Hi all new to this but am looking for help and advice from you all, please!!!!!!

I am looking for someone who can help with erlang, I need to be able to forcast staff in 15 minute intervals, not hours or 30 minutes how do I get erlang to do this?

Would be even better if someone has a spreadsheet they dont mind sharing that is already set up and I would just need to drop in forecasted calls for the 15 minute intervals.

Also I cannot get the queued or que size to work in erlang? any advice?.

Also does anyone have an old budget plan that they have created for a telephony unit, we have in the region of 250+ staff, this would help me to give me an indication of if im going to be presenting the budget in a correct format for higher managers. im having to do this for 6 CSC.


Also if anyone one has any other tips, spreadsheets and advice about managing a central resource tema over seeing telephony for a whole site then this be would very much appreciated.

Sorry if this seems alot but us new people need to start somewere and I think there should be enough experience form the other mails I read to help me fully.

Many thanks.

Oh you can mail me at allrightmatey@msn.com

Cheers

Kevin

Kevin,

Welcome to CCV and here we go....

OK,


Let's do this in two parts.

1) Erlang Based 1/4 hr forecasting

I'm going to make a couple of assumptions here.

1) You're getting historical data in 15 min intervals

2) You're NOT using a WFM package.

3) You've enough historical data to produce a good weighted average.

First off try Here. This is the ErlangC Excel version I wrote.

What you'll need to do is...

Change the code to say

Levels = x (Number of intervals you have in a working day)

And in the worksheet drag all the formulas down to this Row number (n)
it will need to be n+1 as R1= Col headers.

The version described in the other thread is designed for 8-8 1/2hr use.



2) Budgets.

This is a bit of a tough one.

The main point is what are you trying to prove in the budget?

How many staff you'll need? Justifying existing staff?

The old adage "Lies, D*mn lies and..." really does apply here.

As far as presenting it goes, rather than looking for
a model from elsewhere you'll probably be better off
looking at what other departments use and trying
to get yours to look like that. That way you are producing a
budget that has the 'look and feel' of the rest of the comany.
This way you're not standing out to get hammered down :-)

One of the hardest points you'll have to demonstrate however is
the fact that you've deliberatly overstaffed as you've allowed for
the IT project that rolls out in x months time that no-one has allowed
for the impact on the business, handling time and customer satisfaction.

Hope this helps and please let us know how it's going.
We DO like the feedback :-)

Regards

DaveA

A good book on all this is "call center management on fast forward" by Brad Cleveland which has just been updated and expanded. Its published by ICMI with an ISBN number 1-932558-06-3 and you can get it from Amazon etc easily.

You can find some useful free calculators at: http://www.erlang.com

Hi Dave

Thanks for the comments, any information is always good in guiding me in this role.

The way budgets have been done before are rubbish and need to be made more professional and brought in to 21 centry. I am have to do this for all areas of the business so some form of template to start with would be great.

I tried the link you provided? im confussed..... I have erlang on my excel, what im looking for is a template of a spreadhseet that has been set up in excel that I can then adapt to use for our business. I have as much historical data you could ever need.

Any help is great.

Thanks

Kevin

Hello Kevin,

You won't find alot of people probably willing to share something such as excel documents or specific process's they use. Confidentiality is one reason, and the other is that every call centre is very different and can have a wide range of different variables or exceptions.

I realize you are new to the role but I have to strongly encourage you to throughly read through the information that Dave has provided you. There are dozens of other sites and programs out there on the Internet you may find easier to use. What particular aspects are you confused with? and what is CSC? (Correctional Service Canada?)

You haven't really given us much information to go on, erlang really relates to staffing, which relates to budgets but most people wouldn't soley use an erlang calculation for budgets.

Do you have a solid understanding of what an erlang calculation is? or why it would be used? and what it's limitations would be? What a Service level is? How erlang could be calculated to predict a budget?

Have you considered a workforce management tool that will automate much of the erlang, staffing and budget for you?

Please don't be discouraged, there is information out there, and we are definetly a resource you can feel free to use but if you do a lot of this research on your own your understanding of it will greatly improve compared to any template we could provide you.

Try this site, they have a good calculator, which is free

http://www.schedulingstaff.com/secure/Traffic.aspx

Colin

Yes I do not understand Erlang fully, im working at it and there is only 1 way to learn as they say thats why im looking for help.

The problem I have with budgets is a professional format for an outboud team (150 / 200 staff)????? help.

Also I have created forecasts for April 07 to Mar 08, an example month let say is April 07. We expect 140217 calls in this month, how do I use erlang to predict staff or how do I calculate due to shift patterns? we open 8-8 Mon - Fri, and 8-2 on a sat, there are full time staff and part time. does this help?????

CSC = Customer Service Centre.

Any advice tips is really needed, I am learning but can only do this as we go along.

Many thanks

Kev