Strategic and Financial Planning

Achieving your day-to-day performance goals for the contact center requires a sound approach to strategic planning and analysis. IEX Corporation, a subsidiary of NICE Systems Ltd., is partnering with Bay Bridge Decision Technologies to deliver CenterBridge™, the industry's premier planning system for contact centers. CenterBridge complements the IEX® TotalView® Workforce Management system by offering enhanced strategic planning and analysis capabilities.

With CenterBridge, you can quickly develop and easily distribute weekly, monthly, annual, and multi-year planning scenarios that accurately forecast the impact of changes in key performance drivers on your contact center's service quality, staffing requirements and financial results. For each scenario, CenterBridge delivers budget-ready hiring plans, financial forecasts, service quality projections and detailed risk analyses.

Getting the right answer to complex operational questions is quick and easy with CenterBridge. Answer questions such as:

• What are the right service levels and performance goals to maximize profit?
• Should we hire more people or use overtime? When should we hire?
• What is the bottom-line impact of introducing a new technology? A new training program? Consolidating centers?
• What is the effect on ASA, service level and abandonment rates if call volumes change? If staffing levels change?
• What is the true cost of shrinkage?

CenterBridge streamlines your planning and analysis efforts while improving accuracy and building confidence in the results. Designed for multi-user analysis, the system produces internally consistent staff plans, budgets, forecasts, and historical reports across your entire organization. With CenterBridge, you will be able to make informed decisions faster and be better prepared for the unexpected.

Accurately Predict Real-World Performance The CenterBridge system accurately predicts the real-world performance of your contact center through the use of patent-pending, discrete-event simulation technology. Modeling the arrival and handling of each contact in your center, based on your unique queuing, routing and workflow strategies, allows the CenterBridge system to deliver unsurpassed accuracy and performance compared to Erlang-based spread-sheets, mathematical analysis tools and standalone simulation systems.

Develop Budgets and Plans Quickly
Conduct interactive analysis of budgeting and operating plans using the CenterBridge Scenario Viewer. A single, easy-to-use display instantly shows the effects of changes in any metric on the performance of your contact center. The CenterBridge Trend Analyzer provides
graphical comparisons of new scenarios, prior scenarios and actual operating results.

Determine Operational Tradeoffs
Using the CenterBridge Sensitivity Analyzer feature, you can easily determine the exact relationships between staff levels, cost, service quality, sales results and other interdependent performance metrics for your contact center. An in-depth understanding of the risks associated with changes in key performance drivers for your center positions you to proactively plan for and anticipate potentially damaging events.

Optimize Hiring and Staffing Plans
The CenterBridge Staff Optimizer feature automatically determines either lowest-cost or profit-maximizing hiring and staffing plans. This feature shows you exactly when to hire new employees based on your projected contact volumes and service goals. If your center deals with large seasonal swings in contact volumes, the feature helps you develop optimal staff reduction plans. As an alternative to changing staff headcount, the CenterBridge Extra Time/Under Time Optimizer feature determines the best way to utilize overtime or time off without pay to meet your staffing needs.

Advanced Outsourcer Features
If you run an outsourcing business, the CenterBridge Outsource Analyzer enhances your ability to plan and price new business opportunities. This optional feature lets you easily develop customized least-cost business plans based on a prospective customer's unique requirements. You can even present multiple pricing options based on trade-off analyses, some of which the customer may never have contemplated.

Planning for Outbound Operations
If your contact center handles outbound calls, either exclusively or along with inbound calls, the CenterBridge Outbound Call Analyzer can improve the planning and management processes for those operations. This optional component extends the powerful analysis features of the core CenterBridge product to accommodate the unique operational characteristics associated with handling outbound calls.

World-Class Planning and Analysis
An investment in CenterBridge pays back quickly. Improving the speed and quality of the planning process lets you create better plans in less time. Better plans lead to lower costs and improved service quality. And a detailed understanding of the operational sensitivities in your contact center helps you make more effective strategic decisions.

Benefits:

• Develop multi-year budgets, staff plans and service quality forecasts in minutes
• Identify the optimal service level for your organization
• Conduct extensive what-if, sensitivity and tradeoff analyses • Automatically provide budget and weekly variance reports
• Evaluate investment, consolidation and growth opportunities
• Determine the impact of operational changes on service goals and staffing needs