Attendees will come away from this event equipped with strategies and solutions that can be immediately implemented in your contact center planning process, therefore, creating smarter operational plans that deliver even greater value to your organization.

We’ve negotiated a special room rate of $195 night for conference attendees. Rooms must be booked by December 23rd to receive the discounted rate. Call (866) 877-9897 OR Book Online to make reservations.

For more information and to register, please visit us online. If you have any questions please call Abby Montgomery 443.837.9047 or email amontgomery@baybridgetech.com

NOTES FROM THE PRESIDENT
They say that managing is often all about trade-offs; indeed if everything was free, we would never need to decide.  Managing contact centers involves decision-making every day, and the most classic contact center trade-off is cost vs. service.

This trade-off is far from simple or cost free.  Every point in service level has a cost associated with it.  Further, that cost changes as volumes change and the economies of scale of the operation changes.  The appropriateness of certain service standards also is different based on the type of contact being serviced.

I always find it fascinating how service standards are so often assigned arbitrarily.  Given that the service standards drive costs, management performance and bonuses, and the “busy-ness” of the agents, one would think that this is a figure derived after significant analysis.  But it often isn’t.

My guess as to why this is the case is that in order to accurately understand the trade-off between service and costs, contact center management needs an accurate and quick contact center strategic planning process, and many executives are still leaning on their bulky capacity planning spreadsheets.

But there is a better way, and we recommend taking a look at CenterBridge to help you understand the service and cost trade-offs of your contact center network.

BAY BRIDGE TECH’S RISING STAR:
We would like to Congratulate Bayu Wicaksono on his recent promotion.  Bay Bridge Decision Technologies welcomed Bayu to their team in January 2004 as an Operations Research Analyst. Bayu was the genius behind CenterBridge optimizers and the core algorithm which lead him to his current position as Manager, Operations Research Development. He will be responsible for managing the development of our core algorithm and optimization of CenterBridge.

Recorded Webinars

True Staff Optimization
Nov 17 2:00pm
Watch Now

Forecasting and Planning Tips and Tricks
September 20
Watch Now

Planning for Multiple Contact Types, Email, Chat, Phone and Back Office
October 25
Watch Now

Upcoming Events

Users’ Conference 2012 Scottsdale. AZ
February 7-9
Register Now 

White Papers

Contact Center Planning- Agility is Key
Download Now

Hidden Costs in Your Contact Center Plans
Download Now

One of the benefits (or problems, depending on your point of view) with being good at your job is that you often get more jobs to do!  Because of all of the good workforce managers have done, they’re being asked to do much more: produce capacity plans for, not only inbound calls, but back-office functions, instant messaging, outbound calls, and email.

How in the world do we plan for this? In this session we’ll discuss the issues associated with full service centers as well as methods for planning in this more complex business setting. If you can do this well, you’ll save your company a lot of money.

Missed our last webinar?  Watch Forecasting and Planning Tips and Tricks Here

UPCOMING TRADESHOW:
Contact Center Conference 2011
October 4-6
Phoenix, AZ
Queue-Talk: Conference Edition : Podcast with Ric Kosiba

LATEST WHITE PAPER:
Contact Center Planning: Agility is Key
Ric Kosiba Ph. D. President, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

Over the last ten years, there has been a move toward this more contemporary planning process in the contact center community. Leading organizations have sought to minimize operational risk associated with changing volumes by improving the analytic capabilities and increasing the level of automation in their planning process.   This paper will discuss migrating toward an optimal planning process: the organization, technologies, and business decisions that are current best practices.

NOTES FROM THE PRESIDENT:
What service should we offer customers?  Seems like a pretty straight forward question, right? It would be, if service were free.  But service is not free.

At each service level goal, there is an implied cost.  And lowering cost is another of those goals.  So our two goals are: lower costs and provide service.  But those aren’t the only two goals! We also don’t want to burn out our agents with too high an occupancy, we want to provide training and professional growth for our employees, we want to sell product (for sales or collections centers), and so on… Read More

Forecasting and planning have been described as an art; we believe that there’s a fair amount of science and mathematics that inform this art. In this session learn how mathematically optimized methods applied to your planning and forecasting will reduce performance variance in your contact center.

NEW WHITE PAPER: 
Contact Center Planning: Agility is Key
Ric Kosiba Ph. D. President, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

Over the last ten years, there has been a move toward this more contemporary planning process in the contact center community. Leading organizations have sought to minimize operational risk associated with changing volumes by improving the analytic capabilities and increasing the level of automation in their planning process.   This paper will discuss migrating toward an optimal planning process: the organization, technologies, and business decisions that are current best practices.

Notes from the President:
We’re real excited to announce the 2012 CenterBridge Users’ Conference in Scottsdale, AZ.  Like all of our conferences, we expect that this conference will be a blend between users’ best practices (my favorite part) and CenterBridge technical briefings. We’ll be offering pre-conference training, a little more expanded from last year. Some topics include: Sensitivity Analysis, Configuration Management Checklist, Lost Time, Variance Analysis and many others.

The venue is breathtaking and we’ve scheduled fun events for the evenings.  Please check out our website for more information and FAQ’s about the conference. Additionally, check out the Talking Stick Resort website.

We are hoping that we’ll see you all there!

Inc. Magazine Ranks Bay Bridge Decision Technologies as #621 In Its Annual Exclusive List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies—the Inc.500|5000

The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent entrepreneurs. 

In a stagnant economic environment, BBDT 3-year growth rate rose an impressive 520%. Additionally, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies ranks 10th in the Baltimore area, and 46th in the Business Product and Services Industry.

We are super excited to hear what you’d like to talk about at this year’s CenterBridge Users’ conference! Please submit your session title and brief description by August 5^th! You can present solo, as part of a panel, any format you choose. You can even submit just a topic request! Send all submissions to amontgomery@baybridgetech.com.

The conference is February 7 – 9, 2012 at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale AZ.

From the President ::

This month we were pleased to sponsor a webinar by Laura Dillon of TD Bank about optimizing staff plans.  She was terrific, and you can listen to the webinar. Built to Hire- Putting Hire Recommendations into Action

We learned a lot from the folks at TD during the CenterBridge implementation.  One thing we took to heart is how critically important it is to manage the business process changes brought by new technologies, such as CenterBridge.  The old three-legged stool, “people, processes, and technologies” must be supported, or the stool breaks.

Laura touches on this in her webcast.  

We have taken this lesson to heart, and focus on all three legs.  We actively explore and manage the expected end-state of the planning process. We continue to work to make sure that the transition to CenterBridge is smooth- even as we are configuring the technology and training the analysts.

At Bay Bridge, we often say that we’ve run out of ideas (we haven’t) and that we get all of our ideas from our customers (we do!).  This has certainly been the case with our implementation at Toronto Dominion.

Hiring and Staffing Q&A  with Laura Dillon, TD Bank ::

Question: What is the number one benefit you have found using CenterBridge?

Laura Dillon, TD Bank: The impact of CenterBridge’s hiring and staffing recommendations is endless for us. CenterBridge provides long-term and up to weekly hiring plans, which helps us at TD Bank reduce staffing costs, while having the exact FTE’s when we need them. CenterBridge also takes into account each new hire’s “learning curve,” so we as planners can forecast service levels, handle times, etc. using each FTE’s skill-level and knowledge base.  

As a user of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies’ contact center strategic planning software, Laura Dillon offers insight in the everyday use of CenterBridge.  Laura Dillon, WFM Consultant at TD Bank, works hand-in-hand with CenterBridge to optimize short-term and long-term hiring and staffing plans.

More Q&A

To hear about Laura’s experience with CenterBridge, Watch her webinar.

LISTEN TO …
Free Webinar: Built to Hire- Putting Hire Recommendations into Action
Thursday, June 23, 2011
2:00 PM EST
Join Laura Dillon from TD Bank Financial Group and learn how she addressed business concerns in recruitment and learning and development, and transformed them into opportunities that revolutionized TD’s long-term plans.

We are already preparing for next year’s Users’ Conference! 2012 Agenda Coming Soon!
2012 CenterBridge Users’ Conference
February 7 – 9, 2012
Talking Stick Resort
Scottsdale, AZ

From the President…
A common theme that we’ve heard over the last two years is the uncertainty of the business environment and our contact center operation.  Forecasting is tough, and planning, hence, is also difficult.  And while this may seem counterintuitive, in times like these- when forecasts are off- that planningbecomes much more important.

It is only through the planning process that uncertainty can be tamed, and resource decisions made, that incorporate the risk associated with that uncertainty.

If your contact volumes are fluctuating, and are not following your normal seasonal trends, then it is time to lean on your planning process to allow senior managers to understand the risk associated with their resource decisions.  Enter CenterBridge.

Not a CenterBridge user yet?  Request a demo and get started today!

Engage with BBDT!

NICE Global Customer Conference 2011
May 23 – 26, 2011
The Venetian and Palazzo Resort and Casino, Las Vegas
PRESENTING: Do’s & Don’ts of Contact Center Planning
Ric Kosiba, President, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies
May 25, from 10:15 – 11:15am, in Marcello 4406

Free Webinar: Built to Hire- Putting Hire Recommendations into Action
Thursday, June 23, 2011
2:00 PM EST
Join Laura Dillon from TD Bank Financial Group and learn how she addressed business concerns in recruitment and learning and development, and transformed them into opportunities that revolutionized TD’s long-term plans.

Mark Your Calendars!!!
2012 CenterBridge Users’ Conference
February 7 – 9, 2012
Talking Stick Resort
Scottsdale, AZ

STAY CONNECTED…

Tweet.  Tweet.  Follow us on Twitter the most efficient and up-to-date way to stay connected with the latest and greatest from BBDT.

From the President…

There’s a lot brewing at Bay Bridge these days.  There’s a standard business cycle associated with software companies, and as part of our normal cycle, there is always a push to complete our new product features before the annual users’ conference.  So the last few months has seen a flurry of great design work, where new features are white-boarded and competing concepts are debated. I have to say, this is always among the most fun parts of the job.  We’re very fortunate that we have such a great group of creative and analytic software development folks here at Bay Bridge.

This year will be a banner year for CenterBridge.  You can expect some fairly cool new reporting and analytic tools in CenterBridge.  We’re taking the already powerful sensitivity analyses section and growing it out significantly.  What was already a powerful and easy analytic function, will now be even more so.  We’re adding new forecasting capabilities in addition to a whole batch of usability features that will be discussed and unveiled at the conference.

We hope to see you there!

SAVE THE DATE!

NEW! Pre-Conference Training Session
RESERVE YOUR SPOT!

 Bay Bridge Decision Technologies is hosting a CenterBridge training session and we’d love for you to attend! No matter if you are a CenterBridge veteran, amateur, or prospect – you will benefit from this class. How do I know? Because as students you will define the curriculum.

LEARN MORE…

THE MAIN EVENT
2011 CenterBridge Users’ Conference
January 26-28, 2011
Disney’s Boardwalk Inn & Resort
Orlando, FL
REGISTER TODAY!

Employee Spotlight: Thomas Delrue 

Q: What do you do here at Bay Bridge?

I’m a Senior Software Developer/Architect at Bay Bridge and will be working on CenterBridge.

Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I was born and raised in the Flemish part of Belgium. I went to college in Brussels and in 2003 I graduated with a degree in computer science. In 2004, I was ‘tapped’ to participate in the interviews that Microsoft Corporation was holding to fill ten positions for summer interns from the entire EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Asia) region. Since this was the first time they opened up the internship program for participants outside of the United States and Canada, they started out with a pilot program with only ten positions. I successfully completed the set of interviews they threw at me and in the summer of 2004 I went to Redmond in the state of Washington to do a three month internship. Upon completion of my internship, I was offered a full time position which I accepted. That was my first taste of the United States of America and it immediately left a delicious taste in my mouth.

Following the summer internship, I permanently relocated to the Seattle area to work for Microsoft where I worked on various releases of various products, some of which are used right here at Bay Bridge. I worked on the first release of Visual Studio Team Architect and the first and second releases of Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.  Before joining Bay Bridge I was working on SQL Server. But after roughly six years at Microsoft, I was looking for a different challenge which I believe I have found here at Bay Bridge. There are a lot of exciting opportunities here, and I’m excited to work in the Development Team as well as with all other teams to deliver multiple versions of CenterBridge to our customers in the future.

Q: What are some things you like to do in your free time?  (interests, hobbies, etc).
I’m really a programmer’s programmer. A lot of my free time goes into keeping my skills honed, honing them some more, and studying various subjects in the Computer Science, Software Architecture and Programming world. I always have one or two side projects that I’m working on.
When I’m not busy doing that, there’s quite a chance that you’ll find me reading. I’m a true news-junkie and try to stay on top of what is happening on the international stage in terms of news and latest developments.
I also have a strong interest in Intelligence Services and their modus operandi. There are always at least two or three books on the subject on my nightstand.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your family.
As I mentioned before, I was born and raised in Belgium and all of my family still lives in Belgium. I’m the only one who dared to take the plunge and literally move halfway across the world.  I have two younger sisters, Joke (pronounced ‘yoke-uh’) and Julie.
My girlfriend and I recently got engaged after almost five years of being together, which means that she is now even more part of ‘my family’. Her name is Mauli and is currently doing a PhD in psychology at the UMBC. We live together in Ellicott City.

Q: Tell us something about you that most people don’t know.
I have a fascination with moose (or how I prefer to call them: ‘meese’; goose-geese, moose-meese, right?). This fascination goes as far as having multiple stuffed meese at home as well as two (yes, two!) pairs of meese-slippers with antlers and everything. Aside from that, we’re actively thinking of one day visiting Alaska to figure out once and for all whether or not meese are, in real life, as cute as the stuffed animals we have at home.

 STAY CONNECTED…

Don’t forget to subscribe to Ric’s Blog! He updates regularly to keep you in-the-know with the latest and greatest insight into call center planning logistics.

 Make sure you’re LinkedIn  to Contact Center Strategic Planning! Again, this group has been available for a little while now, but if you haven’t joined or heard about it before, then get onboard!  It’s a chance to take part in discussions regarding anything from our most recent webinar to forecasting to planning for virtual agents and social media’s impact on long-term planning.

Tweet.  Tweet.  Follow us on Twitter the most efficient and up-to-date way to stay connected with the latest and greatest from BBDT.

From the President…

While I worry that this may start appearing to be a theme in this newsletter, I wanted to mention again how excited I am about our User’s Conference in Orlando in January.  We’ve just opened registration, and have been working on putting together the sessions. We are hosting the event again, this year, at the Disney Boardwalk Resort. Like everything Disney, the resort is magical.

But even if the setting wasn’t so great, this year’s conference should be a special one. This year has been a banner year for our development team, we’ve added several very exciting new components to CenterBridge that we’ll show at the conference. 

Bay Bridge Decision Technologies has grown considerably since last year, and CenterBridge’s capabilities reflect this.

The conference is going to be terrific.

Another quick item I wanted to mention is that we’re seeing a trend that we are very pleased with:  strategic planning in contact centers- and otherwise- is becoming a much more mainstream concept.  From the Wall Street Journal article, Strategic Plans Lose Favor, to the latest TMC white paper,  Workforce Management: It’s More than Just Software,  there is a business yearning for exactly what CenterBridge accomplishes: fast, accurate, and recurrent strategic/operational plans.  There is power- especially in the contact center operation, with its inherent seasonality- in having a longer view of the operational plan and expected performance. During periods of uncertainty and during periods of change, the type of operational analyses that is developed using a strategic planning system is all the more important- it is the only way executives and planners can get their arms around the risk of their important resource decisions.

We’re happy that this is getting so much attention lately.

SAVE THE DATE!

TRADESHOWS
International Contact Center Expo and Conference
October 25-27, 2010
Doral Golf Resort and Spa, Miami, Fl

USERS’ CONFERENCE
2011 CenterBridge Users’ Conference
January 26-28, 2011
Disney’s Boardwalk Inn & Resort
Orlando, FL
REGISTER TODAY!

WEBINAR
October 26, 2010 at 1 pm (EST)
Contact Center Strategic Planning Tips and Tricks
Presented By: Ric Kosiba, Ph.D., President and Co-Founder of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

STAY CONNECTED…

Happy Budget Season, everyone!  

When I was bucking for my first big promotion twenty-ish years ago, a buddy, who was already a manager in our company, told me I should try my best to wait for the manager promotion until the next January. His thinking: managers had to provide budget support and it was not worth the promotion money to have to go through budget season.  Avoid the budget planning process as long as possible.

Budget planning is not usually fun. The tediousness can be frustrating; the what-if requests can be silly; the work hours ramp to the ridiculous; and sometimes the unreasonable give and take deals a serious blow to the planner’s ego. Couple that with a spreadsheet process that is cumbersome and error prone and you might just want to put off that promotion as long as possible.

I received an email from one of our power CenterBridge users this week, answering the question: “How’s budget season treating you?”

His response:

“Sewed up my section of the budget in late June and sat and waited for everyone to catch up in August.  We made our first submission last week and everything is looking good on the CB stuff anyway.  Which is always a good thing.”

We’ve heard this a lot: “Budget season with CenterBridge wasn’t so tough”.

IN THE NEWS…

PRESS RELEASES

09/21/2010
Inc. Magazine Unveils Its Fourth Annual Exclusive List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies—the Inc. 5000
Bay Bridge Decision Technologies Ranks No. 1345 on the 2010 Inc. 5000 with Three-Year Sales Growth of 217%

09/24/2010
Bay Bridge Decision Technologies Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary
Annapolis born contact center solutions company honors a decade’s worth of growth

 SAVE THE DATE!

TRADESHOWS
International Contact Center Expo and Conference
October 25-27, 2010
Doral Golf Resort and Spa, Miami, Fl
Booth 302
Luncheon Speaker: Brad York, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

USERS’ CONFERENCE
2011 CenterBridge Users’ Conference
January 26-28, 2011
Disney’s Boardwalk Inn & Resort
Orlando, FL
Registration Coming Soon!

WEBINARS
October 5, 2010 at 2pm (EST)
Using Sophisticated Strategic Planning Software, Liberty Mutual Discovers New Opportunities
Presented by: Patrick Flynn, Senior Forecast Analyst, Resource Management, Liberty Mutual Customer Response Center, and Ric Kosiba, President, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

October 26, 2010 at 1pm (EST)
Contact Center Strategic Planning Tips and Tricks
Presented By: Ric Kosiba, Ph.D., President and Co-Founder of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

STAY CONNECTED…

Don’t forget to subscribe to Ric’s Blog!

 Make sure you’re LinkedIn  to Contact Center Strategic Planning! Again, this group has been available for a little while now, but if you haven’t joined or heard about it before, then get onboard!  It’s a chance to take part in discussions regarding anything from our most recent webinar to forecasting to planning for virtual agents and social media’s impact on long-term planning.

Tweet.  Tweet.  Follow us on Twitter

We hope you have enjoyed this latest issue of The Bridge.  If you would like to contribute to our newsletter or have ideas on how we can make it better, please let us know.

Regards,
Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

From the President… 

One of the perennial debates in the contact center industry is over cost versus service.  As a feature of this debate, there is an assumption that this is always and every time a trade-off and that cost and service are irreconcilable goals.  And I assume that this is true to a point.

Back in college, I took a very cool math class (who else do you know would put those last three words together??) called “Multi-Objective Programming” which dealt with the mathematics of the trade-offs associated with having different objectives.  For instance, we would look at the math associated with having a wide range of contact center goals such as 1) efficiency, 2) lower cost, 3) consistent service over time, 4) high service levels, 5) low abandons and 6) agent satisfaction.

And, believe it or not, all of this could be described in some form of math equation that could be solved- often using integer programming techniques as found in our CenterBridge long-term planning system.

Often the objectives were in direct conflict (as we generally suppose that cost versus service is diametrically opposed).  The “cool” part of the math class was learning about the techniques described and using them to make judgments about the trade-offs.

One key concept is that of “non-inferior solutions”.  This means that there are trade-off points that are optimal for each of the objectives.  For example, if your goal is to determine the trade-off curve between service level and cost over the course of a hiring cycle (say 18 months), you would want to determine the cheapest hiring plan that helps you achieve an 80 percent within 20 seconds service level.  You could establish a hiring plan that has higher costs and still results in a service level of 80, but why would you want to do that?  It makes perfect sense that if you want to hit 80%, then you must do so at least cost.

From there, in order to draw the trade-off curve, you would find the absolute cheapest hiring plan to achieve a 70% service level, and a 60 percent, and a 95%, etc…  The trick to all of this is being able to find the best hiring plan that achieves each of these goals.

Using CenterBridge, I’ve created such a graph:

From here, the task at hand is simply to pick the service/cost you want, and make it your goal.  In this example, if you want a 70% service level, it will cost you $12.75 per call.  If you want a 90% service level, it will cost you $15 per call.   All of this is enabled by having a truly optimal staff plan that calculates behind the scenes.  All of the points on this curve are “non-inferior” there is no staff plan that will yield a service level at lower cost than those plotted on this curve.

But here is the neat part.  I am always amazed by how well this sort of theoretical math works in the real world.  Over the course of my career, my team and I have applied a lot of theoretical math stuff to real world business problems, and this math always yields terrific results. We’ve embedded a lot of these great concepts into CenterBridge, and if you haven’t seen it lately, or if you haven’t stretched your CenterBridge installation lately, you should give us a call.

SAVE THE DATE!

TRADESHOWS
Aspect Customer Experience (ACE)
Orlando, Florida
September 20-22, 2010 International Contact Center Expo and Conference
October 25-27, 2010
Doral Golf Resort and Spa, Miami, Fl

USERS’ CONFERENCE
2011 CenterBridge Users’ Conference
January 26-28, 2011
Disney’s Boardwalk Inn & Resort
Orlando, FL

WEBINAR
October 5, 2010 at 2pm (EST)
Using Sophisticated Strategic Planning Software, Liberty Mutual Discovers New Opportunities

Presented by: Patrick Flynn, Senior Forecast Analyst, Resource Management, Liberty Mutual Customer Response Center, and Ric Kosiba, President, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies