Agara vs. Alvaria Workforce

Easy workforce management tool and the dashboard is well designed with multiple accessible functionalities. This platform allows easy data collection across other project management systems and the analytics which the tool provides are excellent and very reliable project planning and easy scheduling with effective and excellent management functionalities and initial implementing is also an easy process.

• easy and quick to use- you don't have to waste hours explaining how to use WFM with your employees
• reliable- multiple employees can be making changes and testing staffing changes without the site crashing
• easy to balance employee scheduling with your business needs

Incentivized

• The configuration of the system is quite complex and very difficult to administer.
• Initial training on the product is simply focused on the product and it typically not done using a customers real data. Since many customers do not have a strong background in WFM to begin with, the training should focus more on the fundamental of WFM before it dives into how to use the tool. You have to learn more about how it is best to use the tool for real world environments and not just how to click here and go there.
• RTA has not been updated in years. It does not offer real-time schedule adherence scores and the reporting is terrible. Reporting is specific to each workspace and you lose data each time you close a workspace.
• The shrinkage calculator feature that was added a few years ago is a great feature but very difficult to reconcile. If you are not an extreme expert with the very confusing superstate philosophy in eWFM it can be disastrous.

While I support other customers who utilize the software, the response from our customers is over-whelmingly positive. Many customers who have not had any type of workforce management software in the past use spreadsheets to schedule and forecast agents. This can be extremely complicated and a nightmare to control. The time saved by having a product that can quickly complete these functions for you is worth the investment. Also, we have several customers who had no way to track what their agents are doing and have found many problems in their call-center with the software. After rolling out a program where their adherence was tracked and actually 'mattered', they were able to see increased efficency from their agents.

Once the initial set up of the software is complete and/or you are familiar with the software, it is easy to use and runs like a dream. However, if you are unfamiliar with the software or have used a competitor's product, some features can seem difficult to learn or get used to.

I was impressed with the support I received. There were never any long delays when I had issues and the representatives that I worked with were always patient and eager to fully understand not only my problem but our business processes surrounding the problem.

Implementation of the software was not difficult but it was tedious for us due to the fact that our processes had not kept up with the times and we had to make a large number of process changes along with setting up the software.

I have used NICE IEX Workforce Management in addition to Aspect Workforce Management, both tools are great at what they do. Aspect however builds its forecast model continuously, adding more information to the model everyday, where are with IEX, the model has to be built each and every time from used selections each week. IEX does not have a historical base model to reference, where Aspect does.

• The workforce management team was able to decrease the cycle time forecasting, staffing and scheduling staff; resulted in higher employee engagement
• The scenario based planning enabled us to develop a more accurate call volume forecast thus staffing the contact centers appropriately; approximately $500k savings realized in labor expenses (reduced FTE headcount, while meeting the same level of service level measures)
• Improved customer experience due to staffing the call center properly (answered 80 percent of our calls within 20 seconds)