© 2011 Scintella Solutions
ShiftMatch Features
Access Levels
ShiftMatch has 3 different access levels allowing for tiered access to ShiftMatch data and facilitating agent input for shift bids.
- Company administrator
- Location administrators
- Agents
Company Setup
The company administrator can set particular date and time formats, as well as indicate the order in which schedules are to be assigned to agents - either by tenure or some user defined ranking system (which could be attendance based, productivity based, quality based, or a combination of different indicators). This offers the flexibility to express different cultural environments.
Shift ranges can be defined in this section to capture the relationship between paid hours and break patterns. [top]
Import Data
The company administrator can import data from your workforce management system, or using a default .csv file format, for different values:
- Employee data - ID, name information and tenure dates
- Agent Schedules, with daily start and end times
- Weekly Agent Paid Hours - to ensure agents are evaluated against the appropriate schedules
- Employee Rankings - Agent IDs and a numerical value to indicate relative ranking (user defined) [top]
Shift Preferences
Each agent has the ability to add an unlmited number of preferences to his or her inventory. Defining preferences is totally flexible, from a daily range of hours to flexible start and end times, to ensure the best possible match of preferences to any type of schedule.
If a preference is likely to match up with multiple schedules offered the agent can indicate whether she would prefer earlier of later schedules in order. [top]
Matching Preferences
Preferences can be re-ordered to reflect an agent's changed circumstances with no need for deleting and re-entering. ShiftMatch will also show the agent the schedules that match a particular preference - in order from early to late, or vice versa as defined by the agent.
If two preferences include the same schedules they will not be listed twice, so that the agent gets a true picture of how many possible matches are available to him during the next shift bid. [top]
Location Administration
The location administrator has the responsibility to manage the shift assignment process. There are a number of functions involved:
1. Importing employee data - which replicates some of the company administrator's functionality.
2. Editing schedule validity. It is possible that some of the schedules currently being occupied by one of more agents are obsolete, and should not be re-offered during a schedule run. The admin can flag these schedules prior to the assignment process so that they will remain open once vacated.
Likewise, if any schedules that had been flagged as obsolete need to be used again, the admin can take them off the 'do not recycle' list.
3. When an assignment has to be run, the admin has the option of forcing agents off their current schedule. This allows poorly perfomring agents to be removed from potentially desirable schedules, offering more productive agents a better chance to obtain a better match with their needs. By entering a variable % the admin can increase or decrease the number of agents affected to arrive at the desired outcome. [top]
Reporting
ShiftMatch generates useful reporting information to help improve the quality of schedules offered, and consequently, employees' satisfaction with them.
Reports analyze how many preferences have been entered per schedule, and how these are distributed across the choices. It is easy to determine the relative popularity of various schedules with agents. This information can be helpful to the workforce management group - it may be possible to eliminate certain shift patterns and replace them with more desirable ones, without compromising the overall results. [top]
Process Shift Bid
After the shift match run has completed, the system produces a report of agents who have been assigned to a new schedule that can be used to update your workforce management solution.
The "Agents with New Schedules" report clearly indicates the power of ShiftMatch. Even with a small number of open schedules added to the inventory, schedules become available dynamically during the run; each time that happens a new bid takes place effectively, and as a result many agents may obtain an improved schedule. ShiftMatch may restart perhaps 30 or 40 times during the shift assignment run, and each time an agent is assigned a new schedule. [top]
Statistics
ShiftMatch also generates statistics indicating what percentage of agents has been assigned their first preference, their second, and so on. This is a good indicator of how satisfied agents are with their shift, and the report is an excellent feedback tool for the employees. [top]
