Forecasting and Scheduling
Impact 360 can help your organization forecast demand and the staffing requirements to meet each individual branch or store’s service-level goals.
In the branch environment, where customer demand is sporadic and can vary greatly throughout the day, forecasting and planning workload and scheduling employees — activities often referred to as workforce management — can be very challenging.
Impact 360 provides branch and remote offices with an automated, streamlined forecasting and scheduling solution that addresses key challenges, including:
- Who is supposed to work today?
- According to the work plan, what is the projected level of service?
- Based on today’s deviations from plan, what level of service will we provide?
- What rescheduling or reassignment options are available to meet the changed circumstances?
With Impact 360, organizations can forecast demand and the staffing requirements to meet each individual branch or store’s service-level goals. Impact 360 Forecasting projects staffing needs down to the queue or position level within daily 30-minute intervals. The forecasting engine reviews and analyzes historical data for seasonality, trends, holidays, and positional day impact, and then creates a forecast. Planning enables you to view trends, determine the optimal staffing mix (full-time, part-time, peak-time) conduct “what-if” scenarios, anticipate staffing demands in association with marketing campaigns — and even accommodate location-specific attributes to produce unique staffing requirements for each branch.
Impact 360 replaces time-consuming, manual scheduling with an automated process that’s integrated with volume and customer traffic forecasts to match resources accurately to customer demand. Branches can deploy the right number of staff with the appropriate skills based on forecasted demand, employee availability, past schedule patterns, and other attributes. An easy-to-use, Web-based tool at every site allows branches to manage employee preferences locally, enforce shift length and breaks, and manage pooled employee resources across multiple locations. Scheduling at the branch level offers the flexibility to modify and balance corporate recommendations against local constraints and service goals, to fit the specific scheduling needs of each branch quickly and easily.
