As companies continue to expand their technology ecosystem, the impact of these changes on employees is usually a major consideration. Choosing the right solutions – and whether or not to build your own or partner with a provider – is a key decision companies face. Building your own can mean more control and customization, but this choice often comes with tradeoffs.
When it comes to workforce management (WFM) solutions, partnering with a provider is now a common choice. More and more, companies are leaving legacy systems and processes they created internally to partner with sophisticated WFM software vendor instead. Here are a few reasons why companies choose to partner with a WFM solution instead of creating their own.
Sophisticated WFM solutions take years to develop – WFM software is unique and considered to be a difficult technology solution to build well, even for technology companies. Take a step back and try to manually think about staffing up a contact center workforce. You would need to manually look at information to create a forecast, then make a schedule based on when you predict contact volume will be the highest. From here, you then need to staff the schedule by factoring in the unique needs of your workforce, including time off and shift preferences. This process would take hours manually, even with a small team, but can be completed in minutes with WFM software. And we didn’t even get into last minute changes! That’s how sophisticated and complex the leading solutions are and making something this powerful internally would take a long time to develop.
Cloud hosting and easy to access – WFM software is among the larger suite of technology that is available through cloud hosting. Unlike an on-premise solution, it can be accessed from anywhere and at any time. With an increase in remote agents for many contact centers, the ability for employees to access a cloud workforce management solution from wherever they are without having to jump through extra hoops is a huge plus. It’s a major reason why companies are partnering with WFM solutions.
Available across multiple devices – Simply put, you’d have a tough time finding a contact center agent in the U.S. that doesn’t have a smart phone. Even ten years ago, companies could build software solutions that didn’t play well with mobile technology and it wasn’t a major deal. But consumer and employee expectations have changed. Many agents don’t want to track down their boss to tell them that they will be late for work. Instead, leading software provides a WFM mobile solution so agents can communicate directly through an app about shifts, absences, vacation time, and more. Leveraging mobile technology is now important to not only internal communication, but also for improving agent morale and retention.
Integrations are already established – If you’re still leveraging internal solutions or processes for workforce management, transferring data between systems is likely one of the more tedious tasks. Instead, more companies are turning to WFM software with an extensive suite of established and comprehensive integrations. Sharing extensive WFM information between systems has become a game changer because it saves both time and money.
To summarize, companies choose to partner with a WFM solution instead of creating one because of a single reason – complexity. Building WFM software isn’t like building a widget to share product information. Because of the complexity in scheduling, forecasting, agent management, hosting, technology channels, integrations, and much more, it’s a software that takes years to create with even basic functionality. And this doesn’t even include popular solutions like automatic agent replacement, adherence, and shift bidding which would taken even more time.
When contemplating what to do for your WFM solution, choosing an already existing software is often the right move.
