IT-Enabled Workforce Management

Today, for many large-scale enterprises whose service demands or production requirements keep changing, the workforce planning and scheduling has become a complex and a costly nightmare. Without an accurate workforce management system, the managers may find it hard to address these challenges. Hence, automating the workforce planning and scheduling process emerges as a critical need for the organizations. While the current age web-enabled workforce management applications offer sophisticated workforce planning and scheduling capabilities along with workforce productivity tools, the emerging solutions support aligning workforce management with corporate goals. This book is an attempt to introduce the concept, evolution, technology, applications and prospects of workforce management, while offering insights of IT-enabled workforce management with special reference to contact or call centers and other industries. The collection of articles in this book introduces the concept and tools to manage workforce effectively in contact/service centers across industries and within specific operations of manufacturing, retail, banking and utility sectors. It also throws light on the cost and efficiency-related benefits along with business and technical drivers for adoption of workforce management solutions. All forward-looking enterprises shall take advantage of the breakthrough i.e., IT-enabled, integrated workforce management software to attain ‘workforce optimization’, while gaining the tactical and strategic benefits that it offers. The book is designed to help professionals, executives and students of management and information technology (IT) to better comprehend and make use of the knowledge and the insight it offers. It is hoped that those for whom this is meant will reap full advantage.