Collaborative Solutions: Enhancing Scheduling Precision with BPOs
The organization I currently work for has some interesting challenges that the WFM (Workforce Management) team needs to take into account. One of these challenges is the significant fluctuations in ticket volume, which are driven by the seasonal nature of our business. Instead of a gradual increase in ticket numbers over several weeks, we experience a massive spike in volume within a single day. It's all part of the excitement of sports betting! Consequently, we need to come up with creative schedules to effectively handle these volume spikes.
In my previous experiences with other BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing firms), they were responsible for creating their own schedules. What I've observed is that while their schedules may look optimal over the entire peak season, they often do not address the day-to-day variations in ticket volume over multiple weeks. By the time the peak season arrives, the BPOs have already finalized their shift adjustments, leaving little room for further schedule changes. This results in suboptimal coverage for several weeks.
This situation led me to consider how we can collaborate with BPOs to develop more nuanced and timely schedules. Here are some suggestions:
1. Collaborate with them several weeks in advance, providing them with the ticket distribution data for multiple weeks during the peak season
2. Offer guidance on what needs to be accomplished, such as:
- Maximizing SL (Service Level) compliance.
- Achieving an even distribution of SLA (Service Level Agreement) performance.
3. Based on these objectives, the BPO team can then create schedules that align with our business needs.
4. Establish regular meetings to provide feedback on the schedules created, allowing the team to make necessary adjustments.
5. Be understanding of the constraints faced by the BPO teams. They also have internal stakeholder expectations to manage. However, if there are conflicts between the expectations of their internal stakeholders and the needs of our business, these conflicts should be promptly addressed.
By following these steps, we can work together more effectively with the BPO to develop schedules that better meet our specific requirements and adapt to the unique challenges posed by our business's seasonality.