First Data Corporation - Work Force Planning Best Practice Review

First Data Corporation (First Data) is a global technology leader in information commerce serving more than 5.4 million merchant locations, more than 2,000 card issuers and their customers and millions of consumers worldwide. Its solutions offer a fast, secure and reliable means for businesses and consumers to buy goods and services using virtually any form of payment.  From large financial institutions to small corner stores, First Data supports its customers by helping them process and understand the intelligence behind transactions.

First data's outsourced service provision includes the delivery of front and back office customer service, sales, collections and fraud operations on behalf of major international credit and debit card providers.  In 2006 First Data commissioned an independent assessment of its multi client Resource Planning function as part of a wider review of its multi-site operating model.

Accord completed a robust assessment of First Data's existing forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, intraday, real time adherence and data management processes.  It assessed First Data's performance against industry recognised Work Force Planning (WFP) disciplines and identified and quantified the impact of the performance gap.

In addition to the improved efficiency and effectiveness of the WFP team itself, Accord identified process improvements to the value of £960k per annum and developed a structured programme of change, aligned to First Data's evolving multi-site model to achieve the benefits.

Accord was subsequently retained to assist First Data in the implementation of the multi-site environment.