Excel and Forecasting

[adelaro]

Does anybody know of an Excel spreadsheet online or anywhere else that could be used to help in forecasting in bound calls? I would like to find something that I could use it as a second source to check against the forecasts that EWFM is generating.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thank you.

[NBosch]

Hi Adelaro,

To be very honest with you, I would not use excell as a tool to check your forecast data. The reason for that is, that the calculations in software like eWFM take a lot of information from the server, to come up with the best result... probably more data than excell would be able to handle effectively.
I have had an IT specialist working in a former organisation, who was able to build a forecast tool in MS Access, that was pretty much spot on, but he also, pulled the data from the Aspect server.

But ( :) ) if you are serious about doing this in excell, the best way would be to write a sheet yourself.
There would be two possible approaches:
1. The simple/not exact method
(forecasted sales volume) x (standard call ratio)
where the standard call ratio can be calculated from your historical data.

2. The more challenging method
Import your call data for the past year in small intervalls and calculate the day to day growth of the call center (note: take weekdays implications into regard) and then pull a forecast yourself.

Again... do-able... yes. As precise as eWFM... I doubt it. Time consuming to do it correct ... very much.

Good luck and I hope to have been of support.

Niek Bosch
niek_bosch@yahoo.co.uk

[ctaylor]

Adelaro,

For excel try installing the erlang add-in for excel. If you are looking for web resource try this link http://www.schedulingstaff.com .

You will need to register (60 day free trial) and once you have done so then you can get to the erlang calculator http://www.schedulingstaff.com/secure/Traffic.aspx.


I hope this helps

Colin

[thetuan]

Hi Adolero,

You can build a very accurate forecast model in Excel but it's not that easy.

Here we go

You will have to create a table where your analyst can input historical information - calls offered, calls answered, ASA and total call processing time (not average call processing time). With this historical information, you can use the pivot tables to build three sets of information. The first pivot table should show Sun - Sat in the column area and the arrival pattern by half hour for each day. This table will give you an accurate look at your daily arrival pattern for each day of the week (in percent). The next table should have your total call processing time by day and by half hour. This table will allow you to forecast the time you will need by half hour to process your work load. The last pivot table will contain information about your daily arrival pattern in a weekly format - this will allow you to forecast your day of week pattern for all seven work days (or the days during the week that your call center is operating). With these sets of information, you can now extract data to accurately forecast your call load curve by half hour and by day. As with any huge amount of data, you will need to smooth out the small bumps within your incoming call load and you will need to normalize all daily volume that is affected negatively or positively by unusual circumstances - for example, Thanksgiving might show a very low volume for Thursday of the Thanksgiving week and you will need to bring that volume back to what is normal for you for Thursday. If you don't normalize your day of week pattern properly, the model will give you an inaccurate DOW (day of week) pattern and your manpower load curve will be off. I can go on about how you will need to incorporate the Erlang theory to forecast manpower load by half hour but that will definitely take us beyond this discussion.

To make all of this easy for you, we have developed a forecast model and scheduling program in MYSQL that will simplify all of this for you. We are looking for folks who are willing to test our forecast and scheduling program and give us feedbacks so we can improve on the model. Let me know and I can give you the link to download the model.

Tuan

[n_meghanath]

Tuan,

Sounds quite interesting, I would love to try out your model and would definitely give you feedback.

[thetuan]

Meghanath,

I'll send you the forecasting and scheduling software to your yahoo e mail address tonight. Please let me know what you think regarding the ease of using it and what else we can do to improve it to make it more user friendly.

Thanks for your interest

Tuan

[Saiuz]

hi there, it will be really usefully if you can help me with that pattern. If you want to send it to me to test it my mail is vali_virdol@yahoo.com

Tenks a lot,
Vali

[danko]

Hi Tuan,

Is this software still on offer for testing? if so can I will be willing to test as well. my email is danko.mitrovic@bigpond.com

cheers

[danko]

Originally Posted by thetuan

Meghanath,

I'll send you the forecasting and scheduling software to your yahoo e mail address tonight. Please let me know what you think regarding the ease of using it and what else we can do to improve it to make it more user friendly.

Thanks for your interest

Tuan

Hi Tuan,

I am willing to try this software as well if that is possible,

thanks,
danko

[xenny]

I will appreciate if u will be able to send me the software too
Thanks a lot

xenny_@hotmail.com

Originally Posted by thetuan

Meghanath,

I'll send you the forecasting and scheduling software to your yahoo e mail address tonight. Please let me know what you think regarding the ease of using it and what else we can do to improve it to make it more user friendly.

Thanks for your interest

Tuan

[superfly]

Hi TheTuan

i would also like to try it out
fannandale@fnb.co.za

[bebob]

I would be very happy to use your software and provide any feedback I could.

bob@infra-strategy.com

[Juli9236]

You would be surprised to see what is out there. Might help with at least getting started.

[mrozon]

I also would love to test this out as i have been looking all over for an excel version of a forcasting tool. I did have a good one in the past but it got deleted by accident

[mrozon]

I would love to test your software as I had one before but for the life of me cannot remember how i did it. I would prefer not re-inventing the wheel.

Thanks,