The “2022-2023 Workforce Management for the Enterprise” report is DMG Consulting's sixteenth annual publication on the workforce management (WFM) market. The Report's new name (formerly the “Workforce Management Product and Market Report”) reflects the growing benefits of WFM throughout the enterprise, beyond the contact center. The new generation of WFM solutions are increasingly flexible and responsive to the needs of enterprises, their customers and employees. This Report is intended to help contact center, back-office and branch operations leaders and chief operating officers (COOs) in companies of all sizes select a WFM solution and partner that best meet their unique requirements.
The WFM market has benefited from unprecedented innovation over the past 5 years, and this is just the beginning of the technological enhancements that are expected to be introduced to these solutions over the next few years. The newer WFM applications are flexible and designed to handle both voice and digital channels, including interactions that pivot between channels and agents. These new solutions give front-line supervisors/managers and WFM administrators the tools they need to create accurate forecasts that can dynamically adapt in real time to the changing needs of customers, the department and its employees.
DMG Consulting describes today's solutions as "new-gen WFM," a term we introduced 8 years ago. At the core of new-gen WFM is the recognition of each agent/employee as an individual with unique needs, not merely a resource to be scheduled at the will of the company. The Great Resignation underscores that employees, particularly in service-oriented positions, will walk away when they are not given the respect they deserve. Fair treatment, especially in the form of competitive pay and schedule flexibility, are priorities for employees today. New-gen WFM solutions help companies balance their needs with employees' expectations for fairness.
New-gen WFM solutions perform the classic functions of a WFM application: forecasting, scheduling, vacation/paid time off (PTO) planning, voluntary time off (VTO)/overtime (OT) calculations, intraday management, agent self-service, mobility, long-term planning, etc. The notable and exciting element in new-gen WFM is that employees have direct input and participate in every step of the planning process. Employees can even make changes after a schedule is generated, without penalty. Workforce management administrators/supervisors also benefit from new-gen WFM, as these solutions greatly reduce the time required to manually enter agent schedules and changes into the system, freeing them to focus their efforts on optimizing departmental performance. The benefits drive positive impacts on the customer experience (CX) and the culture and performance of the contact center or other departments utilizing the WFM solution, which improves the company's bottom line.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an essential enabler of many of the advancements in WFM solutions. It increases the accuracy of forecasts and enables the application to auto-select the optimal algorithm for each situation. Artificial intelligence is also being used for real-time adaptive scheduling, which improves the accuracy, flexibility and fairness of scheduling. It allows WFM solutions to balance the needs of employers and employees, and helps ensure that global, regional and local work rules are adhered to. It also facilitates the handling of vacation planning, PTO, VTO, OT, shrinkage projections, and much more. Artificial intelligence makes it possible to manage the complexities associated with forecasting and scheduling digital channels - concurrency, asynchronous transactions, lapsed time, cross-channel interactions, etc. In the future, DMG expects to see predictive analytics (an AI technology) used to align WFM recommendations and schedules with contact centers' core routing and queuing engines to improve the customer and agent experience while increasing productivity and reducing costs.
The availability of WFM solutions in the cloud has driven the reinvigoration of this market. Many enterprise users had previously been unwilling to upgrade their WFM capabilities, believing that it would not be worth their while, until the transition to the cloud became a reality. The ensuing replacement cycle, in turn, encouraged existing WFM vendors to make product enhancements requested by their customers. The increased activity in the market attracted new vendors, and the WFM market is now growing nicely, a trend that DMG expects to continue as long as the vendors keep delivering promised innovations. Most people-intensive functions can benefit from a WFM solution, as long as the application has the right features to handle each department's unique characteristics.
“The 2022 - 2023 Workforce Management for the Enterprise” report features 5 WFM vendors: Alvaria, Calabrio, NICE, Puzzel and Verint. It also provides a high-level overview of two emerging competitors in the WFM arena, Authority Software and Playvox.
Report Highlights:
- The workforce management market is reinvigorated with innovative solutions: The current generation of WFM solutions is increasingly flexible and responsive to enterprise customer requirements. The applications handle both voice and digital interactions and address the needs of agents, supervisors and WFM administrators with tools to create accurate and dynamic forecasts.
- New-gen WFM is revolutionizing the staffing paradigm: New-gen WFM recognizes each employee as an individual with unique needs, rather than a corporate asset. With new-gen WFM, agents/employees have input and participate in the scheduling process, which introduces fairness and respect into the workplace, while also ensuring that performance goals are met.
- Artificial intelligence is a critical enabler of the positive changes in the WFM market: Artificial intelligence enhances forecasting accuracy by enabling auto-selection of the optimal algorithm to address each unique scheduling scenario. The use of AI also helps balance the needs of employees and the contact center (or other departments) during the scheduling process and improves compliance with global, regional and local work rules. It is being used to enhance many aspects of WFM solutions as well as to handle the complexities of scheduling for an expanding number of digital channels.
- The availability of WFM solutions in the cloud has reawakened the market: When WFM applications became available in the cloud, the increased flexibility attracted enterprise users and fueled a replacement cycle that has reinvigorated the market. The vendors are now making product enhancements requested by their customers, and the increased activity in contact center WFM is attracting new vendors to the market.
- Much more innovation is expected in the WFM market in the next 5 years: Contact centers and other people-intensive enterprise departments are looking to their vendors to help them manage their complex workforce scheduling requirements, including the needs of hybrid, on-site and work-at-home staffing. Managers need enhanced analytics to track productivity and performance, and the vendors are delivering new capabilities to properly handle the changing workplace dynamics. Many improvements have already been introduced, and much more is promised for the next few years.
Key Reasons to Buy This Report:
- Overview of the functional components that comprise a WFM solution, including core and optional modules offered in the 5 featured WFM suites, and high-level functional capabilities
- Market, business and technology trends and challenges that are driving enterprise investments and influencing product development
- WFM market innovation, including a review of recently introduced features and functionality and what is planned for the next 12 -18 months
- Exploration of the methodologies and applications of new-gen WFM and why it is a requirement to support the transformational changes needed in contact centers now and in the future
- In-depth analysis of WFM modules that improve agent engagement and empowerment, including self-service and vacation/time-off management, eLearning/meeting management and performance reports
- How AI is going to alter and improve contact center technology and operations during the next 5 - 20 years
- Examination of WFM capabilities for back offices and branches and opportunities for applying WFM across the enterprise
- WFM market activity analysis, adoption rates and 5-year market growth projections
- Review and assessment of the WFM competitive landscape
- Vendor pricing for 250-seat on-premise and cloud-based voice and digital channel WFM implementations, for core forecasting and scheduling plus incremental costs (if applicable) for intraday management, real-time adherence, agent self-service, vacation/time-off management, eLearning/meeting management, long-term strategic planning, hiring management, workspace allocation, gamification, mobility, back-office and branch WFM
- Comprehensive customer satisfaction survey results that measure and rank ratings across 10 vendor categories, 10 WFM suite modules, and 11 product capabilities
- Detailed company reports for the 7 leading and contending WFM vendors, analyzing their products, functionality and future product development plans
SAMPLE FIGURE:
Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. DMG Consulting Research Methodology
- 3.1. Report Participation Criteria
4. Workforce Management Suites Defined
- 4.1. Workforce Management Vendor Suite Overview
- 4.2. High-Level Functional Overview
5. Workforce Management Trends and Challenges
- 5.1. Workforce Management Trends
- 5.2. Workforce Management Challenges
6. Workforce Management Market Innovation
- 6.1. New Product Features
- 6.2. Future Enhancements
7. New-Gen WFM
- 7.1. Omni-Channel Requirements
- 7.2. Omni-Channel Forecasting and Scheduling
- 7.3. Real-Time Intraday Management and Intelligent Adaptive Scheduling
- 7.4. Real-Time Adherence
- 7.5. Shrinkage
- 7.6. Long-Term Planning
- 7.7. The Work-at-Home/Hybrid Staffing Model
- 7.8. Workspace Allocation
- 7.9. Hiring Management
8. The Agent Experience
- 8.1. Agent Self-Service
- 8.2. Gamification
- 8.3. eLearning/Meeting Management
- 8.4. Dashboards, Reporting and KPIs
9. AI: The "Brains" of the Operation
- 9.1. Artificial Intelligence in WFM Solutions
10. WFM for the Enterprise: Back-Office, Branch and Beyond
- 10.1. Back-Office/Branch WFM
- 10.2. Leveraging WFM Across the Enterprise
11. Workforce Management Market Activity Analysis
- 11.1. Validating Market Numbers
- 11.2. WFM Market Share Analysis
12. WFM Adoption Rate
13. WFM Market Projections
14. WFM Competitive Landscape
15. Workforce Management Vendor Satisfaction Analysis
- 15.1. Summary of Survey Findings and Analysis: Vendor Categories
- 15.1.1. Vendor Satisfaction by Category and Customer
- 15.2. Summary of Survey Findings and Analysis: WFM Suite Modules
- 15.2.1. WFM Modules Satisfaction, by Category andCustomer
- 15.3. Summary of Survey Findings and Analysis: WFM Product Capabilities
- 15.3.1. WFM Product Capabilities Satisfaction, by Category and Customer
- 15.4. Customer Background and Insights
- 15.4.1. Channels Supported by the WFM Solution
- 15.4.2. Other Enterprise Departments Using the WFM Solution
- 15.4.3. Top 3-5 WFM Challenges
- 15.4.4. Additional Comments
16. Pricing
- 16.1. Pricing for a 250-Seat Premise-Based WFM Solution
- 16.2. Pricing for a 250-Seat Cloud-Based WFM Solution
17. Company Reports
- 17.1. Alvaria
- 17.2. Authority Software
- 17.3. Calabrio
- 17.4. NICE
- 17.5. Playvox
- 17.6. Puzzel Ltd.
- 17.7. Verint Systems
Appendix: Workforce Management Vendor Directory