Have you ever made an impulse purchase and felt deep regret afterward? Well, buyer’s remorse also can happen when shopping for workforce management tech. Do your homework and make sure you understand what exactly you are buying, and if it’s right for your organization. After all, you are spending a considerable amount — thousands of dollars, if not more. Making the wrong choices can lead to many problems down the road. Most of those problems probably won’t surface until after implementation is complete and the software is in use.
Common factors that often contribute to faulty purchase decisions involving workforce management tech:
- Not enough advance planning
- Failure to adhere to a budget
- Buying capabilities and features you won’t need for several more years
- Following the herd and selecting a solution based primarily on its popularity
- Believing that one solution can be the answer to all problems
Workforce management tech, like all software, is never a magic cure-all. It’s a tool or more specifically a toolkit. You need the right tools in your toolkit to do each various job, but the person using the tool or tools also needs a certain level of skill to be effective. Overbuying or underbuying can be problematic. Organizations often fall into the trap of overbuying software. This can include buying systems that are too complex or too hard to implement or that simply do not align with current or future operational needs or that cost more than your allotted project budget. Sometimes exaggerated claims or promises on the provider’s part contribute to the problem of overbuying. Carefully evaluate and analyze your immediate, short-term and long-term needs and consider the following recommendations:
Before You Buy
Keep in mind that workforce management tech, like any major software system for your operations, is a major expenditure and a significant investment by your organization. To avoid buyer’s remorse and ensure that the system will meet your needs and generate positive ROI, follow these simple steps:
1. Recognize the Importance of What You Are Purchasing
For many organizations and businesses, like mortgage companies, workforce management tech is one of, if not the most, critical software purchases. Your WFM system supports all your other operations and services. If that WFM software does not produce accurate workload forecasts and optimal staff schedules, the negative impact of overstaffing or understaffing will dwarf the positive benefits from your other software systems. When evaluating solutions consider their flexibility and scalability, not just their feature sets. You need software tools that can grow and adapt with your organization and meet its ever-changing needs over time. Keep in mind that the install base for many WFM providers is predominantly replacement systems. If the technology you are buying isn’t a good fit due to poor forecasting performance, difficulty implementing or managing the software itself, or lack of scalability, it may end of being a failed purchase and you may be in the market for a replacement system sooner rather than later.
2. Don’t Just Follow the Herd
Avoid putting too much weight on a vendor’s marketing tactics and messaging. Your focus should be on their software and objectively evaluating if it does in fact fit your needs. Remember that bigger isn’t always better. Similarly, a larger customer base doesn’t always guarantee that a provider’s solutions or support are necessarily better. It’s a highly competitive market. Do your due diligence, just don’t get so distracted by magazine endorsements, revenue reports, analyst ratings, vendor claims (often exaggerated), and general marketing hype that you lose focus on your actual needs and finding the tools that best meet those needs. Customer referrals and references can be a valuable source of information. Ask the firm’s customers about it’s track record for fulfilling promises it has made. Dig into subtle differences in the software that may impact functionality and performance. Find out how frequently upgrades are released and how changes in the tools have impacted the operations of these customers. Also ask about their experiences with training, customer service and software support provided by the vendor.
3. Plan to Evaluate the Vendor
Over the years many WFM providers have been acquired and their solutions merged with other providers’ software suites. More often than not, the acquiring company lacks expertise in the specialty area of the acquired software. In such cases, the acquiring company may have a solid reputation for the solutions it developed internally, but may lack the capability to innovate and continue developing the acquired solution. You should also weigh other factors including vendor longevity, as well as the likelihood of the firm being acquired and merged into another company with which you have no previous relationship.
Evaluation Process
Purchasing mistakes involving workforce management tech typically focus on two key areas: inaccurate forecasting and an inability to produce requirements at the interval level. The root causes of these issues are tied to inadequate scheduling algorithms. Forecasting accuracy is impacted by: (1) the amount of available historical data, (2) the nature of the data, (3) the forecasting period, (4) an infinite number of different service objectives on one or more work streams and (5) the algorithms used to reflect real-life customer behaviors.
You want a WFM system that can store and use several years of historical data to generate more accurate forecasts. Key criteria for capable workforce management tech include the following.
- How much historic data can it store and/or use?
- Does it account for inflation resulting from abandoned calls?
- Does it recognize seasonal and growth trends?
- Can you input special-event information and apply correlation factors?
Overstaffing and understaffing are clear indicators that you’ve made a poor purchasing decision when you bought your WFM solution. Both conditions have serious negative impact on revenue and profits that can be crippling to your business. Overstaffing results in idle agents and wasted labor expense. Understaffing results in unanswered phone calls and customers lost due to poor service.
Resolving Issues
What should you do if your workforce management solution doesn’t meet your organization’s needs? There are two options: (1) create a workaround using your current software package, or (2) replace the system completely. This is a hard choice. The possibility of your current WFM vendor providing a acceptable solution is unlikely. If they do offer a solution, be sure to weigh the odds of success and the amount of time required to complete the fix.
Scraping a workforce management system and installing a new one can be an expensive and frustrating process, however, when all is said and done, it may be the best alternative for getting the workforce management tech you need at that point. That said, before taking such drastic action, ensure that your existing software package was correctly implemented, and that all users are properly trained. Inadequate training often results in under utilization of the system’s capabilities and/or the system not meeting the expected service levels.
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Workforce management tech is based on scientific principles and should be approached from a scientific perspective. Only WFM systems whose algorithms have been tested over time and proven accurate will consistently produce forecasts that eliminate scheduling errors that cause overstaffing and understaffing. To avoid buyer’s remorse and costly purchasing mistakes, invest the necessary time and resources to thoroughly evaluate your business needs, the strengths and weaknesses of the WFM solutions you are considering and what the WFM vendors bring to the table as potential partners you and your team will be working with over time.
About Pipkins
Pipkins, Inc., founded in 1983, is a leading supplier of workforce management software and services to the call center industry, providing sophisticated forecasting and scheduling technology for both the front and back office. Its award-winning Vantage Point is the most accurate forecasting and scheduling tool on the market. Pipkins’ systems forecast and schedule more than 300,000 agents in over 500 locations across all industries worldwide.