WFM and its application

[Jeff]

Recently, our company is hearing a lot about Work Force Manager.
Is it a simplistic scheduling tool with a very fancy name or something a bit more sophisticated?

Before we would even consider approaching Genesys vendor, and start to receive a flood of followup calls, can somebody please explain in layman terms what kind of product it is?

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Jeff Brown
TCV Call Center SDT
Bordeaux, France
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[Dennis Delisle]

I don't think of myself of the ultimate autority on Genesys products but maybe this would help a little.

I like to think of Genesys products as a collection of software to assist in Call Center management. Genesys products are divides in a few categories like Inbound Suite, Outbound Suite, T_Server FrameWork.

The basis of Genesys is to provide connection between your Voice Network and your Data Network. The TServer is the heart of the software. I act as a "SPY" on your voice equipment (PBX) and reports every status of every agent phone, and other telephony ressource like ACD, RP, etc. TServer generates event that can be trap by an Application on your network and perform action based on these events. The most popular application developped around Genesys is Screen Pop. Screen Pop allows you to synchronize caller information on the Call Center Agent desktop at the same time that the call is forwarded at the agent.

Genesys includes software for the following specialize functions :

Intelligent call routing,
Statistical reporting
Outbound Campaign for telemarketing
Real Time call center monitoring
And few more other things

Genesys is somehow a sophisticated software, but not impossible to master.

I know this is not much, but is a start, EMail me if you have other specific questions.

[Rob Townsend]

I have experience with other workforce management packages and our company is currently in the process of installing Genesys WFM in two different companies. In my experence, one of the more difficult aspects of any workforce management package is the manual effort required to maintain synchronization between the voice environment and the scheduling environment. Clearly if multiple media types are involved the problem becomes 10 times worst. This is the area where Genesys WFM should add real value beyond any other provider. Other vendors' loose integration with Genesys will add considerable recurring operational effort. Even if the math or user interface is not as goods as another vendor the ongoing benefit of tight integration is a major advantage. The marketing hype suggests the Genesys math and user interface are fantastic... time will tell. My bet is that over time Genesys will capture their clients with a well integrated workforce management product that requires substantially less effort to operate and maintain.

Just to give a concrete example... Genesys WFM uses the same Genesys configuration management GUI and database for agent skills and equipment definitions. A change needs to be in only one place. Many WFM solutions loose effectiveness due to inconsistancies between the actual configuration and the last update of the nonintegrated WFM solution. Genesys is also able to offer real ime adherence which non native vendors are unable to support.

[john]

I am currently in the process of moving form PTE PrimeTime Enterprise and PTFS PrimeTime Forecasting and Scheduling. I agree with Rob T's (ELIX??) comments and can tell you that the algorythmn is much more efficient and it is very rich on the forecasting side. The web tools are becoming more and more functional and assuming you are already a Genesys shop it fits well. I have a lot of expercience integrating with Nortel PBX's and I am up on all the current issues relating to that platform. I must say that adherence is what will set a lot of the resource software tools apart when it comes to integration... EMail me if you want to talk more.
Good luck... John
http://homestead.deja.com/user.ctiguy/CallCentreTech.html

[Charles Andrews]

We also use Blue Pumpkin PTE with Genesys. We did have a few headaches with PTE 1.1 using SQL 6.5. Once we upgraded to PTE 2.02 w/ SQL 7 everything seemed to be running a lot better. I haven't had any experience with Genesys WFM so I couldn't give you a comparison.

[Francisco]

Did anyone do evaluation of WFM? If so, do you have any kind of evaluation report you could share with us?

[john]

How did you solve adherence with PTE? I agree with you on the differences between V1.3 PTE and V2+ & SQL 7.
I still think PTE is a good product so I can objectively state pros and cons for both systems. I think its mostly about fit in both the current environment and where a company wants to go in the future.
Did you use the GWI interface that Genesys makes available through Professional Services.
Thanks ... CTIGUY (John)

[Vic]

I do not have WFM report yet, but I have an excellent document written by BluePumpkin about how to evaluate WFM products. I got it from Wang a few months back, and I thought it was really good. You can find it under Reports section.

I think it is very important to know what kind of products are out there, and how they are compared to Genesys. So I have also added a demo discussing functionality of Director Enterprise 3.0 by BluePumpkin to give you a taste of the competition. It is zipped and is about 800k, so not that bad.

I will make few additional demos available soon. In the meantime, anyone has a good Genesys' WFM evaluation report to share with the rest of us?