Abstract: The present invention provides a workforce requirements management system and method that determines future demand for service related transactions or activity and optimizes the planning of workforce to meet the future demand. Initially, the workforce requirements management system reviews historical data regarding transaction volume and service activity to determine the future demand for such transactions or service activities. The historical data may come from a conventional enterprise resource planning application and/or include demographic data and/or economic indicators. The workforce requirements management system can optimize a forecast by isolating certain variance factors and refining the forecast accordingly. A forecast can also be optimized by estimating transaction times and correlating variance factors with estimated transactions times. Additionally, the workforce requirements management system can optimize the forecast based on the queuing model employed for the particular service.