Case Study: Continuum Global Solutions

CUSTOMER PROFILE

THE CHALLENGE

After divestiture from its former corporate parent, Continuum Global Solutions knew it needed a modern SaaS approach to help offer worldclass BPO services to top-tier clients. This included evaluating the overall value of the previously installed on-premise workforce management solution. The server’s advanced age and the transition away from the previous parent’s IT organization meant that the WFM solution had frequent outages. These outages could last for hours at a time, which significantly impacted the workforce management team’s productivity as well as broader contact center operations.

Continuum sought a cloud-based WFM solution that would free the company from the need to hire dedicated IT administrators, and instead gain the benefits of managed upgrades and ongoing maintenance. Continuum also wanted to improve the sophistication and ease-of-use of agent self-service features, reducing the burden on WFM staff. The company also wanted to gain better command of intraday metrics through reliable real-time reporting.

THE SOLUTION

Continuum went live with the cloud-powered NICE IEX Workforce Management as a natural extension of the company’s cloud-first strategy and kept Continuum on schedule for full divestiture from its former parent. Today, Continuum manages 4,500 agents across several clients on the NICE cloud.

A Collaborative Transition

Continuum’s leadership team, service delivery experts, and WFM specialists worked closely with NICE to make the cloud transition successful and smooth.

Continuum’s process bible was re-implemented in the virtual environment, and both historical data and future schedules migrated to the cloud to ensure reporting continuity and consistency. NICE provided a step-by-step configuration document which Continuum’s IT and WFM specialists followed to the letter to ensure a smooth transition to the new cloud server.

The transition was seamless for most employees, with minimal training or changes in process required. New self-service options give agents better control over their own schedules.

THE RESULTS

NICE IEX Workforce Management, managed in the cloud by NICE, has eliminated the disruptive outages caused by the previous on-premise implementation. Maintenance issues which might have idled the WFM team for hours and could take days for an on-premise administrator to resolve have been eliminated.

Continuum has also realized additional benefits from enhanced NICE IEX Workforce Management capabilities:

• Agent self-service for schedule trades and schedule changes. Agents are more satisfied by the greater control, and automated approval rules save WFM staff time.
• CSV export gives supervisors, WFM specialists, and leadership greater command over reporting, with faster and more convenient data extraction and analysis.
• At-a-glance views of the impact of potential schedule changes.
• Real-time analysis of the parties responsible for changes without a lengthy audit.
• Gained access to the latest functionality through continuous upgrades.

Continuum relies heavily on intraday reporting to make decisions, and these are now available with 99.5% uptime instead of the frequent disruptions that impacted the onpremise operation. Scheduled maintenance windows are clearly communicated and coordinated between NICE and Continuum, with no impact on Continuum employees or client operations.

THE NEXT STEPS

Apart from an on-premise Avaya ACD, all of Continuum’s mission-critical systems have transitioned to the cloud. The company has licenses to add thousands more agents to NICE IEX Workforce Management as client needs demand.