Workforce Management Featured Article

Mobile Workforce Management Not Yet Essential in the Call Center

Recently, Xora's StreetSmart offering, which consists of a suite of configurable mobile apps and a Web-based management application, became a Citrix Ready Worx Verified partner, making it available to over 250,000 Citrix enterprise customers and 10,000 Citrix resellers. Xora StreetSmart's mobile apps turn any mobile device into a productivity tool for employees in the office and on the go, while the management application helps managers analyze employee performance.

"Being able to protect their mobile business applications and data is a top priority for our customers," said Anne Bonaparte, president and CEO of Xora. "Of particular concern is being able to separate business applications from personal applications on an employee’s mobile device and enabling or disabling certain applications or features of applications remotely."

Indeed, these types of considerations are now very important across a number of industries as more companies shift toward a mobility-first mentality. Mobile devices have begun to eat into PC sales to the point that NPD DisplaySearch expects tablet sales to surpass notebook PC sales by 30 million this year.

However, the level of importance placed on mobility and aspects of it varies from company to company and industry to industry. For example, the call center industry is still finding its feet regarding mobility and, at least for now, it seems that office managers may not require mobile workforce management to an acute degree just yet.

According to call center solutions provider Monet Software, the only scenario in which most managers will really need mobile workforce management is if they are taking a day off. The fact is, when office managers are in the office, they usually have a desktop or laptop to handle forecasting and scheduling, while cloud-based workforce management offers access from any device.

As such, there are only real scenario in which mobile workforce management is essential is to receive alerts of key metrics and be able to act on those metrics from anywhere.

The industry is still in a state of change, however, and it's likely that call center managers will soon use tablets to track metrics in the workplace. This will allow managers to work more closely with agents for greater overall productivity.