ClickSoftware Ships ClickRoster Version 8.1

ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. announced recently immediate relief for human resource departments and department heads tasked with scheduling shift-based labor forces, with its latest innovation, ClickRoster version 8.1. The leading provider of workforce management and service optimization solutions, now delivers a highly sophisticated solution for shift planning and management to strike the perfect balance between staffing levels needed to serve customers, manage labor costs, and employee preferences.

For organizations that rely on shift-based workforces such as those in the public sector and security, transportation, healthcare, contact centers, telecom, retail and utilities, ClickRoster eliminates the messy, complex and often unsatisfactory approach to planning and staffing shifts. Its powerful algorithms and simulation capabilities quickly and effectively take into account numerous factors, including rules and regulations, expected demand, cost, employee working preferences; and the need to balance undesirable shifts to create shift rosters aligned with strategic business goals.

With this new addition to its ServiceOptimization Suite, ClickSoftware significantly expands its ability to meet today's most pressing workforce management challenges – where temporary employees represent an estimated 25 percent of the workforce and more and more employees working from home. Combining advanced technology and field-tested experience in workforce optimization, ClickSoftware delivers the market's most comprehensive portfolio for managing an organization's entire workforce across all business lines and departments. Trusted by hundreds of organizations around the world, ClickSoftware provides a single source to answer the two most challenging questions related to managing service workforces:

• Who works when?
• Who does what?

With ClickSoftware's complete offerings organizations can scale up – and down – to meet demand without sacrificing service; deploy employees with the right skill levels to get the job done right the first time; and control labor costs.

"Shift planning and its on-going management is a critical step in the service decision making chain. Having the right staffing levels- quantities and mix- for each shift across all company locations has significant business impact – from lost revenue when customers walk out the door to spiraling labor costs driven by overstaffing," said Moshe BenBassat, Chairman and CEO of ClickSoftware. "Getting it right requires more than spreadsheets and that's what our solutions are all about: automatic generation of optimized shifts throughout the organization. Not only planning the shifts but also managing changes and surprises before and during the day of service. Furthermore, our products also enable the creation of new shift patterns to minimize both over-staffing as well as under-staffing."

Built on ClickSoftware's extensive experience in creating solutions that meet the unique challenges of managing service workforces, ClickRoster improves the cost-effectiveness of shift schedules with a highly flexible model that:

• Integrates demand forecasts to ensure the correct staffing – based on time, location and skill.
• Automatically creates the optimal shift schedule, including balancing conflicting objectives and building in breaks.
• Collects and considers employee preferences.
• Expresses numerous of working rules and regulations – and a mechanism to relax them.
• Analyzes the roster quality, identifies potential issues and what's driving them for better decision making around trade-offs.
• Supports the exploration of new shift patterns.

Available directly from ClickSoftware and from its reseller partners - including SAP - ClickRoster offers flexible and affordable pricing options to meet a wide range of shift scheduling complexities – from departmental levels to enterprise-wide.

For more information, visit www.clicksoftware.com.

SOURCE: ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd.