This week’s version of Finovate International options an interview with Karen Elliott, CEO and Co-Founding father of Cinareo Options.
Headquartered in Ontario, Canada and based in 2022, Cinareo Options enhances workforce administration platforms, serving to them streamline contact middle operations and mitigate danger by enabling exact useful resource allocation and decision-making that’s pushed by information.
Cinareo made its Finovate debut earlier this yr at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, demonstrating how its SaaS answer offers scenario-based capability planning for each contact middle brokers and assist employees. The corporate’s know-how leverages industry-recognized statistical fashions and simulations to assist companies meet buyer calls for in addition to important monetary KPIs.
We caught up with Karen Elliott not too long ago to study extra concerning the area of capability planning, the function of enabling applied sciences like AI, and the way Cinareo Options helps contact facilities be sure that the best particular person with the best expertise is in the best place on the proper time.
What function does capability planning have in workforce administration? What makes it difficult and the way does Cinareo assist firms higher meet these challenges?
Karen Elliott: Capability planning is the strategic spine of workforce administration. It determines how many individuals you want with the best expertise, in the best place, on the proper time, to satisfy service ranges with out overspending on labor. Involved facilities, capability planning sits upstream of scheduling—it makes use of historic information, forecasts, and enterprise assumptions to set headcount and finances necessities weeks, months, and even years upfront. Efficient planning ensures buyer demand is met effectively and profitably.
The problem is that unpredictable demand, scattered information, and outdated instruments make planning a relentless problem. Most organizations resort to utilizing Excel spreadsheets and spend hours and even days of handbook labor and embedded formulation to attempt to determine the optimum plan. Cinareo streamlines the method by ingesting your information and enabling speedy “what-if” situation modeling and multi-skilling simulation to create optimized plans for each brokers and assist employees with the press of a button.
Not solely does Cinareo deal with planning with ease, however the platform additionally creates monetary budgets and recruitment and coaching plans so you already know who to rent, and when, to make sure you meet your service targets.
Who’re Cinareo’s main prospects? How do you attain them?
Elliott: Cinareo is an industry-agnostic platform for all contact facilities. We now have prospects worldwide in monetary establishments, telecom, journey, utilities, retail, and even authorities. We accomplice with CCaaS and WFM options to combine instantly into their platforms in order that information can move seamlessly into Cinareo. Any group with variable demand, labor-intensive operations and repair or value targets would get enormous advantages from utilizing a platform like Cinareo.
We now have a large community of referral brokers and ISV companions that advocate Cinareo to their shoppers after they see a transparent want. Cinareo provides webinars and month-to-month product showcases to exhibit the facility behind the platform—or may even organize customized demos and proof of ideas to ensure potential prospects really perceive the advantages of a contemporary planning platform like Cinareo.
What in your background led you to pursue innovation on this area?
Elliott: I spent 12 years on the IBM Innovation Heart earlier in my profession throughout the Person Expertise group with a key deal with user-centric software program options. After leaving IBM, I co-founded an expert consulting agency that specialised involved middle optimization that helped organizations enhance their individuals, processes, know-how, and information.
Years of consulting highlighted an enormous hole available in the market in regard to capability planning. We labored with numerous non-public and public sector organizations that may construct these advanced spreadsheets to find out their optimum staffing and we determined there wanted to be a greater approach, so we created Cinareo. It was constructed to enhance any CCaaS or WFM platform available in the market and combine into no matter was the client’s platform of selection. If prospects swap platforms, they’ll take Cinareo with them—having a conveyable, agnostic answer was key to the design.
One other essential objective was designing a platform that was easy and intuitive based mostly on years of expertise in user-centric design. We even have our prospects as energetic members of the planning and design of the answer—this ensures that all the things we construct is targeted on the wants and necessities of the individuals utilizing the software program.
What function do enabling applied sciences like AI play in growing modern workforce administration options?
Elliott: Capability planning stays related involved facilities even when AI is concerned, and it may tackle a distinct however essential function in optimizing the general efficiency. Whereas AI can now deal with routine queries or easy updates, the truth is far more advanced. Cinareo helps decide the correct mix of AI-driven processes and human sources to satisfy the demand effectively. Our prospects are modelling their operations utilizing Cinareo to find out the perfect stability of human brokers vs bot and the ROI on an funding in AI as effectively.
Incorporating AI into Cinareo is a given—we’re already full steam forward in our strategic plans to make sure that AI-driven capability planning could make a dramatic distinction. However true innovation in buyer assist isn’t about changing the individuals—it’s about giving individuals the flexibility to work quicker and smarter – and we’re doing that with Cinareo.
You lately launched Versatile Month-to-month Planning. What’s the worth proposition with this new providing?
Elliott: We initially provided Cinareo as a strategic, long-term capability planning platform the place customers may construct 12-, 24- or 36-month plans. Nonetheless, as we continued to reinforce Cinareo, our prospects had been telling us they wished extra flexibility of their planning, so we constructed within the functionality to do weekly planning as much as 52 weeks to ensure that contact facilities to create tactical plans over the quick or medium time period.
To proceed to increase on Cinareo’s versatile platform, we not too long ago launched extra flexibility into our month-to-month planning as effectively, so prospects can construct a plan for any variety of months as much as 3 years upfront. These enhancements had been all pushed by the wants of our shoppers since our objective is to have our software program replicate “the voice of the client” and really be user-centric.
You made your Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this yr. How was the expertise?
Elliott: We had a unbelievable debut at FinovateSpring! We generated a number of nice curiosity within the answer from the demo we supplied. Previous to FinovateSpring, we had not too long ago began onboarding extra fintech shoppers and observed an uptick in curiosity from banks, credit score unions, and insurance coverage companies searching for an answer like Cinareo. We thought FinovateSpring can be an important alternative to demo Cinareo to a wider viewers and get fintech firms to see the realm of the doable with a contemporary capability planning answer. There may be such a transparent want on this sector for an answer that won’t solely enhance CX and EX, but additionally present essential KPIs like the associated fee per contact to assist with monetary administration.
What can we sit up for seeing from Cinareo within the months to come back?
Elliott: We’re excited over among the new options which are set to launch within the months to come back—now we have been scaling up considerably to satisfy buyer demand. A pair new options which are quickly to be launched are multi-lingual performance along with the flexibility to match a plan together with your historic information in a fast and straightforward approach. We will likely be providing our shoppers a approach to see how their plan carried out in opposition to their actuals in each efficiency and staffing—right down to the 15-minute interval stage. This new characteristic will assist our prospects perceive traits and patterns and have the ability to enhance their planning shifting ahead.
That’s simply the tip of the iceberg—now we have so many extra thrilling issues deliberate over the following whereas. We’d love to extend our buyer base to have much more voices driving the way forward for our software program! If you wish to see how Cinareo can resolve your capability planning challenges, be happy to contact us.
Right here is our have a look at fintech innovation world wide.
Center East and Northern Africa
Whish Cash groups up with Mastercard to allow cross-border funds to Lebanon.
Financial institution of Algeria joined the Pan-African Cost and Settlement System (PAPSS) launched by the African Export-Import Financial institution (Afreximbank).
Qatar-based AlRayan Financial institution went stay with Finastra Company Channels.
Central and Southern Asia
India celebrated Nationwide Fintech Day earlier this week.
Ukrainian fintech Fintech Farm launched its cellular banking service Tezbank in Uzbekistan.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) introduced plans to unveil new Info Techniques Audit Requirements to reinforce audit practices for startups, fintechs, and e-commerce firms.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazil-based digital monetary providers platform Nubank launched Armando Herrera as new CEO of its Mexican operations.
Uruguayan cross-border fee platform dLocal teamed up with cross-border market platform Tiendamia.
Puero Rico-based transaction processor and fintech EVERTEC introduced plans to accumulate a controlling stake in Brazilian fintech vendor Tecnobank.
Asia-Pacific
Japanese fintech JPYC introduced plans to launch the primary yen-denominated stablecoin this fall.
Thailand unveiled a brand new pilot program to allow guests to transform cryptocurrencies into the native Thai Baht to facilitate purchases.
New Zealand-based small enterprise administration platform Xero companions with UAE-based Wio Financial institution PJSC.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Digital funds supplier Peach Funds launched real-time clearance (RTC) payouts for retailers on its platform in South Africa.
South African fintech Road Pockets raised $350,000 in new funding.
African enterprise financial institution Absa Enterprise Banking chosen Community Worldwide as its digital funds know-how accomplice.
Central and Jap Europe
OYAK ANKER Financial institution GmbH migrated its core banking programs to Berlin, Germany-based Mambu’s platform.
Turkish funding platform Midas raised $80 million in Collection B funding.
Disruption Banking seemed on the rising recognition of crypto in Lithuania.
Picture by Derek Sutton on Unsplash
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