Developments

Aside from finding professional forecasters and planners, the level of difficulty relating to workforce planning is on the increase because:

The initiative and the type of communication is increasingly becoming a mixture of direction by the customer and the organisation. This is thus difficult to predict.
A wide range of opening times of the customer contact channels: shops, websites and contact centres mostly have different opening and closing times and thus affect customer contact channels.
Combinations of work ('blending') result in a diversity of knowledge and skills (so-called 'skills') of the personnel and have to be implemented as optimally as possible
The geographical spread of the customer channels and the way in which this takes place. Consider the locations of shops and the deployment of several contact centres
Scarcity on the labour market and changing employee lifestyles demand creative and flexible solutions

Tools

The forecasting and planning process is a complex entity, where tools contribute towards gaining an insight into the various customer contacts. However, it is not about the tool itself, but about the combination of the forecasting and planning process, the tools and technology and the people. For the strategic and tactical level, a forecaster or planner still has to make the transition; thus consider here the added value for the management! Is this relevant after this?

Not every package offers the same things, so PlanMen can provide you with support to ensure a clear comparison of these packages. A transformation of the company objectives and organisation into the demands that will be made on the packages. This is because there can be a difference between the functionalities and the price level of the various packages.