In workforce management, capacity planning enables organizations to create long-term capacity plans by forecasting demand and aligning labor needs across multiple operational units. Planners can make updates to the inputs in a capacity plan and immediately see the latest calculated results. These results help users to quickly create multiple what-if scenarios by copying an existing capacity plan and adjusting its inputs.

Capacity planning benefits

• Long-term staff planning: Create capacity plans for up to two years using an Automatic Best Method (ABM) forecast.
• Business unit level staffing results: View staffing results at a business unit level to understand staffing deficiencies or overages at the entire business unit level.
• Staffing adjustments: Make staffing adjustment decisions by analyzing planning group level results.
• Supports multi-skill planning: Configure capacity plans for multiple planning groups to be handled by multiple staffing groups for more accurate staffing results.

Common Use cases

Example 1: Long-Term hiring forecasting

A planner is responsible for creating a two-year hiring plan for a specific business unit. Using capacity planning, a planner can project long-term staffing needs based on forecasted interaction volumes and handle times, anticipated shrinkage, and attrition rates. This approach helps the business align recruiting and training timelines with future demand.

Example 2: Managing seasonal spikes

A contact center anticipates higher volume during the holiday season. Capacity planning enables planners to model expected increases in the required full-time equivalents (FTEs) and add on ramp-up strategies such as temporary staffing, or early hiring for onboarding.

Example 3: Evaluating outsourcing options

To reduce internal load, a team considers shifting overflow contacts to an external vendor. By creating a capacity plan scenario, the planner can see how changes affect staffing needs and explore different options before making the shift official.

Example 4: Planning for multi-skill contact centers

A workforce planner develops a capacity plan that accounts for multiple agent types across various planning groups. By aligning planning groups with staffing groups that reflect multi-skilling, planners gain valuable insights into resource allocation, identify staffing levels and gaps, and more effectively determine hiring needs.

Capacity planning in Genesys Workforce Management extends traditional workforce management by introducing flexible, centralized planning capabilities that support both unified and decentralized operations. Whether managing internal teams, partners, or a combination of both, capacity planning offers the tools to align staffing with strategy across organizational structures. See the following articles for more information on how to create, modify, or manage capacity plans.