TEAM Zarate Tarrani Notes From the Field

The best things in life are free. Lester Bromley, who created a web site to help call center professionals, provides some useful, free tools for planning and staff forecasting. The tools are:

• Erlang for Excel, which is a Microsoft Excel add-in that comes in Excel 97 and Excel 95 versions.
• The Switch, which is a skill based routing simulator. It emulates a modern ACD telephone switch with skill based routing allowing you to test various permutations in the way that your switch and agents are setup. TheSwitch will show just what performance you can expect.
• Call Center Calculator that is a Windows based planning and forecasting tool. Enter the basic parameters of service level required, numbers and durations of calls and Call Center Calculator will show you how many agents are required and just what performance you can expect.

Another set of free resources is available from SPOCE Project Management Limited. The resources are for the UK project management standard called PRINCE2 (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment version 2), which in my opinion is superior in many ways to the US standard that is embodied in the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge). The resources are: PRINCE2 CBT, which fully describes the PRINCE2 approach to project management and a risk checklist spreadsheet for Microsoft Excel. If you're not familiar with PRINCE2 take the time to read the Overview of the PRINCE2 Method.