eg’s CEO, Elizabeth Gooch summarised thoughts as follows:

“One of the issues here is that ‘back office’ means different things to different people. It can include many different functions from a single sales support person in a regional office to groups of people processing customer orders, claims or mortgages, financial transaction processing, even HR and payroll processing. For eg it means the people behind the front line where transactions are processed that are critical to delivering the customer experience but are often unseen by customers.

Unlike call centres, where the one main input channel is the telephone, work can come in many shapes and forms via many channels. As a result transactional processing is vastly more complicated and difficult to manage than the call centre will ever be. However, transactional processing has the scale and scope to deliver great operational efficiencies so investing time and money to performance manage these back office areas should reap significant financial rewards – businesses need to reduce cost.

I disagree that there is an emerging class of Back Office Workforce Optimisation tools are designed to accommodate the issues in the Back Office. Back office planning is not the same as front office and it is this misconception that prevents WFM tools being used effectively in the back office as they do not address core requirements of back office operating environments (latency, backlogs, multiple channels etc). There is only one back office product on the market that properly addresses all of the requirements of the back office and since it has been around for many years it can hardly be called ‘emerging’.

Adrian’s point about the cultural and behavioural challenges are true and should not be ignored. The tools will only give you partial benefits. It is the Managers and Team Leaders using those tools that will deliver the real benefits with the right training.

I think the biggest factor that stops people using WFM for back office planning is that ultimately these are not fit for purpose. End users with back-office WFM needs should ensure that the solution they select can effectively meet all of their requirements for specific back-office processes, ideally with purpose built functionality that works”.

In response to this one of the members posted:

What a great post. I can’t comment on the different vendors but you make some really great points. Back office environments are so diverse – even in my own organisation I’ve yet to find two that are the same! Thus we use bespoke methods to plan for them in order to make our planning relevant and meaningful.

Read the full conversation http://linkd.in/tbLdqG or comment here on your thoughts.

“To become the experts in task and process data capture should the Planning team start by tracking and forecasting their own workloads?”

How long does it take to authorise a holiday, and how many holiday requests do you receive per day, per week, per month, etc? Do you receive more holiday requests at the start or end of each week? Do you receive more holiday requests in some months than others? When did you last review your holiday process and when the process last refined?

I’ve used annual leave/holidays as an example but these questions could be applied almost everything resource planning do.

For me the big question is: “Could Resource Planners plan their time, workload and schedule better by using the best practice principles they apply to their organisation?”

My response to the above: In my experience, having been involved with data capture for many years, I would agree that the best practice principles that resource planners apply across their organisation are absolutely applicable within their own teams. Any business area that receives work items that require any form of processing adds an operating cost – and it is foreseeing and controlling this cost that is the ultimate challenge.

The ‘holiday request’ example you have used illustrates the many associated factors that need to be considered when creating a resource plan – accurate data capture at key facets of this process would enable planners themselves to better understand the trend in these requests (volumes/date received), and armed with this information can seek to better plan their own workloads. The data also enables analysis of such processes as part of any process improvement initiatives – the outcomes of which may be to introduce service levels/cut off dates for holiday requests to add an element of ‘control’ and enable a better level of forecasting from which to plan.

The need to identify metrics/KPI’s to measure performance and better facilitate planning & forecasting is absolutely relevant across all teams and enables work optimisation, and collecting the right data at the right level requires intelligent operations management.

A number of eg’s clients have successfully implemented Back Office Optimisation software to capture and transform the detail of every activity and interaction with a process or customer into a three-dimensional view of their operation. It is through this data capture that they can plan their time, workload and schedules more effectively.

If anyone wants to know more about their approach to data capture please email me and I can put you in touch with these clients to share ideas – ask@eguk.co.uk

I have heard long is anything between 36-60 months and i’d be interested to get a poll going on what is the most common for all three terms – please let me know your thoughts?  Here were some of the responses:

1. We define long term as the point at which you can recruit staff and get them trained to complete the work, currently 8 weeks, although we often use the word strategic and then anything before that is short term or tactical. We have detailed plans for 18 months and only occasionally are required to go longer than that. We don’t have mid ter.
Rachel, this is a very interesting question where the answer depends on the processes and more importantly the culture of the organisation we are discussing. But let me see if I can share what we see across the entire Customer Contact Industry (Front Office, Back Office, Email, Field etc…)

2. Long term is very much around what Graham said earlier in this thread, it’s the part of the planning process where you set your stake in the ground to set your capacity requirements (staff, desks, lines, IT, licences etc.) This can be anything from 12 months through to 5 to 7 years out. I’m not convinced in the accuracy of ANY forecast 5 years out, but that isn’t the point of the plan, to be accurate, it’s about being representative.

This is the key point of the transition from Long term to Midterm forecasting. This is where the stake in the ground is then required to be more than representative of demand; it needs to become a robust reflection of anticipated demand, so scheduling, investment and operational decisions can be made with confidence. This is usually ALWAYS within year, sometime rolling 12 months or often just within the live financial year for the organisation. We need to start to manage not just the level of demand we receive but to begin to profile it (What, When, Who, How and Why) which is what makes forecasting a full time role. Understanding this historically and predicting the impacts of ALL operational activity is what makes this such a demanding and specialist role. (Also often tied into the finance RAF process)

And I suppose this is also a hint of when a forecast becomes short term. When is it “handed over” from the forecaster to the operation or the real time function? How far out is this? Well what is it being used for? If I use front office as an example, if we are looking to produce flexible schedules/rotas then a strong short term forecast is very important, can be considered short term as far as 12 weeks out (as THIS is one of the key uses for the forecast). If we have an environment where the shifts are fixed, it’s the planning of offline activity which we have in our arsenal to deliver the best service possible, so the short term can be anything from 6 weeks out to the day before!. I would always expect the level of demand for a customer contact environment to have been forecast up to 8 times for any single day before you actually get to the day it’s being used for
1. Longterm
2. Midterm
3. Midterm RAF
4. Midterm / shorter handover
5. Monthly reforecast
6. Weekly reforecast
7. 2 days out
8. 1 day out…..

So the answer is a set one, it’s about how you intend to use the forecast and where the planning process sits within your culture and environment, but hopefully you can see often what dictates the terms is the importance we put upon i.

3. Well, this is a question with several answers i guess. When we started using forecasting in Operational Intelligence we plan for three months. In our business the amount of work change from period to period and it could be a waste of time planning long term. We have made some plans for 12 months, in areas with more predictability, but mainly doing a three months plan. The long term planning is more linked up to the budged, and number of employees and than it’s mainly 12 months planning. We have no shorter planning than three months, but this could be more relevant in the future.

Some varied comments and much variance between how organisations view this.  I’ll be certain to make sure we touch on this at the forthcoming focus group in Birmingham.

What do you think? Why not join the back office optimisation linked in group too.

Read the Forecasting data sheet.

eg have been a member of the Professional Planning Forum for some time and it is great to see member organisations embracing the opportunities that back office can deliver.  The PPF website has some good content for anyone involved in Back Office Optimisation and also has back office specific events.  If you are interested in Strategic & Forecast Planning, Real-time work management and Operational Analytics for the back office then I’d recommend you attend this Back Office Optimisation event.

Our Chief Executive, Elizabeth Gooch, wrote in a recent paper that one of the issues is that ‘back office’ means different things to different people.  For eg it means the people behind the front line where transactions are processed that are critical to delivering the customer experience but are often unseen by customers.

Transactional processing is difficult to manage.  It suffers from significant variation, not just in defining its scope, but also because there can be:

• Many input channels
• Varied, complex and multi-stage processes
• A variety of systems in use and
• A high degree of manual interaction

Unlike call centres, where their one main input channel, the telephone, work can come in many shapes and forms via many channels.  As a result transactional processing is vastly more complicated and difficult to manage than the call centre will ever be.

What we are hearing more and more is that the trouble lies in that workforce management solutions are not equipped with the required functionality to address back office work.  Erlang based solutions are considered outdated because of the multi-skill/channel element requirements and Erlang C does not allow for latency or address backlogs.

Is this your experience?  I think this topic is one to explore as one thing is for certain optimising back office performance is here to stay.

If you are interested in a related white paper from Bloor on ‘Operations management – measuring and managing effectively’ then just complete your details and I will send a copy to you.

I’ve come across some interesting facts about coaching to share with you.

In a recent survey conducted by the Institute of Leadership and Management into coaching methodology across 250 large UK companies the following was noted:

• Coaching is widely used as a development tool. 80% of the organisations surveyed had used or were using coaching, with a further 9% likely to use coaching in the next three years.

• 83% use internally recruited/employed coaches and 65% use external coaches.

So who are the internal coaches?

• 53% of internal coaches are coachee’s line manager, 46% are ’senior staff members from within coachee’s own business area (technical specialists)

How were these coaches selected?

Internal coaches are selected on the basis that they are:

• Suitable individuals (54%)
• Line managers (53%)
• Senior staff members (46%)
• Members of HR staff (43%)

This led me to question if they have the right skills and how are they trained.  In the same survey two thirds of organisations (34%) offer some form of development, and one third encourage coaches to gain a qualification – but are the right people elected as a coach in the first place?

So can everyone be a coach?

Used well coaching is a powerful tool that can improve individual and company development.  However the coach needs to develop core skills, experience, knowledge and personal attributes to enable them to develop as a great coach.  You do not become a great coach just by being appointed one.  I’ve seen this many times and it takes a certain skills set to be effective.  A good coach knows there is always room for improvement – in themselves and the people they coach.

So over to you….

Do you see coaching as a proven way for managers to motivate people and improve individual and business performance – what works for you and what are the benefits?

Is coaching seen (evidenced) as a powerful tool in your organisation?

Leave a response and comment on what size organisation you are too please.  Thanks!

Janet Greenwood, Client Solutions at eg

Quantifying how much needs to be completed, prioritising activities and making sure there are enough people in the team are all important.  However, will Team Members feel engaged and deliver what’s needed?  Some Team Managers find that their Team Members understand what needs to be done but that doesn’t always translate into delivery.  Team Managers will allocate a full day’s work to their Team Members, in the hope that if they “pile the work on” everything will get done, only to be disappointed at what was left over at the end of the day.  Others let Team Members choose the work they do only to find that some haven’t taken enough and results are also disappointing.

What have you found works in your organisation?  We would love to hear your views on what you’ve tried and any learns from that.  Leave a response below.

At the next eg Client Focus Group @ Old Trafford on 21.06, we will also look at how pro-active work allocation to team members can help deliver improved performance to optimise the back office. Contact ask@eguk.co.uk if you would like to attend.

It doesn’t matter how good the front office is, customer perception will be shaped by what comes after their initial transaction – all too often failures in the processes that follow.

So what exactly are the problems that need to be addressed?

Unlike call centres, where their one main input channel, the telephone, work can come in many shapes and forms via many channels.  As a result transactional processing is vastly more complicated and difficult to manage than the call centre will ever be.

The key to choosing a back office system for your organisation is to understand the problems that need to be addressed and to find a vendor with a track record of delivering the full range of functionality required out of the box.  Many of the solutions on the market have been derived from experience in the front office, manufacturing or financial management – be sure to choose a system that has been purpose built to solve the problems of back office – a tool that will achieve your objectives and deliver real business benefit.  This is not about Marketing hype but solving a genuine problem – how to optimise back office performance.

Are you looking to optimize your back office and what are the problems you face?   Share your thoughts and leave a response and I’ll respond to any specific issues.  I’ll also share with you the finding of some research we commissioned on this very topic.  In the meantime take a look at the Back Office Optimisation video.

“After reading about this subject in an article from iSixSigma magazine it got me thinking about why six sigma is so slow to deliver and methods that can be used to make it more quantifiable and sustainable.

Without day-to-day operations being under control, the benefits expounded by all other initiatives tend to be understated and gradually deteriorate/revert to what was and are hugely dependant on individuals in the process as opposed to properly defined and executed management roles.

Typically, excessive time may be spent trying to identify data/metrics that exist in disparate systems and then try to understand them in terms of indicators of potential problems.  Often, such data does not exist or is really difficult to gather and correctly contextualise.  Does this sound familiar?

What I have noticed is that in equipping Management with real-time operational intelligence coupled with operational management best practices, ensures optimal delivery of all initiatives that are applied in the operational environments.

I have written extensively on this topic and invite you to learn more about utilising good operations management and request the full paper – just complete the contact form below.  Email any questions, thoughts and experience to ask@eguk.co.za”

Follow us on twitter @ http://twitter.com/egsolutions

Join our linked in Operations Management group – http://linkd.in/cgVtz5

It’s interesting the conversations you have in the middle of the night. As I write this at 2.30am, our Year End processing is taking place and a couple of bleary eyed chaps in our IT department are finishing off the remnants of the pizzas and bottles of pop to try to keep themselves awake.

One of them asked me if we were still using eg work manager®, to which I replied we couldn’t live without it as I have always believed that, as is posted so many times on this site, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it…” Then we got onto the subject of staff measurement.

They couldn’t believe the extent to which we can measure our staff through work manager and our telecoms system, but to me after more years than I care to remember, it’s a way of life in a busy Contact Centre and I should know as my team produce reams of MI for managers on an hourly/daily/weekly/monthly basis. I guess many HO support areas in other organisations are similar in so much as they don’t have the same level of measurement.

This got me thinking… In an age when we measure our most important resource, those at the customer facing rock face who are on the whole at the lower end of the salary scale against:

• quality of work
• effectiveness/productivity
• service standards
• regulatory compliance
• timekeeping etc, etc…

What keeps them coming back every day?? I guess it can’t be that bad a place to work, there is a good atmosphere within the teams and of course they get paid.

However, what will make them want to come back day after day? The best thing for some I guess is the chance to grow and develop their skills, improve their career and increase their pay and someday move to a support team when the amount of time you spend in the loo in a day isn’t as important.

This then reminded me that one of the objectives for the coming year for the Contact Centre management group is to dust down the skills matrices and create development and training plans for our teams.

Before I get too bogged down in it all, and taking the advice of a former manager of mine who said “Never re-invent the wheel” can any of the readers of this blog who have had to create development plans in the past provide any good points to consider and any pitfalls to avoid. We obviously want this to motivate staff to develop which should in turn help the company with peaks and troughs in the various work types we have to process.

Any help would be appreciated…