Resources

By Karen Elliott, CEO/Cofounder, Cinareo AI is starting to show up more in workforce management and capacity planning. As new capabilities emerge, it is clear that the industry is exploring how these technologies can enhance planning workflows in practical ways. This is an exciting development. At the same time, capacity planning sits in a unique category of decision-making, one where precision, transparency, and repeatability are essential. Planning models inform real-world

Small changes rarely break a plan. It is how they accumulate and surface that creates the real problem. The plan did not fail overnight. It stopped holding quietly. Nothing obvious broke. Forecasts were still within range. Staffing looked reasonable. Service levels had not collapsed. On paper, everything still appeared under control. But something had shifted. A small change in demand. A slight increase in handling time. A hiring delay that did not seem urgent at the time. In

Capacity planning often looks solid on paper, yet breaks down when real-world pressures are applied. As complexity increases, timelines compress, and executive scrutiny intensifies, many organizations find their planning outputs no longer inspire confidence or hold up when decisions matter most. This session brings together executive and practitioner perspectives to examine why capacity planning struggles in practice and how experienced leaders respond. Rather than focusing o

A practical discussion on why workforce plans fail in execution and how standardizing processes brings control and predictability back to operations. What You'll Learn Even the best workforce plans can fail in execution. Forecasts are accurate, spreadsheets look sound, yet service levels still slip and teams end up firefighting. In this webinar, Cinareo’s Mark Alpern and industry advisor Daniel Piper explore why this happens and how standardized workforce management pract

By Mark Alpern, COO, Cinareo. This article reflects patterns we see repeatedly when reviewing real-world staffing models across contact center environments. In many of these environments, the largest source of staffing error is not forecast accuracy, but how abandonment and retries are treated, or ignored, in the underlying model. Despite decades of technological change in contact center operations, Erlang-based staffing models remain the de facto standard for determining f

By Karen Elliott, CEO, Cinareo. In capacity planning software, complexity has become a proxy for credibility. It seems like more exposed variables and more buttons and functions sends the message: if it’s complicated, it must be accurate. After years of building a planning system, I’ve come to believe the opposite. Complexity is the easiest thing to promote. Clarity is the hard part. And when complexity becomes the interface, planning slows, trust erodes, and decision-making

Key Insights from Cinareo’s Recent Conversation with Industry Experts Mark Alpern and Daniel Piper This article is the fourth and final part in our series exploring key themes from Cinareo’s recent conversation with workforce planning experts Mark Alpern and Daniel Piper. Workforce plans often lose traction the moment they reach executive leadership. Not because the work was wrong, but because leaders are being asked to make decisions on information that does not clearly tran

Key insights from Cinareo’s recent conversation with industry experts Mark Alpern and Daniel Piper This article is the third in a four-part series exploring key themes from Cinareo’s recent conversation with workforce planning experts Mark Alpern and Daniel Piper. Workforce plans rarely break because the work was done poorly. They break when decisions made after the plan slowly pull operations in a different direction. Not all at once, but through small, everyday choices that

Key Insights from Cinareo’s Recent Conversation with Industry Experts Mark Alpern and Daniel Piper This article is the first in a four-part series exploring key themes from Cinareo’s recent conversation with workforce planning experts Mark Alpern and Daniel Piper. Workforce plans often fail before they even reach execution. Not because the logic is wrong, but because the data they rely on does not reflect what is actually happening in the operation. By the time the plan is bu

Why Complex Tools Miss the Mark and How to Find What Works , a thought leadership paper by Karen Elliott . Unnecessarily complex...

Many contact centers struggle with capacity planning. They often rely on outdated methods and reactive decision-making. While the...

Manual capacity planning using Excel is costing you money. Every day that you delay adopting an automated capacity planning solution will result in operational, financial and reputational costs. Can you afford to wait? While Excel is a powerful tool with a wide range of capabilities, here are 8 reasons why it may not be the best option for capacity planning for your contact center: 1. Lack of Automation Excel requires manual data entry and updates, which can lead to hu

If you’ve been following the rapid advances in AI, you’ve probably heard about how chatbots and automated systems are bound to wipe out...

Unlock the keys to contact center success with Cinareo’s latest thought leadership paper, Navigating Contact Center Success: The Strategic Imperative of Effective Capacity Planning by Dr. Mark Alpern . Dive into the critical importance of disciplined and iterative capacity planning across short-, medium-, and long-term horizons, and discover how data granularity, statistical accuracy, and error measures shape effective planning strategies. Explore the multifaceted benefits

Capacity management is crucial for contact centers for optimizing resources to meet work volumes while minimizing operating costs.

It is the norm for call centres to have a goal of answering 80% of their calls in 20 seconds. Are there benefits to shortening or perhaps...