Workforce Management in Action GMT Planet® Exceeds Expectations of the West Midlands Police Force UK’s second largest police force realizes an 80% reduction in overtime costs after deploying GMT Planet Workforce Management Solution World Headquarters: GMT Corporation • 2831 Peterson Place • Norcross, GA 30071 • USA Tel +1.770.416.6000 • Fax +1.770.734.9000 • E-mail: sales@gmt.com • www.GMT.com “We have seen an 80% reduction in overtime cost. Staff turnover has improved from nearly 16% to less than 2%. There has been an immediate improvement in call center performance, exceeding our grade of service targets for the first time since inception of the department.” --David Williams, Director of Personnel, West Midlands Police Overview Customer: West Midlands Police Country or Region: United Kingdom Industry: Public Sector /Contact Center Customer Profile As the UK's second largest Police Force, West Midlands employs over 13,000 and answered over 713,000 emergency calls and 2.2 million non-urgent calls in 2005. Business Situation In May 2002 West Midlands Police formed a special project team set up to address the growing number of problems associated with call handling including call abandonment, improving the average-timettoanswer and reducing repeat calls. Solution GMT Planet, an affordable and scaleable workforce management solution that accurately forecasts, schedules and staffs for any type of work. With comprehensive reporting, intraday management, a webbaase employee module and more, GMT Planet is recognized by Gartner as being #1 in ease-of-use and functionality. Vision. Value. Innovation. With installations on every continent, GMT helps organizations of all sizes achieve workforce optimization success every day. Customers include: ABN AMRO, Citibank, Nielsen Media, Pizza Hut, SunTrust, Time Warner Cable, UPS, Washington Mutual, New York Life and Wells Fargo. CHALLENGE In May 2002 West Midlands Police formed a special project team, ‘UNITY’, set up to address the growing number of problems associated with call handling including call abandonment, Improving the average time-to-answer and reducing repeat calls. SOLUTION In evaluating solutions, it became clear that to overcome challenges, a tool was required that would support the West Midlands Police’s strong work-life balance culture while meeting the high levels of performance required. GMT Planet was chosen for its features and functionality, and especially for particular strengths such as powerful, robust and accurate forecasting, easy to follow graphic displays and the ability to schedule staff based on availability, skills and proficiency. RESULTS 80% reduction in overtime costs 14% Reduction in employee turnover Abandoned calls dropped from 27,000 to 788 per month Satisfaction with call handling increased to 96% Employee attendance improved from 89% to 96% *Source West Midlands Police Chief Constable’s Annual Review for 2004/2005 Workforce Management in Action GMT Planet® Exceeds Expectations of the West Midlands Police Force UK’s second largest police force realizes an 80% reduction in overtime costs after deploying GMT Planet Workforce Management Solution World Headquarters: GMT Corporation • 2831 Peterson Place • Norcross, GA 30071 • USA Tel +1.770.416.6000 • Fax +1.770.734.9000 • E-mail: sales@gmt.com • www.GMT.com World Headquarters: GMT Corporation • 2831 Peterson Place • Norcross, GA 30071 • USA Tel +1.770.416.6000 • Fax +1.770.734.9000 • E-mail: sales@gmt.com • www.GMT.com Background The West Midlands Police is the second largest police force in the United Kingdom behind London’s Metropolitan Police Service, serving a population of almost 1 million households. The central switchboard staff at police headquarters answered more than 2.6 million calls last year. A dedicated team of 61 full and part time operators and six supervisors staff the department 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In 2002, as part of a major review of the way that it wanted to manage call handling at its central switchboard, West Midlands Police was keen to revamp its historic rotating shift patterns. Almost 50% of call center staff are parents and 68% of the staff surveyed said that would like more flexibility in their working hours. On analyzing working patterns, it became clear that supervisors were spending the majority of their time resolving staffing issues, but options for the staff were still too restricted and overtime spending needed to be controlled. In addition, West Midlands Police faced challenges from the huge demand of data outputs from their ACD management information system and were manually trying to resource against demand. West Midlands Police have been extremely proactive in recent years, in introducing policies for flexible working and to improve work-life balance. They needed a way to incorporate these principles, yet still provide a responsive 24/7 service to the citizens of the West Midlands and meet strict budget requirements for I.T. expenditures. The Solution Since deploying GMT Planet Workforce Management, staffing demand is clear and schedule fit has improved from 49% in November 2003 to a target of 85%, making a net saving of £94k in the first year. The overtime budget is only necessary to cover public holidays, with an approximate annual saving of £50k. GMT Planet’s self-service Employee Time Center has reduced the amount of time supervisors spend organising and resolving staffing issues. The activities of six supervisors manually organising schedule been replaced by one resource planner covering both the switchboard and the emergency call center. Additionally, the introduction of flexible working has been successful because GMT Planet provides an easy-to-use tool that enables resource planners to analyze the impact of each request. Staff confidence in both the system and more choice in flexible working hours have improved attendance and morale on all shifts and reduced employee turnover. West Midlands Police’s central switchboard recently won the Best Public Sector Call Center Workplace Award. The newly improved call center and its outstanding performance garnered the prestigious ‘Innovation of the Year Award’ given by the Professional Planning Forum. About GMT Planet GMT Planet® Workforce Management Software introduces distinctive new capabilities for contact centers of all sizes. Built-in Precision Forecasting ensures that your labor requirements adhere to cost budgets and are aligned with the most relevant labor drivers in the business--with proven 99% accuracy. Forecasts are automatically adjusted for known events, seasonality and budgetary constraints to ensure that customer demands are met at all times...at the lowest costs. With GMT Planet, managers can guarantee that labor is exactly aligned with customer demand, skill & performance levels and all the other ever-changing factors in your business day. Visit www.GMT.com for more information. “The West Midlands Police staff now has a better opportunity to balance their work and home life and our ability to resource against demand has improved beyond our largest expectations” David Williams Director of Personnel, West Midlands Police For more information about GMT’s Workforce Management and Resource Optimization solutions for contact centers and retail banking, call the GMT Sales Center at +1.770.416.6000, or outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact a GMT regional office in your area. For online demos, functionality papers and case studies, visit the GMT Knowledge Center at www.GMT.com © 2006 GMT Corporation. All rights reserved. GMT, GMT Planet, GMT Planet Express, GMT CashMaster, Mission Control and One-Click Sick are either registered trademarks or trademarks of GMT Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published June 2006 Reorder #CS060106US