation of responsibility behind the call routing platform, this standard recommends that the real-time team have a strong alignment with the Telephony Management / IT team, and that strong governance be established for managing change to the telephony system.

Third Party Management / Outsourced Vendor(s)

Organizations that leverage third party partners to service a percentage of their calls will have functions that are heavily interconnected with the forecasting role. Forecasters are forecasting demand, regardless of who is servicing that demand. With that responsibility, forecasters will need to allocate demand to third party partners and will have processes to determine how volumes are locked and managed with these partners. Given the wide range and nature of third party agreements, the vendor management function is acknowledged in this standard, but it is left to an individual organization to design the methods under which forecasting roles incorporate vendor associated functions.

Reporting & Analytics

WFM organizations generate significant amounts of data and a WFM role or roles may be potentially responsible for generating reports or analysis behind that data. These reports may include:

• Intraday performance reports (IDPs),
• Prior day performance reports (PDPs),
• Service Level performance,
• Incident reports,
• Forecast models & artifacts,
• Schedule health reports,

and potentially many more. Again, depending on an organization's overall operating model and design, these reports may be initially designed with the workforce management team, then managed for generation via either the same team, or by a reporting & analytics organization serving the overall reporting needs for the contact center.