Understanding forecasting concepts

Workforce Scheduling assists you in scheduling employees for work and holiday periods. It offers an integrated forecasting component that uses historical data to partially automate the scheduling process. Scheduling is not entirely automated. You may have to modify employee schedules and enter shift and employee variables manually after creating a schedule based on forecasted data.

You schedule employees so the number of incoming calls at any given time typically exceeds the number of employees currently available. This ensures callers experience a slight delay before employees answer their calls. The expected number of incoming calls forecasted for the time of day and day of the week influence scheduling decisions when trying to find the right balance between call volume and available staff.

For information on accessing historical data to assist when making schedules, see "Expecting forecasts to workforce scheduling".

For information on forecasting variables and how to improve forecasting accuracy, see "Step#3 Forecast the Call Load".

For information on Service Level variables and how to calculate the Service Level Percent, see "Understanding the Service Level".