Planning/Bugeting
The QServ planning engine is used to set plan hours and cost by day by scheduling area over
multi-week planning periods of a month, season or year. The plans
can be set to achieve a hours or cost budget or a productivity or selling cost objective by location, region
or total company.
The output of the planning process serves as input to the scheduling process and controls the hours and cost
available for each scheduling area. Plan reports also provide valuable information for hiring and adjusting minimum
and maximum weekly hours for associates.
Planning Process
During the plan calculation process QServ first develops a table of staffing
requirements from the bottom up using the
Ideal Staffing
engine. This calculation considers forecasts for sales and other drivers by
function and day, productivity standards and minimum staffing requirements for security and loss prevention.
The staffing requirements resulting from the bottom up calculation are then
compared to the top level budget, productivity or selling cost objective. If the
rollup of required hours or cost exceed the top level objective, then QServ
selectively reduces plan hours and cost by function and day based on forecast sales until the top level objective is
achieved. As hours and cost are reduced QServ ensures that minimum staffing rules and weekly
base hour requirements
are satisfied.
If the staffing requirements are less than the hours or cost provided by the
objective, then additional hours are added to the functions and days with the
highest forecast.
If recalculating plans midway through a month or season QServ will optionally
include actuals to date so plan hours and cost for future periods include the
effects of actual hours, cost and sales to date. For example, if management sets
a selling cost objective of 5% for the Spring season for the company before the start
of the season and then recalculates
the seasonal plan each month during the season, including actuals to date, the plan hours and cost
for the remaining months of the season will be set to achieve that overall selling cost
objective of 5% for the season.
An important consideration is that week boundaries represent artificial boundaries.
A planning process that is based on weekly forecasts can produce the wrong
result (see the
planning white paper
for more details).
Adjusting Capacity to Plan
A seasonal plan provides a long range view of staffing requirements. Synchronizing available staffing with
planned hours can be accomplished using QServ WFM reports and tools.
The "Planning Conflicts" report identifies weeks when the minimum hour commitments to associates exceed planned hours or
the maximum hours available from associates falls short of planned hours.
When associates are added to the QServ database, either through an import process or manually, they are assigned to a
scheduling class. A scheduling class defines the minimum and maximum hours per week, minimum and maximum shift length
and minimum and maximum number of shifts per week for each associate assigned to the class. Exceptions to the class properties can
be entered for individual associates. To minimize maintenance requirements permission to modify these properties for individual
associates should be limited to application administrators.
The "Full Time/Part Time Mix" report presents the full time/part time mix of associates in terms minimum hour requirements and
headcount and is used to balance the associate mix. Use this report to adjust the headcount mix to match management objectives.
Adjustments to minimum and maximum capacity can easily applied to the total organization by simply revising scheduling class properties.
For example, to reduce capacity simply reduce the minimum weekly hours for part time classes. In the same manner maximum capacity can also be adjusted up.
Available capacity for specific days, like "Black Friday", can be increased by defining events for these days that enable the
use of extended shifts, overtime and that allow associates to be scheduled on a day that has been selected as a normal day off.