Projects go through three broad phases – (a) portfolio analysis and business case justification (b) project initiation & planning (c) project delivery. At each of these stages, effective enterprise resource planning through industry-leading resource management tool act as the catalyst for value and cost. In a hyper-competitive business world, the need for cost optimization was never so compelling.
It may be pertinent to mention that resources could be physical or people. Organizations have been reasonably successful in managing physical resources, thanks to the maturity of engineering, pharma, manufacturing, and construction industries. However, the situation is not so hunky dory when it comes to managing people resources – especially in today’s knowledge-based world. With resource planning and management being the foundation of modern businesses, very few organizations have invested in contemporary resource management tools – struggling to deliver consistent value as well as optimize costs.
Let us double-click to analyze how a top-class resource management tool is essential for effective project management at different stages.
DURING PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS AND BUSINESS CASE JUSTIFICATION
Being in a project economy, organizations pursue numerous projects at any given point of time. However, not all projects are approved due to constraints of finance and people resources. Business leaders and delivery managers must collaborate to assess the business demand against resource capacity (considering job profiles, competencies, skills, and experience). Projects require diversity of resource competencies and skills. All such projects are rolled-up to the business unit level or the enterprise level to review the overall customer demand versus available capacity.
Without a resource planning software, imagine the process of review and decision-making for organizations that manage ten, twenty, fifty or more projects – leaders could be counting the hairs on their head!
A project resource management tool with capabilities to summarize business demand and resource availability ensures transparency leading to swifter analysis and decision-making. Enterprise resource planning in the face of sales demand was never so easy!
DURING PROJECT INITIATION AND PLANNING
Project initiation & planning represents a critical stage in the project lifecycle when the project managers perform detailed scoping, scheduling, and resourcing. This is also the stage when the project resources and cost estimates get fine-tuned. Cost estimates largely depend on the resource-mix. Resource-mix represents the profile, competencies, skills, domains, and cost rates. Project budgets are very tightly linked to the project resource-mix.
Enterprise Resource Planning and Management Struggle # 1
Resource Identification and Selection
Managers rely on multiple spreadsheets or disparate legacy systems, leading to wasted and duplicated efforts (due to multiple data comparisons) as well as resource data quality. Imagine when projects need resources from different geographies with diverse levels of skills & competencies and cost structures. Throw in another dimension with organization undertaking multiple projects simultaneously – you are dealing with a dynamically changing resource-specific Rubik’s Cube.
Value of a Project Resource Management Tool
With a top-class resource management tool, leaders and project managers can expect capabilities including a holistic and consolidate view of an organizational resources (location, skill, competency, domain, cost structure, years of experience) based on their current engagements and availability – enabling resource planning and management in just a few clicks!
Enterprise Resource Planning and Management Struggle # 2
Granular Resource Estimation and Budget Creation
Contemporary projects have greater levels of complexity, longer duration, and a greater emphasis on detailed resource estimation – leading to meticulous resource budgeting. Without a resource planning software, imagine a detailed work breakdown structure created on a spreadsheet running into just 500-line items and visualize the effort involved in resource allocation. When businesses rely on numerous spreadsheets and obsolete systems, it would be an irony to blame project managers for shoddy resource planning and management. Can we even think of scenarios when resources have planned leave, or are available partially, or working on multiple projects in parallel?
Value of a Project Resource Management Tool
Armed with a powerful resource management software that is well-connected to work breakdown structures, allows project managers to estimate and assign resources from an organizational resource pool by considering their current availability and engagement. Further, with inbuilt mechanisms to connect resources with their cost profiles, creating project budgets could be accomplished in a jiffy.
DURING PROJECT DELIVERY
Plans are great, execution is the premium! Immaculate resource planning and management is critical to project delivery as well as project cost and profitability management.
Enterprise Resource Planning and Management Struggle # 1
Resource Utilization
As a key cost-driver, it is vital that project managers across the organization ensure that their resources are optimally utilized. Imagine a company with even a thousand resources with 5% of the resources unutilized – this corresponds to fifty resources (at USD 4K per month) or USD 20K per month / USD 240K annually. The impact to organizational profitability and cashflow is huge! Take larger organizations and the numbers would leave any business leader shocked! It is not uncommon to hear cases of businesses where one set of resources are over-worked while another set of resources have a rocking time! In this background, if project managers are expected to manage resources on without a resource planning software, the level of inefficiencies should turn heads around!
Value of a Project Resource Management Tool
A best-in-class resource management software can generate real-time information about resource utilization at different levels of granularity. Project managers are better equipped to focus on problem-avoidance and problem-solving rather than struggle with problem identification.
Enterprise Resource Planning and Management Struggle # 2
Resource Efficiency
Projects must be executed within specific timelines and resources. Further, it is critical that the project is delivered against ‘planned effort’, be in hours or days. With project costs and profitability getting tighter, ‘actual effort’ should not exceed planned effort. There are instances when the ‘real’ effort is either under-reported or not captured at all – leading to deflated costs and inflated project profitability.
Value of a Project Resource Management Tool
Relying on a solid resource management software enables project teams to accurately track and report actual effort along with alerts and notifications that help managers trigger proactive course corrections – to ensure profitability is not compromised.
Enterprise Resource Planning and Management Struggle # 3
Resource Productivity
It is very easy to get carried away when all your teams are extremely busy on various projects. We may be just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The truth could be revealed only when we closely review the nature of work that keeps our teams busy. It is quite common to find resources being busy as ‘cookie cutters!’ Managers must evaluate whether the tasks being carried out by their teams are adding value or not! Being busy is not adequate – teams must be busy with work that adds value.
Value of a Project Resource Management Tool
With a strong resource management software by your side, business leaders and managers could easily sift and evaluate whether the work performed by their teams is adding value or not.
CONCLUSION
It must be crystal clear that if business leaders and project managers are serious about managing costs and delivering value, they must look no further – a resource management software such as TouchBase is a must.
