Verint Enhances Enterprise Workforce Optimization Software Portfolio

Verint (News - Alert) Systems, a provider of workforce optimization software and services, announced enhancements to its workforce management, or “WFM,” or workforce optimization software from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions.

The enhanced Impact 360 WFM software enables contact centers to create more flexible scheduling options, monitor back-office work activities more efficiently, manage backlog and model forecasts to meet service levels and processing deadlines, company officials said.

Impact 360 Workforce Management is part of the Impact 360 Workforce Optimization suite. As a packaged solution, it features such capabilities as forecasting, scheduling, adherence and strategic planning, along with bundled functionality for performance scorecards and eLearning, according to Verint Systems.

The new software supports compliance with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973, benefiting individuals with disabilities.

“Striking a balance between managing multiple sites, staff schedules and customer expectations has only compounded the challenges an enterprise already experiences,” said Nancy Treaster, general manager and senior vice president, Verint Witness Actionable Solutions.

Additionally, enhancements to Impact 360 Workforce Management solution are in response to customer needs and compliance standards, and are designed to keep pace with where the industry is headed in respect to scheduling practices and trends, Treaster said.

Verint's Impact 360 features Time Banking and Time Off Accrual management, adding new capabilities and flexibility to the forecasting and scheduling of staff, the company said.

The Time Banking feature enables modeling and tracking of “annualized hour banks” mandated in employee contracts by government labor laws. The capability can factor in weekly minimum and maximum work hour constraints and can be used globally for both contact centers and back-office operations.

Time Off Accrual allows for the detailed and flexible modeling of rules associated with how employees accumulate vacation. It also helps validate and process time off requests, reducing managerial overhead in processing queries and improving employee satisfaction and productivity, the company said.

Impact 360 Workforce Management also features new capabilities for back-office operations. They include Work Item Tracking, which enables simplified set-up, viewing and drill-down into workloads by age of individual items, and Linked Queue Forecasting, which expands on existing multi-queue forecasting by defining linkages based on workflow from one queue to the next.

These capabilities are especially beneficial in back-office environments where it is common for a given work item to pass through many steps, often involving many people, company officials said.

The software has also been designed to improve the tracking and managing of backlogged work items. Based on Verint's extensive deployments of back-office workforce management, pre-defined Key Performance Indicators or “KPIs” and corresponding reports are now available to address the most common measures of back-office performance.

Impact 360 suite is now made accessible to users with disabilities – thanks to the enhancements to the user interface. The solution also supports Job Access with Speech, a software program created to eliminate barriers in information technology, making available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and encouraging the development of technologies to help achieve those goals.

Earlier in March, Verint Systems announced Verint’s Impact 360 Workforce Optimization software received a perfect rating - a score of 5 out of 5 - for product satisfaction in the “2009-2010 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report” from analyst firm DMG Consulting.