Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
in his/her list of “My processes”. When visiting a process shared space, a person can
see directly on the map what step(s) are assigned to him, see a green box in Fig. 3.
4.2 Experience of Use
The communication possibilities in an iPB-based system may seem to be too limited.
The only way of attracting a given person's attention to visit a particular shared space
is by assigning him/her to be an owner/co-owner of some step in the given process
instance. No clarification or explanation is given when making the assignment. This
should be figured out by the person him/herself from the state of the process, i.e. from
the partly filled step form.
However, in practice, this communication mechanism works quite well for
relatively structured processes for which it is possible to identify steps. A system of
this kind is quite easy to introduce in operational practice, which cannot be said about
systems with a collaborative planning style. The communication works well even
when participants do not know each other personally.
To extend communication possibilities, we added a rudimentary planning scheme
similar to ProBis. In the systems currently introduced, however, this additional
mechanism is not being widely used.
5 A System with Communication Based on Status Changes
5.1 Description
The system called eForm was developed for a large Swedish call center (Eniro
118118) to solve the daily staffing problems that can be defined as follows [11]. The
scheduling software is run once per month. Staffing requirements may change from
day to day (if not from hour to hour) due to changing volumes of inbound calls. In
addition, unscheduled absences due to illness, traffic jams, snowfall, etc. make it
impossible to totally rely on the pre-generated schedule even when the call volume
follows the established pattern. Corrections in the schedule are constantly made to
cope with fluctuations in volumes of calls and the number of agents not appearing for
work. More agents need to be called in to deal with an increase in the volume of calls
or increase in the number of absentees. Alternatively, fewer agents are required when
the call volume decreases, or the sick rate due to a seasonable epidemics diminishes.
Effective dealing with fluctuations in the staffing level at a call center requires fast
communication channels between agents and managers responsible for operative
staffing of the call center. eForm is a web 2.0 system providing efficient channels of
communication between three different categories of workers at a call center:
•
Central staffing center, aka Control Tower, or just Tower
Agents
•
•
Coaches (managers)
The system works according to a simple scheme: a communication process starts when
one of the participants fills an electronic form that serves as a shared space for this
process. This form gets the status New and immediately appears in the list watched by
