Scenarios (Perform "what-if" operations)

Vantage Point 8.0 now supports scenario-based functionality throughout the system. This allows you to generate forecasts and schedules for any week, performing "what-if" operations with the service levels and various configurations, without interfering with your production data. By defining "scenarios", you can define as many "parallel" environments as you like to experiment with alternate configurations or service objectives. Scenarios can help you eliminate the guesswork without compromising your existing production data and planning.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Interface

A new add-on module has been added to Vantage Point to interface to Interactive Voice Response (IVR) units. This add-on module enables agents and management to keep staffing information up to date. With this new interface agents can call in sick, report late arrival, request personal and vacation days, check their next assignment, and retrieve current or future schedules. Supervisors can use it to review and approve exceptions as well as check agents' schedules and assigned activities. Streamline your processes by eliminating the cumbersome and time-consuming paper work and data entry associated with schedule exceptions!

Schedule Reoptimization

Service levels don’t have to be abandoned due to employee absence, last-minute meetings, or unexpected work volume. With Vantage Point’s unique Intraday Schedule Reoptimization feature, agent schedules can be adjusted at any time, and as often as needed, to compensate for those unexpected circumstances. Agents can even be automatically notified of the schedule changes by E-mail or by posting the revised schedules on Pipkins' optional agent Web portal.

Filters

No longer limited to filtering only Staff, Queues, and Teams, virtually any of the data managed by Vantage Point can now be filtered, giving you the data-level control for both security and convenience. Pipkins’ unique Mandatory Filters allow you to grant access to data on a "need-to-know-basis", with User Filters that can then be applied to reduce lists to a manageable size by viewing only a subset of the accessible data. You can choose which filters you wish to employ and which ones are not necessary to your operations.

Linked Shortcuts

Process streamlining just got better! With Vantage Point v8.0, you can take those time consuming, multi-step, methodical processes and wrap them up into one simple button-click! With Vantage Point’s Linked Shortcuts, you can define a single Short Cut button to run your Forecast, Requirements, and Schedules, generate and print a Deviation report and E-mail it to all appropriate parties. And, if that isn’t easy enough, you can schedule the system to do all of this automatically so it is done when you come to work in the morning! Your imagination is the only limit to how this feature can help you run your business.

Enhanced Vacation Planning

Version 3.0 of our Web Access module now includes enhanced Vacation Planner administrator functionality. This allows greater flexibility and granular control over how and when an agent can request paid time off. Requests (such as partial day, full day, and full week) can be more precisely controlled and restricted to a period of a day, or down to a half hour time range. In addition, administrators can logically define restrictions on groups of agents, and allow these groups to share unused available time off.

E-Mail integration

Vantage Point now integrates E-Mail into its robust suite of reporting options. When defining reporting parameters, you can specify a distribution list to whom the report will be E-Mailed after it is generated. Additionally, for agent-related reports such as the "Current Schedule Report", you can even instruct the system to E-Mail each agent included in the report. When the report is generated, each agent will be E-Mailed only his or her portion of the overall report - in this case, his or her schedule. With the advanced layout capabilities of Vantage Point, you can save these report parameters for one-button distribution of reports and/or agent schedules!

Automated Data Exports

With Vantage Point's Automated Exporting feature, you can eliminate that daily chore of having to manually export your data. Simply configure the report that you need and instruct Vantage Point to automatically generate the report at your chosen time of day and interval (daily, weekly, etc.). Designate the desired export file format and destination file folder, and you're done! Once initiated, the system will take care of your data exporting for you, without any additional interaction required. And, since the reporting is done on the server, you can occupy your time and your computer with more important duties.

WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) Report Distribution

Now you can share reports electronically with your staff or management exactly as you see them on your screen. Vantage Point reports can now be exported to a "native" format and viewed just as they are in the original report. Our new distributable "Report Viewer" allows you to share reports exactly as they were originally generated without having to convert them to another file format (i.e., HTML, Excel, Text, etc. ). Our "Report Viewer" can be downloaded for free from our Customer Support website. You can even use this feature to archive reports for future review or export, without having to regenerate the reports.

Budgeting Vantage Point

With our "Vantage Point Budgeting View" of the product, you can easily accomplish your future planning and budgeting tasks. A predefined setup (called a Vantage Point) gives you access to the tools you need to plan for future call volumes and determine the cost of scheduling to meet your desired goals and service levels.

Data-Level Security and Filtering

Vantage Point allows you to partition your data to fit the way you do business. You can define data-level access to give the centralized scheduling team access to all data, yet confine the floor supervisor to access and visibility of only his or her agents and responsibilities. With Vantage Point's enhanced filtering capabilities, you determine what data your users can see, utilizing both "mandatory" and "supplemental" filters. Mandatory filters determine the limits of their data access, while supplemental filters can be applied and removed by the user to allow them to view subsets of the data to meet a specific need.

Agent Productivity Reporting

The latest release of Vantage Point features a new Agent Productivity Reporting capability. Essentially any agent-related data that your switch can provide can be stored in Vantage Point and reported. Our new custom Agent data reports allow you to configure your own custom report with the data you want.