Best Practice Events & Live Case Studies

We facilitate Live Case Studies and best practice days, to share learning from our Award winners and finalists over the summer months, especially from the Transformation & Innovation Awards. This is another great opportunity to learn about the fantastic things that these organisations have achieved. These are interactive events to allow plenty of time for questions with key stakeholders in the transformation and networking with other delegates focussed on the same challenges. 

As a member, you are not on your own but part of a community with others facing many similar challenges. We are here to help you to make a tangible impact in your organisation and show how developing the capability of each specialist professional function is fundamental to your business.

All Live Case Studies Videos are available to all Forum Members. You will need login to gain access or register if you don't have a login.

 Once logged in they will appear on this page. Click on Read More to view the video.

Free Webinar: Micro scheduling, peak shaving and split shifts: Innovations in Planning and the homeworking operating model. Sponsored by Sensée

Hosted on 16th July 2020

The switch from bricks & mortar to work-from-home contact centres during the current crisis has posed challenges for IT, HR and Operational Management. But it’s also proven to be hugely beneficial, delivering substantial benefits for organisations and work-life-balance benefits for employees.

In this webinar we examine innovations in Planning and the homeworking operating model - including micro scheduling, peak shaving and split shifts. As well as explaining the meaning of these terms we’ll show how, by applying these innovative techniques to example scenarios, organisations can boost productivity, cut costs and deliver improved work-life-balance.

Technology Showcase: Anaplan

Originally broadcast Monday 28th September 2020, 12:30

Planning for the Workforce of the Future Join Anaplan’s online session to hear how strategic workforce planning can provide much needed agility in the face of digital disruption, financial pressures and turbulent external market factors. During this session we will showcase how to quickly and strategically realign your workforce to shifting skill and resource demands. We will showcase workforce analytics, deploying initiatives to right-size the workforce and reconcile with financial targets, as well as explore capabilities in workforce talent management. Join us to discover how to improve collaboration across thousands of users and how you can realise a 10x return on investment through organisational right-sizing.

Keynote: Digital Acceleration - Planning

Originally broadcast Monday 28th September 2020, 14:00

The Great Digital Acceleration The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way that customers engage with organisations. Digital adoption has leapt forward by a decade and the contact centre is playing catch up. During this session Sabio’s Stu Dorman, will describe how deep integration between the contact centre and digital experiences and the use of the latest generation of AI to support customers and agents can be deployed quickly and scaled to meet the needs of a more digitally savvy customer.

Keynote: Planning for Wellbeing

Originally broadcast Wednesday 30th September 2020, 09:30

If the P in planning stood for People Following an extended period of accelerated change across our industry, Keir will explore some of the advantages to putting our people first in the planning process, potential barriers to success and what would need to change for this to be a reality for every customer-centric business. Keir Greenwood is VP & General Manager Customer Success at Arise.

Technology Showcase: NICE

Originally broadcast Wednesday 30th September 2020, 12:30

Hear how Skipton Building Society is on a journey to develop their planning capabilities by proactively collaborating with NICE across a number of initiatives to drive colleague and customer excellence.

Technology Showcase: Business Systems

Originally broadcast Thursday 1st October 2020, 12:30

Inspired People go above and beyond – so how can you inspire your employees to engage with your planning team to drive impressive ROI? Your employees need to work in a positive environment so they can continue to grow, remained inspired and be more productive. So how can WFM help with this?

Technology Showcase: Calabrio

Originally broadcast Friday 2nd October 2020, 12:30

The State of the Contact Centre: Embracing the Evolving World of Work Join Ed Creasey, Director of Pre-Sales for Calabrio, as we explore how leading contact centres are turning disruption to their advantage. From the rapid increase in importance of the contact centre, to changes in demands from employees and customers, we will be envisioning the contact centre of the future. Join us to discuss tangible ways to embrace this evolving world of work.

Technology Showcase: Anaplan

Originally broadcast Tuesday 1st December 2020, 12:30

Agile & Reactive Modelling: the key to Modern Planning We must take into account not only future trends but unforeseen events and market conditions. The ability to make good business decisions is completely reliant on a plan that is adaptable and flexible enough to react with resilience and speed. In this session you will see how many scenarios can be created and compared to enable a decision to be made with good principles and alignment to strategy.

Technology Showcase: Aspect

Originally broadcast Wednesday 2nd December 2020, 12:30

Enabling Flexible Working Practices As organisations embrace flexible working strategies for their contact centre and back office workforce what working practices are going to change and how can technology enable these? Join Aspect Software to understand more.

Technology Showcase: Arise

Originally broadcast Thursday 3rd December 2020, 14:00

When People Do Your Planning Using a ‘live’ demonstration of their award-winning Starmatic scheduling tool, Arise will demonstrate how you could let your People do your Planning, exploring performance gamification, agent preference scheduling, intraday variation and meeting unplanned demand.

Conference Endnote

Originally broadcast Friday 4th December 2020, 09:15

Positive habits for a successful career With so much uncertainty in the world, it is important to take control of our conduct, behaviour and attitude. Developing simple positive habits can make a huge impact on how you learn, share ideas and ultimately transform yourself and our career. This endnote presentation will take a look at the role of professionalism, how to build positive habits and an opportunity to hear from members who have transformed themselves during 2020.

Free webinar: Simplified Workforce Management Sponsored by Eleveo

Hosted on 21st January 2021

Join Phil Anderson Director at The Forum & Dan Solomon & Liam Anderson of Eleveo, for a discussion on how we rethink the complexity of forecasting and scheduling to create a simplified and trusted plan which is understood by the business. Whether this is your first step into planning, or you are an experienced planning professional this webinar will be of interest. 

 - Understand key principles to forecasting and how to use these effectively
 - Simplified scheduling, providing choice and control for you advisors
 - How all levels in your organisation will benefit from a simpler approach to WFM
 - How to provide meaningful on-the-day insight
 

Free Webinar - How D&G transformed their contact centre using intraday automation. Sponsored by QStory

Hosted on 23rd February 2021

Domestic and General are the UK’s leading specialist warranty provider for over 100 years. Their contact centre serves 8 million customers, taking 9 million calls per year and authorising 2.4 million repairs.

D&G’s Planning and Real-Time teams wanted automation and support for their processes and systems:
 - They were swamped in admin work
 - Disparate data sources were creating internal stakeholder conflict
 - Duplication of work was creating inefficiency, confusion and complexity
 - Manual processes were time consuming and complex resulting in sub-optimal performance, inefficiency and demotivated staff

Mike Blewitt, Head of Planning led the project and selected QStory as the solution. He joins us along with Ben Harknett, CRO and Tony D'Cruze, Customer Success Manager at QStory to discuss how they implemented the software and achieved some amazing results for the team with a 2X ROI by Q3.
 - 400 hours per month of threat management used which has improved customer service by reducing wait time for customers
 - 3,300 hours per month of opportunity management ensuring agents are receiving their development training
 - Automated 575 hours per month of manual work
 

Free Webinar: 2021 and beyond – how can we use data to help us plan as our working world continues to evolve? Sponsored by Calabrio

Watch at you own pace

The global pandemic has accelerated the shift of consumers away from traditional channels to a digital world where the vast majority of customer service staff are more remote than ever before.

At the same time, Data, Analytics, AI and ML capabilities are all accelerating rapidly – and each can bring a wealth of advantages which help organisations with their planning.

But sometimes, it can be a challenge simply to keep up with all of the various developments and changes.
 
The good news for all of us as humans beings is that many companies are placing great importance on both customer experience and employee wellbeing.
As digital transformation takes hold at pace, organisations continue to demonstrate that they care.
 
With all this change, two things have remained constant: the importance of good quality planning and the need to be agile and respond to changes rapidly.
 
In this webinar, you will learn:
 - How consumer channel selection is rapidly evolving
 - Some developing data and analytics capabilities which could help your planning
 - Some agility techniques to help you be more prepared for continued uncertainty
 

Free Webinar: What if we could deliver agile workforce planning and optimisation?

1st April 2021, 15:00

Agile – it’s an adjective we hear in the front of everything now in the world of business: agile project management, agile finance, agile supply chain, agile marketing, agile HR, etc. The important take is that the ability to rapidly adapt and pivot in response to significant events is a must across all functions in a business (especially after the year we have had!). And the common thread across the business is its people that perform the work – if your workforce is not agile, your business can’t be. 
 
Join us for an insightful conversation with Rupert Bader and Zoe Hruby from Anaplan and hear how we can become a strong business partner by establishing a Connected Planning culture and taking a proactive, continuous approach to aligning workforce capacity plans with business needs in the near- and long-term to maximize utilisation, and anticipate and close workforce and skills gaps.
 
In this webinar, we will discuss:
 - the opportunity to drive business impact
 - connecting workforce planning with financial and business planning
 - engaging stakeholders across the organisation
 - addressing common workforce planning challenges

Keynote: Unlocking Opportunities

Originally broadcast Monday 26th April. 2021, 09:30

Hear from Phil Anderson, Director at The Forum with the conference opening keynote. Understand how disruption can pave the way for new opportunities and how you can become key to unlocking change and development.

Technology Showcase: Anaplan

Originally broadcast Monday 26th April. 2021, 12:30

“My supply always meets my demand”. In reality this almost never happens – but how do you bridge the gap between the two? Demand is constant but it is not consistent, nor does it affect every department equally. So how do you optimise your talent pool not only to drive customer satisfaction but maximise your operational efficiency? Come and see how two conflicting constraints on the business can work in harmony by using a Connected Planning platform.  

Technology Showcase: NICE

Originally broadcast Monday 26th April. 2021, 13:15

Fear of missing out? New technological advancements in self scheduling and micro shifting. Planners and Schedulers are under increased pressure to provide hyper flexibility in the scheduling methodology and the general opinion is that micro shifting is too confusing and complex to manage. Life may have changed for all of us; for some, this means the ideal schedule is a couple hours early, a few hours midday and maybe a couple of hours later in the day. 

Technology Showcase: Calabrio

Originally broadcast Tuesday 27th April. 2021, 10:30

The Evolving World of Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) in the Cloud: Five Tactics that Help Keep Agents Engaged in a Modern Contact Centre It’s no secret the contact centre is forever changed. Moving to a cloud contact centre can prove valuable with virtually limitless resources; fast, cost-effective scalability to accommodate seasonal changes and sustained growth; and access to new or more robust technology. 

Technology Showcase: Intradiem

Originally broadcast Tuesday 27th April. 2021, 12:30

How to support your agents better in remote operations by optimising the delivery of coaching and training Want to find out how to support your agents better in remote operations by optimising the delivery of coaching and training? Hear how real time planning & operations teams at British Gas delivered this with the help of Intradiem’s award winning Intelligent Automation Technology solution. Join a panel of business leaders facilitated by Matt Rumins (Head of Customer Success) to discuss the engagement & effectiveness improvements and tangible results that leading organisations are experiencing with Intelligent Automation.

Technology Showcase: Verint

Originally broadcast Wednesday 28th April 2021, 10:30

The Engagement Capacity Gap… and How to Close It: The new research propelling resourcing strategies Discover the latest study on the fast emerging, and critically important Engagement Capacity Gap – the difference between resources available to meet customer demand and the exploding volume of customer interactions and communication channels.

Technology Showcase: Aspect

Originally broadcast Wednesday 28th April 2021, 13:15

Empowering Your Workforce with Flexibility As contact centres have changed forever understand how technology can deliver the flexibility your workforce craves whilst delivering the service your customers expect. Now is the time to re-examine your WFM technology. Is your workforce management solution: Fit for the new normal? And most importantly, can it do all this in a public cloud environment from 250 to 25,000 advisors?

Keynote: Returning to Work

Originally broadcast Wednesday 28th April 2021, 14:15

The past 12 months have been rocked by disruption; and with lockdown lifting, what are the important factors and considerations you should take into account when planning for your teams to return to the office? Join Chris Haggis, Chief Operating Officer at Sabio as he shares Sabio’s plans and provides his insights into the challenges, research, attitudes, safety protocols, systems/processes and long-term plans you should be thinking about.

Technology Showcase: Sensée

Originally broadcast Thursday 29th April 2021, 12:30

What Communications & Collaboration systems and processes are needed in Hybrid Working Environments that put all citizens on a level operating field Having problems with absenteeism and engagement? Declining performance and productivity? People isolation and motivation? Is the new world of working making these problems worse?In this session, Steve Mosser will examine today’s burning work-from-home (WFH) and hybrid (home/office) challenges.

Technology Showcase: QStory

Originally broadcast Thursday 29th April 2021, 13:15

Balancing contact centre staffing with demand is tough Discover how Nationwide tackled this challenge along with many others by introducing Intraday automation into their business. Lateness reduction of 75%. 5% improvement in adherence. 1.3% Shrinkage reduction. 15% reduction in manual tasks, allowing the team to be value add Analysts instead

Keynote: Investing in Real-Time

Originally broadcast Thursday 29th April 2021, 14:15

Hear from Jen Lee (Chief Strategy Officer) & Paul Milloy (Forefront Executive Council Chair) at Intradiem on how leading organisations are investing in real time capabilities to optimise customer channels, increasing support for agents and creating improved experiences with less effort by leveraging data and Intelligent Automation to deliver increased optimisation.

Workshop: Tactical Planning

Originally broadcast Thursday 29th April 2021, 15:15

Tactical Planning: performance expectations in the ‘new normal’ As we move into new ways of working, we will need to look at new ways of managing our people on the day. How are we going to monitor adherence? How are we going to update our playbook to take hybrid or homeworking into account? What factors do we need to take into account

Free Webinar – Top Challenges contact centres face around scheduling & forecasting and how to overcome them. Sponsored by Business Systems

22nd June 2021, 12:00

Forecasting and scheduling accurately within a contact centre is key to a successful operation.

However, many contact centre leaders and workforce planners face challenges with their forecasting and scheduling accuracy, with these challenges ranging from hybrid working, historical data, agent engagement and the rise of digital channels. 

Join Phil Anderson, Director at The Forum, he will be discussing how contact centres can address their top scheduling and forecasting challenges with Scott Budding and Neil Draycott of Business Systems.

Our webinar will cover:
 - How to forecast with historical data which may be skewed 
 - Top tips on addressing a hybrid workforce in 2021 and beyond
 - Top tips on how to address employee wellbeing and agent engagement
 - How to position your contact centre with the transition to self-service and digital channels while providing an exceptional customer service

Free Webinar - Critical Workforce Planning: Getting the Right Care to the Right Place at the Right time. Sponsored by Anaplan

24th June 2021, 15:00

How to Leverage Workforce Planning to Build Resilience and Organizational Agility 

To save lives and help people access appropriate care within 7 minutes across a 3,500 square miles area, 24/7 is no easy feat. It requires finely tuned operations that are accurately staffed and coordinated, whilst serving the community with optimal deployment of ambulances and paramedics. 

Join us on Thursday 24th June for a conversation with Steve West, Director of Planning and Performance Forecasting at South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), on the growing importance of having a robust workforce plan to deliver safe and reliable care for patients. Hear how Connected Planning has improved SCAS’s ability to plan against the realities of the pandemic, and their ability to meet key KPIs.

During this webinar, you’ll discover how your organisation can become more agile by:
 - Building a planning model that links from the demand through to resource needs
 - Integrating models to see direct impact of extra demand, and 
 - Driving and improving everyday operations with continuous planning.

Moment of Truth – The Forum Community App, live stream exclusive

The moment of truth; critical time for your workforce strategy and hybrid operating model. Strategy is about to become the reality as organisations look to introduce strategic Hybrid operating model at scale post the summer holidays which will have important consequences for the future.

As a member, you are not on your own but part of a community with others facing many similar challenges. We are here to help you to make a tangible impact in your organisation and show how developing the capability of each specialist professional function is fundamental to your business.

Book for one of our events to experience our exceptional community or get in touch to talk about how we can help you and your teams to be fully effective in adding value to your business. Email advice@theforum.social, call 0333 123 5960 or contact any of The Forum team