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March 29, 2021: opcyc expands HomeOffice feature for opcycWFM

March 29, 2021

opcyc expands HomeOffice feature for opcycWFM

What already started before the turn of the year is now being consistently continued as announced: opcyc is expanding its HomeOffice planning and control feature for opcycWFM.

The first stage of the feature has already been very well received by opcyc customers. Building on the basic functions, it will now be possible to assign conditions to employees for the status "HomeOffice" for automatic planning and control. In addition to the skill, which can also be assigned with corresponding HomeOffice parameters, opcycWFM now takes these conditions into account during planning. The now multi-dimensional and automatic consideration of the parameters thus ensures support even in more complex situations.

In addition, with the extension, opcycWFM consistently focuses on the inclusion of HomeOffice functionalities in the employee portal myOPCYC. From now on, for example, employees can not only see their plan status in relation to HomeOffice, but also edit it themselves with the appropriate activation. "Especially in terms of self-organisation, the scheduling of HomeOffice is comparatively demanding," says Ender Tezel, member of the opcyc management board, adding: "As far as the combination of automation and individual but controlled intervention options is concerned, our customers may also rely on our operational understanding when it comes to planning and controlling HomeOffice."

"The pandemic is one thing, but with the current level of feature opcycWFM will continue to enable home office working as an integrated and natural part of customer service planning and control processes," says Ralf Thomas, opcyc's Managing Director.

The advanced solution has been delivered since the end of March. The home office feature will be continuously developed and is an integral part of the opcycWFM suite.

Customers of opcycWFM can access another tutorial [in german language] on how to use the new home office functions at www.opcyc.de in the customer area.

About opcyc GmbH:

opcyc GmbH, founded in 2011, offers one of the most powerful systems for planning and controlling customer service centres with its software 'opcycWFM', developed from operational practice. opcycWFM supports all workforce management processes: Forecasting, shift and deployment planning, operational control, payroll-ready time management, reporting and analysis.

With opcycWFM, opcyc stands for the operative, configurable and affordable workforce management with personnel administration and time management for customer service centers of all sizes. Among opcyc's customers are banks, customer service and eCommerce service providers, insurance companies, technology, event and tourism companies, energy providers.

March 15, 20211: opcyc with economic momentum into the future

March 15, 2021

opcyc with economic momentum into the future

opcyc is continuing the successful path it began in mid-2018 in 2020 and can draw a very positive balance. At first glance, the turnover of EUR 1.2 million is 6% lower than in 2019, but it is worth taking a second look. While 2019 still included one-off revenues of around EUR 300,000 from the sale of licences, the switch to rental licences will take full effect in 2020. All new customers are included in the monthly revenue with this licence model. Adjusting the previous year's revenues accordingly, opcyc grew by approximately 21% in real terms in 2020 compared to 2019. Customers also benefit from the changeover and the associated ongoing development of the software, without having to wait for multi-year leaps in the further development of the software. In return, opcyc no longer capitalises own work as an intangible asset since 2020. Together with the residual amortisation that expires in 2021, EBITDA and EBIT will thus almost equalise from 2022 onwards. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rose in 2020 from +0.125 million (2019) to +0.356 million EUR, an increase of approximately 285%. At EUR 0.557 million, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) made 2020 once again the most successful year in the company's history.

Opcyc can also present a broad cross on the balance sheet. The loan liabilities built up by the old shareholders could be fully repaid from own funds in 2020, so that the company is more than equipped for future growth and further developments.

"The conversion of the licensing model was also a financial tour de force, but the company and our customers benefit equally from it," says opcyc Managing Director Ralf Thomas, "In many cases, such a conversion is used to make software more expensive. That has not been our approach. opcyc offers the affordable WFM solution on the market. With the rental licence model, we want to face the associated responsibility to continuously develop the software and our customers really appreciate that."

With modules such as opcycDATA - the DataWareHouse to opcycWFM -, opcycDOCS - the first true back-office control -, opcycJOIN - the first collaborative WFM - and the future-oriented HomeOffice feature, opcyc was once again able to demonstrate its operational capabilities in an impressive and customer-oriented manner. Ralf Thomas comments: "A WFM is not an app. Colourful is not our claim. Our claim is to offer our customers user-friendly solution-oriented business software, which you can clearly and daily feel our conceptual operational experience and its consistently benefit-oriented implementation in opcycWFM compared to our competition."

opcyc will use the solid economic basis to place its WFM suite at the centre of all customer service software tools used by customers over the next 2 years. Planning and control processes at all levels of customer service require data and mechanisms from the increasingly central WFM. opcycWFM will thus increasingly become the active data-, process- and event-hub of customer service in the future. Ralf Thomas comments: "Routing customer communication in a way that makes sense in terms of content and economy without ongoing interaction with the WFM is becoming increasingly inconceivable. And if the corresponding personnel-intensive processes have to converge somewhere, it is in WFM. In the future, processes from controlling, HR, QM and administration will also be served, planned and initiated more and more from the WFM. We are moving opcycWFM to the centre of the customer communication platforms and expanding it into a customer engagement solution that will ensure our customers' competitiveness in customer service in the future."

About opcyc GmbH:

opcyc GmbH, founded in 2011, offers one of the most powerful systems for planning and controlling customer service centres with its software 'opcycWFM', developed from operational practice. opcycWFM supports all workforce management processes: Forecasting, shift and deployment planning, operational control, payroll-ready time management, reporting and analysis.

With opcycWFM, opcyc stands for the operative, configurable and affordable workforce management with personnel administration and time management for customer service centers of all sizes. Among opcyc's customers are banks, customer service and eCommerce service providers, insurance companies, technology, event and tourism companies, energy providers.

January 12, 2021: opcycWFM can do home office

January 12, 2021

opcyc can do home office

opcycWFM can do home office! This is a good way to describe the new feature for opcycWFM. Starting before the turn of the year, opcyc has now delivered the first development stage of the new feature to its customers of the latest opcycWFM platform.

Employees can, should or must work in a home office, but certain others cannot. Activities may or may not be processed in the home office because certain technologies are only available at the location. Works agreements, e.g. on proportional home office distribution, must be taken into account. "When you get into the topic of home office from a WFM point of view, you quickly realise how complex it actually is. We want to offer our customers a solution that is not only suitable for Corona-adhoc, but can also be used sensibly in the new normal. In this respect, the feature that has now been delivered is only the first step. In the current version, we fulfil the basic requirements of our customers. We enable them to plan their employees for home office activities and to get a meaningful overview of them," says Ender Tezel, Head of Customer Management at opcyc and member of the Executive Board. Tezel adds two practical use cases to this: "A replanning may not suddenly assign a task to an employee in the home office that cannot be processed in the home office. And what actually happens to a carpool that can be planned with a modern WFM if the driver has a home office next Tuesday? Which feature has priority and when?"

In a next step, the new feature will be further developed with complex rotation models in mind and the existing planning logics will be brought into line with it in a configurable way.

"Instead of very quickly tinkering with home office scheduling tools as early as summer 2020, our claim to be the operational WFM solution on the market was more important to us," Ralf Thomas, Managing Director at opcyc, explains the timeline for the implementation of this feature and continues, "Extremely complex operational processes are attached to scheduling into the home office and customers are also only slowly developing a kind of standard for this from previous pandemic experiences. With the first stage of the home office feature, opcycWFM customers are being picked up on their basic requirements and usage is already showing our accuracy in implementation."

The advanced solution will be delivered at the end of Q1 2021. The home office feature is now an integral part of the opcycWFM suite.

A tutorial [in german language] on how to use the home office feature is available to opcycWFM customers in the customer area.

About opcyc GmbH:

opcyc GmbH, founded in 2011, offers one of the most powerful systems for planning and controlling customer service centres with its software 'opcycWFM', developed from operational practice. opcycWFM supports all workforce management processes: Forecasting, shift and deployment planning, operational control, payroll-ready time management, reporting and analysis.

With opcycWFM, opcyc stands for the operative, configurable and affordable workforce management with personnel administration and time management for customer service centers of all sizes. Among opcyc's customers are banks, customer service and eCommerce service providers, insurance companies, technology, event and tourism companies, energy providers.

September 16, 2020: opcyc equips opcycWFM with important GDPR feature

opcyc equips opcycWFM with important GDPR feature

The latest platform of opcycWFM has been available since the beginning of 2020 and since then, opcyc customers have also taken big steps forward. After the back office module opcycDOCS and the data warehouse module opcycDATA, opcyc now equips its WFM suite with additional features.

The first one is the new DSGVO feature. All personal data can thus remain within opcycWFM, but will be irreversibly anonymised.  Both a pre-settable period of between 0 and 120 months for all departures and the immediate anonymisation of individual departures can be mapped in an audit-proof manner. opcycWFM thus relieves its customers of a large operational burden and still ensures the necessary data continuity. "All WFM systems are in a balancing act between legal department and operations. With regard to the GDPR, nobody has solved this so far," says Ralf Thomas, Managing Director of opcyc GmbH.

The head of customer management at opcyc and member of the management board, Ender Tezel, explains this: "On the one hand, employees who have left the company have a right to have their personal data deleted; on the other hand, this data must not simply be omitted for forecasts, capacity planning, production, reporting in WFM. As a provider of a WFM suite, it is contractually wonderful to be able to evade this responsibility. This may reassure the legal departments, but is counterproductive for management and operations. It was important for us to do justice to both. We are happy to substantiate our claim to be the most operational WFM suite".

The new GDPR feature will be rolled out immediately and is available to all customers of the latest platform from opcyc at no extra cost. "Such a GDPR feature is more complex in terms of content than one might think at first due to the countless references to the relevant data. But our customers should not once, but again and again recognise that opcyc meets the requirements of the operative market leader", Thomas explains the motivation for the new GDPR feature in opcycWFM.

About opcyc GmbH:

opcyc GmbH, founded in 2011, laid the foundation for the WFM suite back in 2004 under the influence of one of the leading German customer service providers. With the software opcycWFM, which was developed out of the operational practice, opcyc offers one of the most powerful systems for planning and controlling of customer service centers. opcycWFM supports all workforce management processes: Forecast, shift and resource planning, operational control, time management, reporting and analysis. With the opcycDOCS module, opcyc also makes the first operative back office control possible.

With opcycWFM, opcyc stands for the operative, configurable and affordable workforce management with personnel administration and time management for customer service centers of all sizes. Among opcyc's customers are banks, customer service and eCommerce service providers, insurance companies, technology, event and tourism companies, energy providers.

June 4, 2020: opcyc underpins the claim of the operational WFM solution: competitive advantages in one fell swoop

June 4, 2020

opcyc underpins the claim of the operational WFM solution: competitive advantages in one fell swoop

The operative, configurable and affordable WFM solution with personnel administration and time management. Since the change of shareholders in the middle of 2018 and the takeover of the management by operationally very experienced management, opcycWFM is facing up to exactly this demand. "The change of the name to opcyc, i.e. 'op' as in Operations and 'cyc' as in cycle, was only a small part of the consistent implementation of a fundamentally new company orientation", says Ralf Thomas, Managing Director of opcyc. "With opcycWFM we want to clearly differentiate ourselves from the competition, whose solutions were all developed on the green table". Ender Tezel, Head of Key Account Management and member of the management adds "Building up know-how takes far too long for a software provider in a special segment. Where others try to build up the know-how, we have it."

Already at the beginning of March opcyc had successfully rolled out the new module opcycDOCS. With the first real back office planning and control on the market, opcyc again sets itself apart from the competition with its claim to operational market leadership. All WFM tools tacitly neglect the fact that the processing times of documents are very different and combine documents with processing times of 3 minutes with those of 30 minutes in planning and control. And unlike with calls, the "leave it at home" component can and must be considered. While a "patient" call cannot be assigned a different position in the waiting loop by efficient means, this is basically possible with documents. opcyc combines these things in the new module opcycDOCS. "The results are immediately impressive", explains Ender Tezel, "The new approach to document planning and control with opcycDOCS immediately leads to improvements and deals with the operational challenges of daily business much more accurately than anything we know".

Independent of this, opcyc has now opened a tutorial series for its existing customers two weeks ago. The videos help opcyc's customers to use the very powerful capabilities of the opcycWFM suite for the implementation of concrete operational issues. Again, the most important benefit for opcyc is the operational benefit. "It is not about being cool or glossy. We make a business software and it has to understand the customer's business, very close! Our customers are simply interested in content and it has to be right," Ralf Thomas positions himself clearly. Ender Tezel adds: "Feedback from our customers, that they use one or the other trick of the presented features, is just as important to us as the feedback that our customers had immediate operational benefits after the tutorial".

But that's not all, because opcyc is now expanding its operational advantage step by step.

With opcycDATA, opcyc has now completed the DataWareHouse module for opcycWFM and made it available. opcycWFM requires extensive data for its operations and also continuously produces new data itself. All these data are stored in the opcycWFM databases and are available for reporting and Excel exports. opcycDATA now enables direct access to these data sets. "With opcycDATA, our customers can access the opcycWFM data completely freely via views, BI tools or other third-party software," explains Ralf Thomas the approach of opcycDATA. With opcycDATA, the use and further processing of the data is now completely left to the customers. Ender Tezel, himself a long-time manager on the user side, underlines the benefits: "Whether special reports, e.g. including other data sources, are to be created from the data, or whether the data is to be used for your own HR or payroll programs, or whether selected groups of people are to be provided with data prepared using BI tools such as Tableau, Qlik, Microsoft Power BI etc. ... all this is now possible with opcycDATA.  With the new module, opcyc focuses on larger units and organisations that want to use the extensive reporting and data export capabilities of opcycWFM. Tezel points out an interesting aspect: "Even frequently requested applications are now possible with opcycDATA. Thus, customers of several customer service centres can use the possibility of consolidated reporting. On the other hand, service providers have the possibility to make a lot of individual customer reports available. And finally, opcycDATA makes any combination of data possible for all customers, which helps to make completely new evaluations.

With the two modules opcycDOCS and opcycDATA, opcyc impressively substantiates its claim to the leading position as the most operational WFM solution on the market and offers its users significant competitive advantages.

About opcyc GmbH:

opcyc GmbH, founded in 2011, laid the foundation for the WFM suite back in 2004 under the influence of one of the leading German customer service providers. With the software opcycWFM, which was developed out of the operational practice, opcyc offers one of the most powerful systems for planning and controlling of customer service centers. opcycWFM supports all workforce management processes: Forecast, shift and resource planning, operational control, time management, reporting and analysis. With the opcycDOCS module, opcyc also makes the first operative back office control possible.

With opcycWFM, opcyc stands for the operative, configurable and affordable workforce management with personnel administration and time management for customer service centers of all sizes. Among opcyc's customers are banks, customer service and eCommerce service providers, insurance companies, technology, event and tourism companies, energy providers.

April 8, 2020: opcyc draws first full-year balance sheet: Best year in company history

April 8, 2020

opcyc draws first full-year balance sheet: Best year in company history

opcyc can draw a consistently positive annual balance for 2019. In 2019, 11 new customers were acquired. Revenues increased by 26% to EUR 1.275 m. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) adjusted for a debt waiver rose from EUR -0.783 million (2018) to EUR +0.125 million (2019), an increase of more than EUR 0.9 million. Even with an adjusted EUR 0.524 million, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) make 2019 the most successful year in the company's history.

As of August 2018, catinedo AG had acquired 100% of the company from mVISE AG (WKN 620458) under the name Just Intelligence GmbH and immediately started restructuring the company into today's opcyc GmbH. For 12 years, catinedo AG has been implementing success-based projects for the strategic and operational optimization of customer service. With opcycWFM, a WorkForceManagement suite, opcyc provides the software for planning and controlling customer service.

"It is precisely these combined competencies that make up the clout of the new opcyc GmbH. opcycWFM is the only WFM suite on the market that originates from the operative and not from the green table and is consequently further developed in this way", says catinedo CEO and opcyc managing director Ralf Thomas, "Our customers appreciate this very much and our new customers notice right from the start that they are well understood".

The acquisition of new customers could already be put on a new footing from Q4/2018 on and could be given a new and more professional "tone". "Our competition sells a software. We are selling the possibility, with the help of our software, to optimize the operational side of the business, taking the employees with us. We ourselves have many years of experience from responsible positions in operational customer service," says Ender Tezel, Head of Key Account Management and member of the management board of opcyc GmbH since autumn 2018, "and we have been combining this with opcyc's excellent development capacities for a year now.

The number of new customers is just one of the parameters for success. Thanks to the strategic adjustments in sales, the sales cycle itself has now been reduced to less than 6 months and thus halved.

The consistent restructuring in the software development itself is also largely responsible for the success. opcycWFM itself has been further developed and has grown. "The company lacked a strategy for the software. Further development on demand is no strategy." Thus, the employee portal myOPCYC could be adapted to the market needs and has been rolled out successfully since the beginning of 2019. With the new module opcycDOCS, opcyc has completed the world's first real back office planning and control system in just one year and with opcycDATA, opcyc's own DWH, opcyc has scored the next direct hit. Ralf Thomas comments: "In addition to the fact that we offer the affordable and configurable WFM suite, it is the conceptual operational ideas and their consistent user-oriented implementation by our development team that differentiates us significantly from the competition".

Parallel to the restructuring of content, the strategic reorientation of the company as such was also achieved. By changing the licensing model for all new contracts to exclusively rental licenses and turning away from customer adjustments that did not lead to the desired results, opcyc has already successfully completed the most noticeable sub-project. Ender Tezel comments: "Customizing is very costly for the customers, not very profitable for us and very maintenance-intensive for everyone.

For the future years, opcyc was also able to completely leave behind all the financially burdensome undesirable developments of the past few years through restructuring measures and also put itself on a very solid and also financial market-suitable foundation with an excellent outlook in all economic matters.

About opcyc GmbH:

opcyc GmbH, founded in 2011, laid the foundation for the WFM suite back in 2004 under the influence of one of Germany's leading customer service providers. With the software opcycWFM, which was developed out of the operational practice, opcyc offers one of the most powerful systems for planning and controlling of customer service centers. opcycWFM supports all workforce management processes: Forecast, shift and resource planning, operational control, time management, reporting and analysis. With the opcycDOCS module, opcyc also makes the first operative back office control possible.

With opcycWFM, opcyc stands for the operative, configurable and affordable workforce management with personnel administration and time management for customer service centers of all sizes. Among opcyc's customers are banks, customer service and eCommerce service providers, insurance companies, technology, event and tourism companies, energy providers.

About catinedo AG:

catinedo AG was founded in 2007 and has been committed to performance-based restructuring consulting and support from the very beginning. In the area of customer service, catinedo has proven in online sanitary trade, in the automotive industry, energy supply, telecommunication and in the field of tour operators that this form of consulting is not only well received but also results-oriented and goal-oriented for the customers. catinedo stands for responsible consulting and implementation in equal measure and thus closes a real value gap for its clients depending on success.

More information is available at: https://www.catinedo.de

March 28, 2020: opcyc at the CCW 2020 from 02 - 04 March 2020 in Berlin

February 1, 2020 / March 28, 2020

opcyc at the CCW 2020 from 02 - 04 March 2020 in Berlin

Workforce Management (WFM) is currently on everyone's lips again as a buzzword and opcyc GmbH has once again brought it to life. With opcycWFM, the operative, configurable and affordable WFM suite with personnel administration and time management will be presented at CCW 2020. As the only software in this area not developed on the green table, opcyc has already earned the reputation of the operational WFM solution in recent years. The configurability has been further extended and the new price structure allows the statement: affordable WFM suite!

From personnel administration to forecasting, planning, controlling, intraday management, a sophisticated absence management system and the preparation of ready-to-use data, opcycWFM offers an integrated mapping of the operational cycle of a customer service centre. op wie Operation cyc wie Cycle, opcycWFM meets this requirement alone with its extremely high configurability. Without time-consuming and costly customising, centres ranging in size from around 50 agents to international corporations can map the requirements of their own organisation. With myOPCYC, we have also succeeded in creating an employee portal that meets the latest requirements and yet is functionally linked to opcycWFM in a function-oriented and unplayful manner.

The opcycDOCS module will be presented brand new at the CCW 2020. For the first time, it has been possible to seamlessly integrate real back office planning and control into a WFM suite. Compared to previous solutions in which the logic for synchronous communication (calls) for back office tasks was more or less bent, opcycDOCS offers the possibility to take into account the needs of asynchronous communication. A document can possibly be left lying around and another one processed first. This simple insight has highly complex effects that cannot be adequately considered in today's customer service world. With opcycDOCS this is possible!

Visitors can get a live insight into opcycWFM at opcyc's booth G18 in hall 3.

For those who prefer a short, concise introduction, opcyc can also be seen in the Demo Forum at the CCW 2020: 02.03.2020 11.40, 03.03.2020 14.30, 04.03.2020 9.30.