Resources, especially employees, are the lifeblood of any organization. However, without their efficient management, youโll hardly be able to make things happen. When the number of resources is limited, and a company has to deliver multiple projects, there arises the question and how to distribute work between the team members in an optimum way so that resources are available when needed and enable seamless and successful delivery of all projects? Effective resource management software can address this issue. Letโs take a closer look at its capabilities and the benefits it provides organizations with.
Resource management software and its capabilities
Resource management software is a tool that helps organizations plan, allocate, and manage resources as well as facilitate their maximum efficient utilization for timely and successful project delivery. The capabilities of these solutions vary – some of them focus on resource planning, scheduling and allocation, while others have more advanced functionality, e.g., forecasting resource demand, detecting bottlenecks, etc.
Letโs examine resource management functionality using the example of Epicflow which is multi-project resource management software. It aims to ensure effective management of multiple concurrent projects and their shared resources. Here are some examples of its resource management capabilities.
Providing visibility of resource-related data
The solution stores the data on each team memberโs competences, capacity, availability. You can manipulate this data when needed. Also, if a company leverages a human resource management system, Epicflow can integrate with it so that you can be sure that capacity and availability data are always up-to-date. Finally, Epicflow has an AI-driven resource allocation advisor that suggests a team member who perfectly matches a certain task.
Tracking resource performance
Using the Timesheet, you can track the number of planned vs spent hours to assess how to work on a project progresses. Epic flow graphs provide the data on resource groups; historical output in relation to their capacity for more in-depth performance analysis and bottleneck detection.
Forecasting capabilities
You can forecast the resource demand for future projects, gain insight into future capacity of your team members as well as detect improper workload in the future.
Managing material resources.
In Epicflow, you can keep track of materials consumption (if they are used in a project) and manage the other material resources (equipment, facilities) – monitor their capacity, availability, and assign them to project tasks.
Scenario analysis.
Epicflow AI-powered What-if Analysis makes it possible to test different scenarios and their consequences for the project environment; e.g., you can see what will happen if you add or reassign resources, move milestones, etc.
To sum up, a resource management solution has a variety of features that not only simplify some routine tasks, but also improve resource planning and allocation and optimize the resource management process in general.
Now, letโs review the benefits of leveraging a resource management solution in more detail.
The benefits of leveraging a resource management solution
Utilizing an effective resource management solution can provide organizations with benefits on multiple levels: from improving the workflow to increasing a companyโs profitability.
More efficient resource allocation
When you have all the necessary data at hand, you can assign resources to tasks quickly and efficiently and be sure that the right talent works on the right task at the right time. Effective resource allocation makes it possible to:
- Optimize team members; workload, as their capacity and availability are taken into account
- Increase employee productivity – when they work on tasks that fully correspond to their competence levels, they can deliver much better results
- Optimize project costs thanks to reduced chances for unplanned last-minute hiring.
Planning for upcoming projects
With resource management solution predictive capabilities, you can forecast future capacity and workload, which will help you plan resources more effectively. Letโs explain what we mean.
First of all, forecasting can show whether there are enough resources to staff an upcoming project.
Also, predictive capabilities help make the right decisions regarding future projects. For example, if a resource manager sees that the team members donโt have enough capacity for an upcoming project, he or she can decide to postpone this project for later or outsource employees if it cannot be postponed.
Finally, forecasting capacity and workload help prevent overwork, which in turn can hamper the work of the whole project environment.
Optimization of employees & workload
Balanced workload is one of the most important prerequisites for team members; productivity. However, when the amount of work to deliver is large, it can be difficult to keep team member workload balanced so that everybody is neither overworked nor idle. A resource management solution helps you optimize workload from different perspectives. First, it helps plan and allocate resources taking into account peopleโs availability and capacity, which on its own contributes to a more balanced workload. Second, it provides tools that help detect improper workload so that a project and resource manager can timely fix the situation.
Detecting bottlenecks and preventing bigger problems
As a rule, project managers gain insight into project health by monitoring project progress. However, itโs more effective to track resource performance first, especially when you work in a multi-project environment with a shared pool of resources and dependencies between projects. It must be kept in mind that the state of the project level is a reflection of what has been going on at the level of resources. A resource management solution provides opportunities for monitoring resource performance so that you can timely detect issues and avoid bigger problems.
Boosting employee productivity
The right resource allocation and optimization of team members workload positively impact their productivity. In addition, regular monitoring of team members performance with a resource management solution makes it possible to detect issues (e.g., overload) that arenโt obvious but negatively affect productivity. As a result, a project/resource manager can improve the situation and ensure optimum productivity levels.
Improving decision-making
<p>When you have to resolve a bottleneck or make a decision under conditions of uncertainty, you can take advantage of scenario analysis which will show you the effect of your decisions on the workflow. Having analyzed all possible variants, you can come up with the most reasonable decision. For example, youโve detected an overloaded resource group and you need to decide how to address this issue. You can test different decisions – hiring more people, move milestones, assign resources from other groups, etc. The analysis of these scenarios will help you resolve a bottleneck in the most advantageous way.
Enhancing business performance and increasing a companyโs profitability
- Finally, all of the above-mentioned benefits contribute to improved business performance:
- Productive employees deliver the high-quality output on time
- As a result, the customers are satisfied and the company can intake more orders;
Wise resource management makes it possible to deliver more with the same number of resources, and a companyโs profitability increases.
Therefore, leveraging a resource management solution facilitates maximum effective management of an organization’s resources for timely and efficient delivery of every project, which in turn contributes to better business outcomes and increases its profitability.
Last Updated on by Icy Tales Team
