Management View

Business Objectives

Workforce Management can be challenging because of:

• Disparate applications involved in workforce management processes
• Lack of visibility into resource deployment decisions
• Difficulty in linking resource deployment, project accounting, skill certification, location/response cycle time and business performance objectives
• Lack of real-time visibility into information to support planning and workload leveling
• Difficulty in capturing real time status information

Rolta's Workforce Management Fusion Solution serves as the spatial fusion engine which links the interdependent systems and processes required to perform true workforce management into a seamless activity and provide operational intelligence for supervisors, managers, executives and political public servants (government). This holistic approach to workforce management enables the internal processes and also provides the insight required to make adjustments to ensure that service levels expectations are met.

Solution

Workforce management is broad process area that is typically implemented through a combination of ERP Financial applications (General Ledger, Chart of Projects, Payroll), Human Resources Information Systems, Time and Attendance, CRM and Asset Management, Work Order systems. Each industry has different characteristics in terms of how many of the key inputs to workforce management like attendance or activity based accounting is measured. Project centric organizations typically leverage software based time and attendance closely coupled with their ERP systems. Manufacturing organizations typically opt for combination hardware and card centric systems to support the management of large shifts. In union environments, workforce management systems along with HR systems support the codification of collective bargaining agreements as well. In general, workforce management contains the following processes:

• Demand Forecasting - forecast work orders to help plan the number and skills of technicians that will be needed
• Scheduling - uses predefined rules to automatically optimize the schedule and use of resources (people, parts, vehicles)
• Dispatch - automatically assigns work orders within predefined zones to particular technicians
• Field Workforce Mobility - allow dispatchers and technicians to communicate in real time

Rolta's solution integrates and fuses the data from HR, time and attendance, scheduling, work order management and other applications in order to optimize and effectively deploy labor relative to the demand for service or production schedule. Rolta's solution is unique in its' ability to integrate cross platform systems via SOA/web services, ability to provide a spatial context to the work management information and its' configurable solution which requires no programming.

Approach

Our implementation approach is built around a straight forward approach that is focused on providing tangible results quickly. Our implementation methodology includes:

• Assessment, Strategy and Planning
• Requirements
• Configuration/Construction
• Deployment and Transition to Production

Business Value

The solution is focused on providing demonstrable improvements in work management operations that can drive improved service at a reduced cost.

Technical View

The technical challenges to support a Work Management solution can be a challenge in many organizations. Perhaps the following are typical our your organization:

• Custom applications the impede process adaptability
• Complexity and varying age of agency systems that are difficult to maintain and impede the ability to deliver a common gateway into government services
• Fragmentation of systems and specialized applications to address niche requirements
• Poor integration of systems and complexity of creating and managing interfaces between systems
• Manual work-a-rounds to supplement inadequate systems
• Lack of a IT architecture strategy and procurement practices that result in incompatible systems and limit the ability to extend systems and processes externally to constituents
• Inability to prioritize and track responses to issues
• Lack of visibility (internally and externally) into problem resolution status thus increasing call volumes and generating non value-added activity

Solution Components

Rolta's solution architecture for Workforce Management includes:

• Rolta's Geospatial Fusion and the OnPoint™ Spatial Integration Platform
• Business Intelligence: Oracle OBIEE, Business Objects and/or MicroSoft SharePoint
• SOA:/Web Services: Rolta's iPerspective/SOA Today Suite

Implementation

Our implementation approach is built around standard software development methodologies that are focused on providing tangible results quickly and limiting the need for rework. Our implementation methodology includes:

• Assessment, Strategy and Planning
• Requirements
• Configuration/Construction
• Deployment and Transition to Production

How Does it Fit and Why is it Different?

Rolta's solution provides for integration of agency related systems, GIS, portal technology and business intelligence through a configurable web services platform that does not require custom coding and the dedication of IT and GIS developers. All database connections are driven through wizards and point and click applets. Security is managed seamlessly across the solution and can be controlled down to a feature level within each spatial component. Queries can be made via the spatial component or the BI component facilitating content convergence (data, maps, documents, audio, video, etc.) while maintaining context synchronization.