Clay Combs Email & Phone Number

Four years in Workforce Management gave me a feeling for what better, more timely data and analytics could do for a large operation. So when the opportunity arose to devote all my energies to a smaller team of high performers, I jumped at the chance. We support both the Workforce Management and Vendor Management sides of the house with everything from app development and process automation to Power BI visualizations and statistical analysis of large datasets. As we mature the team and our platforms, we expect transformative effects as we drive an ever-greater share of our decisions with data and insights gleaned from our analyses.

It takes a village to manage a million calls to 1-800-GOFEDEX each week, and that village is Workforce Management. My four manager teams handle the planning, scheduling, and intraday management of the call center, which is actually a constellation of at-home representatives and brick-and-mortar operations around the country and the world.

After 7 years in Fraud and Security Controls, I'm now in the process of building a new analytics group in Customer Services. We'll be taking as much data as we can find, asking as many questions as we can imagine, and letting it tell us what our customers need from us and how we can give that to them in ever more timely ways. That should keep us occupied for a while...

As a charter member of TechConnect's Fraud Remediation and Analytics Group (FRAG), I wear a number of hats, but most of the time I am analyzing data about customers and shipping that point to risky behavior. This works involves querying several back-end databases from TeraData to SQL Server to Oracle to MySQL; analyzing the results with everything from Excel to SAS to hand-written stored procedures; automating these processes with corporate scheduling tools and SQL Server packages; and presenting the results via the usual suspects (Office apps) as well as dynamic tools that output to Web pages. The heart of the work is the analysis part, the goal of which is to create ever-better algorithms for detecting anomalies.If you're not asleep yet, the bad news is that you're a Techie or a Friend of Techie. The good news is that the early 21st century is your time.

Techsentric is... Clay Combs, a one-man shop handling all aspects of Web site development, including database design. I also have several years' experience (since 2003) in Oracle Transportation Management, specializing in branding and customization. I also do non-technical work, including training, grant writing, and copy editing, mostly in the not-for-profit sector.

With Tsol, I fill the niche as point person for branding and customizations. My expertise covers XSL modifications for outbound transmissions (including tenders) and screens (including screens otherwise untouchable via Manager Layouts).I represented Tsol at the first annual OTM SIG conference in Philadelphia, where my topic "Guerilla Branding" was voted runner-up in the Most Valuable Presentation sweepstakes--second only to the keynote address from Oracle themselves. I will be reprising the talk in June 2009 at the 2nd conference.