Resource planning and management is an essential business process that can help you keep track of your projects and their results. Also known as project management and enterprise resource planning among several other terms, resource planning can be applied to various disciplines.
However, it is mainly considered a subset of these business processes. The best way to define resource management is a solution to plan, manage, and deploy the right individuals and skills for the right projects. Most successful businesses consider resource management a top priority and a standalone discipline. Here are some best practices that can benefit your company.
Understand difference between busy and billable
The first step to effective resource planning for your project portfolio is to understand the difference between being busy and being billable. If you notice that your employees are busy but aren’t utilizing their skills in the right manner, there is something wrong. It is important to insist on business solutions that time or track your employee’s work. One way to reduce time wasted on unnecessary processes is to introduce shared applications that plan and track billable hours.
Avoid over servicing clients
A common problem faced during resource planning is allocating too many resources to a single client. This practice is ineffective and potentially expensive as your staff remains busy but not billable. Over servicing of clients can occur when you are unsure of how to plan your resources and the true worth of your employees. By determining the billable value of your team, you can effectively direct their expertise in the right manner, without affecting output and quality.
Avoid depending on guesses
Another common reason for under utilization or over utilization of company resources is to make guesses and not accurate estimations. If your company does not align project estimation with execution and capacity, you are not using your resources in an efficient manner. You may end up using more resources than necessary or even miss deadlines because of improper resource planning and management. By relying on guesstimates, you could risk a negative impact on profitability and optimum project costs.
Match long-term projects with planned capacities
If you are faced with long-term projects, it is imperative to compare them with your planned capacity. To best use your resources, integrate the resource management process with the sales pipeline. This move can help you source your employees better and improve your strategies for future recruitment, subcontracting, as well as organization development. This move will also create a working synergy with the sales team and help you deliver projects on time.
