A start-up company had developed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to take a picture of a store receipt and upload the image to the company’s system for storing and managing the receipts. The client’s system uses recognition technology to capture information from the receipts allowing shoppers to easily search and retrieve the receipts. Shoppers no longer had to keep paper receipts and could retrieve them instantly for returns and promotions. Shoppers using the app also received store coupons and other promotions sent directly to their smartphones by the retail stores.
Axion’s job was to verify the accuracy and completeness of the information being uploaded to the system. The receipts would not be visible to the shoppers until such verification had been completed, and the client required that verification be completed within 30 minutes of the receipt being uploaded. Furthermore, Axion was required to perform verification 365 days a year for 20 hours each day.
In order to staff the job properly, shopper traffic patterns had to be identified by day of the week, hour of the day, and week of the month, for each month. Using this information, Axion developed a computer model to determine how many staff members were needed for each of five 4-hour shifts for each day of the week.
During times of excessively high shopper traffic staffing was periodically insufficient, especially for the period between Black Friday (the day following Thanksgiving) and the week following Christmas. In those cases “reinforcements” were called into action in order to avoid or reduce an unexpected backlog. In no case was a backlog ever carried over to the following day.
