2025 Best Practice Guide
Raising Standards

Professional Services and Consultancy

Tailored solutions to your problems

Consultancy

Professional services: 
Expert support in a nutshell 

All our professional services have one thing in common. Business leaders asked us for a bespoke, tailored solution to their problem – not a theoretical idea, but a practical delivery that moves them forward in a sustainable way. You may value us at The Forum for conferences, best practice sharing or specialist skills training. You may not know that every year we support members in bespoke projects. 

If you need an injection of expertise to kick start a change or get a key delivery over the line, have you thought of asking us? Do you need to accelerate your most important priorities? Do you know what you want but don’t know how to do it? Or you don’t have the right capabilities? Or is there an urgent deadline? Or you want a fresh set of eyes, an external perspective to influence thinking in the organisation? 

Our on-site and bespoke work can be as short as a one-day diagnostic or skills assessment. Sometimes it is a longer project or placement, when we connect you with one of a network of associate consultants who are trusted, specialised and long established.
Proven network

Are you taking advantage of our professional services network?

  • Access to a wide and diverse pool of trusted associate consultants, each with proven practical experience ‘doing the job’ over many years.
  • Coverage from a short diagnostic or skills audit to an interim placement or a project lasting weeks or months. The focus is on results, delivering a significant return on investment.
  • Our work stretches across all four professional communities, with a growing demand in data & insight as well as resource planning and operations strategy.

Our Trusted Partners

Select Planning
With 40 years of experience as resource planners and people and customer service champions, Keith and Adrian are our trusted and longest established resource planning consultants. In 2021 they spearheaded the Resource planning for the Covid vaccine booking and pass 119 call centre on behalf of the NHS. They are regular contributors to The Forum’s best practice programme and achievement awards and also winners of the innovation of the year award.
What We Do
Placing Planning at the heart of your decision making:
  • Customer Demand and Workload Forecasting 
  • Organisational End to End Planning
  • Capacity and Budget Planning
  • Scheduling and Service Delivery 
  • Business Intelligence and Insight
Who We Do It For
Organisations across all industries and business sectors need to plan for all methods of Customer Contact:
  • Private and Public Sector Organisations
  • Sales and Retail
  • Customer Service and Claims Operations
  • Repair Networks
  • NHS and Emergency Services
  • Contact Centres, Administrative Back Office, Field and Branch Operations
Darling Solutions Ltd
Darling Solutions is a UK-based Workforce Engagement Management consultancy, providing professional services to the contact centre industry. We have 23 years of operational experience as expert superusers of software platforms like Verint Impact 360, Calabrio, Genesys, Injixo & Puzzel WFM. The majority of our operational experience has been with Verint products & we predominantly take care of functional usage but we have years of technical experience, too.

We work hard to create trust & buy-in from all stakeholders - it’s imperative that everyone affected by a WEM deployment has the knowledge, skills & belief in the system they are using & we are experts at supporting them in their journey to becoming magicians! We are agile & able to respond quickly to changing circumstances. We are niche experts at what we do with a proven track record of success in this space.
Inspire Planning
From the strategic to the tactical, resource planning is fundamental to the success of your customer contact operation. Utilise our experience to build a strong foundation or push the boundaries in any part of the planning cycle.

Supporting each area of the planning cycle from strategic reviews, building models & capability to tactics and service recovery, we offer professional service support across each area of planning.
Strategic Review & Design
  • Budgeting
  • Strategic Review
  • KPIs - Targets & Outcomes
  • Omni Channel / Routing & Service Strategy
  • RFP Support
  • Outsource Review
  • Site Strategy
  • Tools & Technology Review
Tools & Technology Review
  • ​End to End Planning Cycle Build
  • Model Creation
  • ​Engagement Cycle
  • Governance, Impact Assessments & Benefit Realisation
  • Supply Planning
  • Forecasting Techniques 
  • Tactics and Contingency Planning
  • Shift Review
Deliver operational excellence with Atlantic Insight
At Atlantic Insight, we help organisations solve operational challenges, improve performance and unlock substantial value.

With deep expertise in diagnosing performance barriers, we identify evidence-based opportunities for improvement and translate them into a prioritised roadmap of actions, essential for achieving meaningful commercial gain.

Forecasting & Planning is a core offering. We can help improve your capability across the full operations planning cycle, combining academic rigour with decades of hands-on experience improving frontline planning across many diverse organisations.

Other services include:
  • 360° Operational Review – an evidence-based approach that identifies and quantifies the potential for operational and financial improvement
  • Trusted Manager – equipping frontline managers with the skills, knowledge, tools and confidence to lead
  • BPO Optimisation – working with both clients and BPO providers to improve performance and value from outsourcing
  • Analytics & Insight – creating & building advanced analytics, insights and capabilities to drive informed decision-making and continuous improvement
  • Operational Improvement – aligning people, process and management system to accelerate delivery of tangible operational and financial outcomes.
    We help businesses, teams, and individuals deliver outstanding operational performance, employee engagement and customer experience.
Firstsource
Discover the driving force behind Firstsource’s success in workforce management – the revolutionary WFSuite. Empowering our clients with digital prowess, we take charge to identify and resolve potential bottlenecks even before they emerge. Anticipating natural trends and fluctuations, we leave no room for uncertainty. Partnered with you every step of the way, we ensure seamless team training and unparalleled support for your milestones.

Our approach is simple yet effective – we make it cost neutral. With exponential revenue growth, our workforce management services pay for themselves. Embrace excellence with a one-stop shop for customer service, consulting, back-end solutions, and remarkable improvements in productivity and profitability. Step into the future of workforce management with WFSuite – leading the way to success.
Runik Resource and Performance Planning
We specialise in providing comprehensive support and tools to planning teams, helping them improve their efficacy in forecasting, capacity planning, and budgeting. Our goal is to shift you away from a reactive approach and move towards a proactive strategy that focuses on events within your control and adds value to your operations.
Key areas of support:
  • Planning team engagement
  • Capacity plans
  • Budget models
  • Outsourcer engagement
  • Ramp up/ ramp down of contact centres
Choose us as your partner, and we will help you transform your planning function, enhance collaboration, and achieve operational excellence.
Modus RP
Founded in 2016 Modus RP is a Resource Planning consultancy and managed service business.
With over 64 years of experience, we have comprehensive understanding of planning best practice and principles as well as and the unique needs of different industries.
 
Modus RP offers a customisable resource planning solution that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your company providing insightful data analysis and reporting, allowing you to make informed decisions based on accurate and up-to-date information.

Your resource, your plan, your success! 

Companies who have used Professional Services

Utilise our trusted partners

Understand more

We offer Consultancy and Interim Resource in all areas of customer contact – Leadership/Operational Management, Change Management, Resource Planning, Insight/Data Analytics, Customer Experience/Quality.

If you would like to know more and have an informal chat contact either:
Phil Anderson – CEO
t: 01772 797 138
 
or

Dave Vernon - Director of Membership & Best Practice
t: 07956 497 800