Finovate Global: Workforce Management and Capacity Planning with Cinareo Solutions’ Karen Elliott

Finovate Global: Workforce Management and Capacity Planning with Cinareo Solutions’ Karen Elliott

This week’s edition of Finovate Global features an interview with Karen Elliott, CEO and Co-Founder of Cinareo Solutions.

Headquartered in Ontario, Canada and founded in 2022, Cinareo Solutions complements workforce management platforms, helping them streamline contact center operations and mitigate risk by enabling precise resource allocation and decision-making that is driven by data.

Cinareo made its Finovate debut earlier this year at FinovateSpring 2025 in San Diego, demonstrating how its SaaS solution provides scenario-based capacity planning for both contact center agents and support staff. The company’s technology leverages industry-recognized statistical models and simulations to help businesses meet customer demands as well as vital financial KPIs.

We caught up with Karen Elliott recently to learn more about the field of capacity planning, the role of enabling technologies like AI, and how Cinareo Solutions helps contact centers ensure that the right person with the right skills is in the right place at the right time.


What role does capacity planning have in workforce management? What makes it challenging and how does Cinareo help companies better meet those challenges?

Karen Elliott: Capacity planning is the strategic backbone of workforce management. It determines how many people you need with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time, to meet service levels without overspending on labor. In contact centers, capacity planning sits upstream of scheduling—it uses historical data, forecasts, and business assumptions to set headcount and budget requirements weeks, months, or even years in advance. Effective planning ensures customer demand is met efficiently and profitably.

The challenge is that unpredictable demand, scattered data, and outdated tools make planning a constant challenge. Most organizations resort to using Excel spreadsheets and spend hours or even days of manual labor and embedded formulas to try to figure out the optimal plan. Cinareo streamlines the process by ingesting your data and enabling rapid “what-if” scenario modeling and multi-skilling simulation to create optimized plans for both agents and support staff with the click of a button. 

Not only does Cinareo handle planning with ease, but the platform also creates financial budgets and recruitment and training plans so you know who to hire, and when, to ensure you meet your service targets.

Who are Cinareo’s primary customers? How do you reach them?

Elliott: Cinareo is an industry-agnostic platform for all contact centers.  We have customers worldwide in financial institutions, telecom, travel, utilities, retail, and even government.  We partner with CCaaS and WFM solutions to integrate directly into their platforms so that data can flow seamlessly into Cinareo.  Any organization with variable demand, labor-intensive operations and service or cost targets would get huge benefits from using a platform like Cinareo. 

We have a wide network of referral agents and ISV partners that recommend Cinareo to their clients when they see a clear need.  Cinareo offers webinars and monthly product showcases to demonstrate the power behind the platform—or can even arrange custom demos and proof of concepts to make sure potential customers truly understand the benefits of a modern planning platform like Cinareo.

What in your background led you to pursue innovation in this field?

Elliott: I spent 12 years at the IBM Innovation Center earlier in my career within the User Experience group with a key focus on user-centric software solutions.  After leaving IBM, I co-founded a professional consulting firm that specialized in contact center optimization that helped organizations improve their people, processes, technology, and knowledge. 

Years of consulting highlighted a huge gap in the market in regard to capacity planning.  We worked with countless private and public sector organizations that would build these complex spreadsheets to determine their optimal staffing and we decided there needed to be a better way, so we created Cinareo.  It was built to complement any CCaaS or WFM platform in the market and integrate into whatever was the customer’s platform of choice.  If customers switch platforms, they can take Cinareo with them—having a portable, agnostic solution was key to the design. 

Another important goal was designing a platform that was simple and intuitive based on years of experience in user-centric design.  We even have our customers as active members of the planning and design of the solution—this ensures that everything we build is focused on the needs and requirements of the people using the software.

What role do enabling technologies like AI play in developing innovative workforce management solutions?

Elliott: Capacity planning remains relevant in contact centers even if AI is involved, and it can take on a different but crucial role in optimizing the overall performance. While AI can now handle routine queries or simple updates, the reality is much more complex. Cinareo helps determine the right mix of AI-driven processes and human resources to meet the demand efficiently. Our customers are modelling their operations using Cinareo to determine the ideal balance of human agents vs bot and the ROI on an investment in AI as well.  

Incorporating AI into Cinareo is a given—we are already full steam ahead in our strategic plans to ensure that AI-driven capacity planning can make a dramatic difference. But true innovation in customer support isn’t about replacing the people—it is about giving people the ability to work faster and smarter – and we are doing that with Cinareo. 

You recently launched Flexible Monthly Planning. What is the value proposition with this new offering?

Elliott: We initially offered Cinareo as a strategic, long-term capacity planning platform where users could build 12-, 24- or 36-month plans.  However, as we continued to enhance Cinareo, our customers were telling us they wanted more flexibility in their planning, so we built in the capability to do weekly planning up to 52 weeks in order for contact centers to create tactical plans over the short or medium term. 

To continue to expand on Cinareo’s flexible platform, we recently launched more flexibility into our monthly planning as well, so customers can build a plan for any number of months up to 3 years in advance.  These enhancements were all driven by the needs of our clients since our goal is to have our software reflect “the voice of the customer” and truly be user-centric.

You made your Finovate debut at FinovateSpring earlier this year. How was the experience?

Elliott: We had a fantastic debut at FinovateSpring!  We generated a lot of great interest in the solution from the demo we provided. Prior to FinovateSpring, we had recently started onboarding more fintech clients and noticed an uptick in interest from banks, credit unions, and insurance agencies looking for a solution like Cinareo.  We thought FinovateSpring would be a great opportunity to demo Cinareo to a wider audience and get fintech companies to see the realm of the possible with a modern capacity planning solution. There is such a clear need in this sector for a solution that will not only improve CX and EX, but also provide important KPIs like the cost per contact to help with financial management.

What can we look forward to seeing from Cinareo in the months to come?

Elliott: We are excited over some of the new features that are set to launch in the months to come—we have been scaling up significantly to meet customer demand.  A couple new features that are soon to be released are multi-lingual functionality in addition to the ability to compare a plan with your historical data in a quick and easy way.  We will be offering our clients a way to see how their plan performed against their actuals in both performance and staffing—down to the 15-minute interval level.  This new feature will help our customers understand trends and patterns and be able to improve their planning moving forward.

That is just the tip of the iceberg—we have so many more exciting things planned over the next while. We would love to increase our customer base to have even more voices driving the future of our software! If you want to see how Cinareo can solve your capacity planning challenges, feel free to contact us.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Whish Money teams up with Mastercard to enable cross-border payments to Lebanon.
  • Bank of Algeria joined the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) launched by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank).
  • Qatar-based AlRayan Bank went live with Finastra Corporate Channels.

Central and Southern Asia

  • India celebrated National Fintech Day earlier this week.
  • Ukrainian fintech Fintech Farm launched its mobile banking service Tezbank in Uzbekistan.
  • The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) announced plans to unveil new Information Systems Audit Standards to enhance audit practices for startups, fintechs, and e-commerce companies.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Brazil-based digital financial services platform Nubank introduced Armando Herrera as new CEO of its Mexican operations.
  • Uruguayan cross-border payment platform dLocal teamed up with cross-border marketplace platform Tiendamia.
  • Puero Rico-based transaction processor and fintech EVERTEC announced plans to acquire a controlling stake in Brazilian fintech vendor Tecnobank.

Asia-Pacific

  • Japanese fintech JPYC announced plans to launch the first yen-denominated stablecoin this fall.
  • Thailand unveiled a new pilot program to enable visitors to convert cryptocurrencies into the local Thai Baht to facilitate purchases.
  • New Zealand-based small business management platform Xero partners with UAE-based Wio Bank PJSC.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Digital payments provider Peach Payments launched real-time clearance (RTC) payouts for merchants on its platform in South Africa.
  • South African fintech Street Wallet raised $350,000 in new funding.
  • African business bank Absa Business Banking selected Network International as its digital payments technology partner.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • OYAK ANKER Bank GmbH migrated its core banking systems to Berlin, Germany-based Mambu’s platform.
  • Turkish investment platform Midas raised $80 million in Series B funding.
  • Disruption Banking looked at the increasing popularity of crypto in Lithuania.

Photo by Derek Sutton on Unsplash

Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateSpring 2025

Finovate Global: Meet the International Alums of FinovateSpring 2025

If our European fintech conference, FinovateEurope, is our most international event, then FinovateSpring—which kicks off next week in San Diego, May 7 through 9—is our most homegrown. This year, for example, only two of the 40+ companies that will be demoing their innovations live on stage are headquartered outside the United States.

This week’s edition of Finovate Global leads off with an introduction to these three fintechs. Hailing from New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico respectively, these innovators will provide insights into the kinds of financial challenges faced and solutions sought by businesses and consumers alike.


APIMatic – Auckland, New Zealand

Founded in 2014, APIMatic is a developer experience platform for APIs that enables organizations to drive fast, widespread adoption of their APIs. The platform supports every stage of the API journey, from design and dynamic SDKs to code sample generation and end-to-end automation. Adeel Ali is Founder and CEO.


Cinareo Solutions – Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Cinareo Solutions offers a capacity planning platform that provides pro-active resource planning and financial analysis to cost-efficiently manage front- and back-office team members, as well as support staff. Launched in 2022, the company is a winner of Finovate’s Sustainability & Inclusion Scholarship Program. Karen Elliott is CEO.


Hyperdesk – San Francisco, California and Mexico City, Mexico


Founded in 2025, Hyperdesk provides an AI-powered search engine that helps credit unions and community banks grow their loans and deposits by better engaging with local businesses. Eric Yáñez is Founder and CEO.


Here is our look at fintech innovation around the world.

Central and Southern Asia

  • Mongolia-based digital lender LendMN secured $20 million in debt financing from Lendable.
  • TBC Uzbekistan launched its new SME lending product this week.
  • Business Today India profiled Indian fintech Nucleus Software.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Asia-Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Nigerian fintech and microfinance bank, Bankly, has been acquired by C-One Ventures.
  • Fintech startup Djamo raised $17 million to boost financial inclusion in French-speaking Africa.
  • The Central Bank of Nigeria imposed a $190,000 fine on Paystack for operating its latest solution, Zap, without the appropriate licensing.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Slovenian payment processing company Bankart partnered with Iliad Solutions as its payment testing provider.
  • Berlin, Germany-based corporate card platform Pliant raised $40 million in Series B funding.
  • Polish fintech BidFinance raised €1.6 million in seed funding from 4growth VC, FundingBox, and a group of business angel investors.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • UAE-based Islamic bank Ruya introduced a new service to enable customers to trade cryptocurrencies via its mobile app.
  • The MENA Fintech Association (MFTA) welcomed Iraq-based digital payments and identity services provider International Smart Card (ISC).
  • Alfardan Exchange partnered with iPiD to launch Qatar’s first real-time payee verification service.

Photo by GaĂ«l Gaborel – OrbisTerrae on Unsplash

FinovateSpring 2025 Sneak Peek Series: Part 1

FinovateSpring 2025 Sneak Peek Series: Part 1

A look at the companies demoing at FinovateSpring in San Diego on May 7 – 9. Register today using this link and save 20%.

Cinareo Solutions

Cinareo is a SaaS solution designed for scenario-based capacity planning for both agents and support staff at a contact center, including financial analysis and recruitment and training planning.

Features

  • 50% time savings for workforce planners adopting cloud-based planning
  • 20% cost reduction while keeping high service levels and productivity
  • 25% improvement in service efficiency and customer satisfaction

Who’s it for?

Any financial institution with a contact center that has over 100 seats.

Covet

Covet transforms estate organization by consolidating financial, physical, and digital assets into a real-time estate summary—unlocking insights for advisors and financial institutions.

Features

  • Provides complete estate visibility across financial, physical, and digital assets
  • Automates estate documents that are generated and updated seamlessly
  • Delivers scalable, automated updates for assets and family changes

Who’s it for?

Financial advisors, wealth management firms, family offices, credit unions, investors, and individual clients seeking seamless estate organization, automated updates, and multigenerational insights.

Kaian

Kaian’s white-label solution helps banks and credit unions support customers and members.

Features

  • Supports bill payment challenges for customers and members
  • Rewards smart spending habits to improve financial behavior
  • Drives loyalty and increases lifetime value for banks and credit unions

Who’s it for?

Credit unions and community banks.

TAPP Engine

TAPP Engine bridges the gap between banking and wealth, helping financial institutions grow by embedding white-labeled investment solutions that enhance engagement, drive revenue, and strengthen loyalty.

Features

  • Delivers an intuitive design, educational resources, and accessibility
  • Provides access to self-directed, automated, and practice investing experiences
  • Offers institutional-grade connectivity with data-driven personalization

Who’s it for?

Credit unions, banks, fintechs, RIAs, independent broker dealers, and more.

Winnow

Winnow is an award-winning regulatory change management platform that allows customers to build customized state and federal compliance surveys.

Features

  • Pay-As-You-Go Surveys: Generate a-la-carte compliance surveys
  • Bills: View bills linked to relevant requirements and defined terms
  • Historical Surveys: Build compliance surveys based on a past date

Who’s it for?

Banks, credit unions, fintechs, lenders, and law firms.

Showcasing Female Leadership in Fintech at FinovateSpring 2025

Showcasing Female Leadership in Fintech at FinovateSpring 2025

Last week, we showcased five companies—all led by female CEOs—who demonstrated their latest innovations at FinovateEurope in London in February. Part of Finovate’s annual Women’s History Month commemoration, the post not only highlighted the achievements of women in fintech, it also helped introduce five new companies to our Finovate audience.

With that last point in mind, we’re thrilled this week to introduce you to some of the women who will be leading their companies on the Finovate stage next month at FinovateSpring in San Diego, May 7 through 9.

First, meet the two companies—Cinareo Solutions and Cratoflow—that were selected to participate at FinovateSpring as part of our Female Founder Scholarship program. Second, we introduce two additional companies—Penny Finance and Instarails—both with female CEOs, and both slated to demo their latest innovation at FinovateSpring next month.


Karen Elliott

CEO & Co-Founder, Cinareo Solutions

Elliott (LinkedIn) is CEO and Co-Founder of Cinareo Solutions, a SaaS platform that provides capacity planning for agents and support staff, financial management, what-if scenario modelling, and multi-skilling simulation.

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Cinareo Solutions sets a new standard for workforce planning and decision support for multi-channel contact centers. This provides robust and pro-active resource planning and financial analysis to cost-efficiently manage front and back-office staff, as well as all support staff.


Shiv Patel

CEO and Founder, Cratoflow

Patel (LinkedIn) is CEO of Cratoflow, a company that helps organizations to save up to 110 hours a week, reduce errors, and acclerate payments, enabling faster decision-making and driving operational efficiency and cost savings.

Based in Anaheim, California, and founded in 2021, Cratoflow offers a no-code financial workflow solution that centralizes and simplifies complex daily accounting processeas with an intuitive user interface. The platform leverages machine learning and AI to sync with third-party financial systems to systematically complete revenue, banking, and expense entries.


Yamini Sagar

Founder and CEO, Instarails

Sagar (LinkedIn) is founder and CEO of Instarails, a global payment network infrastructure that helps credit unions, community banks, and businesses attract and retain more clients while accelerating revenue growth,

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Instarails leverages blockchain technology to make direct, real-time, cheap, inclusive, and transparent payments. Clients connect to Instarails’ network via SaaS API and send transactions. These transactions are routed through Instarails’ network and recipients get funds instantly through their bank, e-wallet, or via cash pickup.


Crissi Cole

Founder & CEO, Penny Finance

Cole (LinkedIn) is CEO and Founder of Penny Finance, an online financial planning engagement engine that attracts, retains, and services the digital generation of credit unions and community banks by providing tailored education, resources, rewards, and services to their members and customers at large.

Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, and founded in 2020, Penny Finance connects the dots between a financial institution’s products and services and member and customer needs, all while creating efficiency for their marketing organizations.


FinovateSpring 2025 kicks off May 7 through 9 in San Diego, California. Visit our FinovateSpring hub today to learn more about our emerging speaker lineup, demoing companies, and how to plan your visit to Finovate’s first conference in SoCal!