Hi All,

Im roughly a year into my Analyst job and my manager has set me the challenge of Analysing data further to allow me to approach him with suggestions and fixes before an issue arrises. My job involves managing the forecasting, staffing, reporting on all Contact Centre figures, db admin, Symp admin, and i use Excel a huge amount in all my work. Have any Analysts here attended any useful courses on Excel and Analytics, or Forecasting or the like that they believe was very useful and helped advance their knowledge and career? We intend on bringing in WFM very soon, and the training on that will be provided, but i need to expand my Analytical knowledge, and without attending a Applied Maths/Analytics Degree, are there are decent courses out there?

Thanks for your help,

Scott

You wouldn't go far wrong as to look at the resources available from the Planning Forum.

They offer development courses around Contact Centre planning along with many forums, visits and access to best practice techniques that will help you help yourself.

Contact Centre planning is a specialist topic, there are some books out there but a lot of the skill comes from practice and sharing of knowledge for which the Planning Forum is very well suited.

www.planningforum.co.uk

Julian beat me to it.

Make sure you tell them that you were sent from CCV!

Yeah, looked and here and have picked two courses that i think would benefit my career and also my department hugely, but as managers do, he wants me to prove and justify that this is the best way for him to spend £2k on developing me. Im trying to exhaust all options, then show him that these are the two best courses i can find that will give the best return for his money.

Thanks for your replies.

Scott

p.s. I agree strongly with your last sentence Julian, but i think my boss and i would feel more confident if i had the qualifications/certifications to back up the experience. I have A-Levels in applied Maths and Statistics and have also attended many advnaced Excel courses, but like you say, Contact Centre work is very specific.

Some of the best coders/Power users I have met in Excel do not have higher educational qualifications, they got to where they are by self development.

It's a chicken and egg type thing, if you get the knowledge first you then end up spending time looking where you can use a specific technique and do something because you can and because you have spent a lot of money getting that knowledge.

Whereas the alternative and to my mind better approach cost/benefitwise is for the specific development need to be identified first and then the learning is applied in meeting that need through reading books, looking on the web (there are many sites that offer help and downloads for making better use of Excel) or if it really justifies going on a paid for course.

As an example(very basic so please dont take as an insult because I dont know your current skill levels), you have an excel file that you paste information into every hour to provide intraday reporting on your contact centre. You know it is a pain to complete and surely there has to be a better way. The data for the report comes from two places, the switch and the WFM, once you have pasted the data in you also need to reformat the data. There are several things here and one at a time you can address them - first write a macro to format the information - at the lowest level you can purchase "A Dummy's Guide to" and this will tell you a heck of a lot about macros. Secondly you want to automate the actual extraction of the data - this time you use the web and find some very useful ways to employ the MS Query interface to get data straight from the databases into your Excel spreadsheet. Finally after getting all this in your boss asks you to do some analysis on the data and re-forecast staffing requirements. Another look on the web turns up Erlang add-ins which allow you to calculate your staffing requirements and make staffing recommendations to your operation throughout the day based on real activity.

I have found that going on courses gives you lots of high level ideas and when you get back to the office you dont use them, whereas if you have something to aim for be it automation or some form of direct analysis you can hone your search for suitable solutions. The only time a real "qualification" comes into play is on big solutions employing SQL/Web interfaces, when I say big I mean corporate because even these solutions can be built by self developers without a massive investment upfront in training. It is all about gradual development with very specific learning aims linked directly to business objectives.

Brilliant reply, and i totally understand and appreciate what you are saying. Thanks very much. I think my boss needs to approach me with issues more and needs, because i have the initiative intelligence to hunt out fixes and methods of automating work and giving answers from all angles to complex queries, for him to then make the important decisions.....knowing all bases are covered. I think ill mention this to him, to provide me with problems that are on his mind that he currently doesnt discuss, and to have a bit more faith in my abilities.

Tahnsk again.

Scott

...sorry, few grammer/spelling mistakes in that reply.....and that word towards the end!??!? My my, whats does that mean? :-)

Scott