Workforce Engagement Management

We are attempting to use the Automatic Best Method for forecasting but the volume numbers are way off. How do we adjust the settings/system to get more accurate volume numbers? We always have to make minor changes to our weighted forecasts and we always expect that. But these are off by very high numbers.
#GeneralQuestion
#Forecasting
#Workforce Management

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Greg Barrett
Outdoor Network, LLC
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ABM will continue to learn. Usually on cold start situations or post significant changes (adding new queues; making significant alterations of route paths; a drastic step up/down in volume/AHT) it takes a couple of weeks. If ABM reacted more immediately it would overcorrect/oversteer and be chaotically stochastic.

Worst-case post significant change you could produce a forecast using each method and make a schedule-time decision on which to use and then at some point 1, 2, or 3 weeks later stop dual producing schedules and use ABM again.

We are looking at ways to better support cold-start and large changes more immediately (e.g., for someone to denote change is expected and you want to have it be not considered an outlier).

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Jay Langsford
Senior Director, Workforce Optimization Engineering
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