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Episode Description:
Welcome to the ProductDossier Podcast. I am delighted to bring this series of episodes to you in which we will discuss important aspects of professional services automation.
In today’s episode, Sandeep Kumar, Founder and CEO ProductDossier is here to discuss the increasingly important subject of resource management. Welcome, Sandeep.
Thank you, Hemant. Thank you for having me on this podcast.
To start with, before we get into resource management, can you please tell us how project businesses are different from other types of businesses?
Well, there are really two kinds of businesses, the product business, and the project business. Right? So, there are companies that make products and the thing is they are not building the product for a specific customer, they are building it for a market and for a set of similar kinds of customers.
Right? So that’s the product business, whereas in the project business you are working for the needs of a specific customer. So, the team, including the project manager and all, they are engaged with the customer even before the project begins.
And they have this task of getting the customer satisfaction, getting the project margins you know as planned, and completing the project in time with you know governance and all that.
So, in that sense, these two businesses are very different.
One hears a lot these days about resources. Of-course resources are important for any business. But the subject is coming up again and again on resources, managing them, and allocating them why it is becoming important.
Absolutely. You see, resource management is extremely critical. So first, what is resource management? Basically, it has a decent span. So, it starts with the resource capacity and planning of resources.
That is capacity planning. Then there is a resource forecast coming from different sources and the demand forecast, so to say. And then allocating those resources to projects and tracking their utilization.
So, this is involved in It, and then linking all of this with the downstream processes like rev rec. (Revenue Recognition) and billing, etc.
So, this is sort of what comprises resource management. And then why it is important? Because today if you take especially the project-based businesses like the IT industry, they are employing hundreds and thousands of billable resources, right?
So, it is extremely critical that companies do the resource allocation or resource management and that the right resource management to make sure that you know their revenues are it basically impacts their revenues, impacts their margins and it also impacts customer satisfaction.
And in recent times we have seen if resource management is not done right, then it reserves into high attrition. So, in my mind, resource management is extremely critical for the factors I just said.
That’s interesting because although everyone knows that resource management is important, so far it has been more or less you know delegated downwards. So, can you explain these individual aspects, particularly starting with the top line and margins?
Yeah. So, you see today one of the biggest challenges the CEO or the practice head is facing is called billing loss. So, what happens is there are firm orders in the organization, but they are not able to find the right resources for that project.
And if you don’t put the right resources in time, this results in revenue loss and this basically a phenomenon industry also calls a billing loss.
Now, why this is happening? There are two reasons primarily one, basically, there was no, I would say resource forecasting, or the demand analysis done in a proactive manner and the forecasting comes from the existing projects and more importantly from the opportunities.
And since there was no forecasting for the TA teams or the talent acquisition teams, they are not able to plan their hiring and all and because of this, the resources are not available.
And the second reason in my mind is today there is very less visibility in a real-time manner that where the resources are allocated, which resources are on the bench, and what is the ramp down in the next few days or weeks, right?
And because of this, even the organizations are not able to utilize even the existing resources in an optimized manner. And both of these sorts result in your revenue loss and impact your top line.
Now, the second thing is if you don’t allocate the right resources to the right projects, for example, if you allocate a higher skill person to a low bill rate job, then this is going to impact your project margins as well. So, you can see that resource management, if not done well, will hit your top line and bottom line.
So, you’re saying lack of resource forecast, not having proactive hiring and real-time visibility of resources, it affects even the benching, it affects the company’s revenue.
Before we talk about the solution, let’s first talk about customer satisfaction and attrition because you touched upon those points and said that not using resources the right way can affect these areas as well.
Absolutely. The reason for both of these is reduced customer satisfaction and high attrition. The reason is the same. Now take two use cases.
The first one is if there is a certain skill set required in a customer project and the organization put in a person who has a lower skill set, then that is required. Now, what will happen?
It’s very logical that it is going to impact your deliverable performance, etc. Right? And that will result in customer dissatisfaction and even puts your future business in jeopardy.
So, you can see the right allocation, as I mentioned earlier, can impact your customer satisfaction. Now take the other way around, it is not just about customer satisfaction.
If you put a high-skill resource person into a project which requires relatively lower skill sets, now this person will obviously feel frustrated because this person, she’s not getting job satisfaction and all that.
And ultimately this will lead to attrition. And not only that, but it will also lead to a lower project margin. But the right resource allocation the word is really the right, it is very important for customer satisfaction and lower attrition.
Oh, that really sounds like a loose loose loose customer, employee, and company.
Absolutely, you got that.
So, Sandeep earlier You had mentioned the relationship between resource management and downstream processes like revenue recognition and billing. Can you please elaborate on that?
Absolutely. See, revenue recognition and billing, as you would know are the most important and critical activities in any project-based business. I mean in any organization, but especially project based.
Since we are talking about that. Now, what happens is at the end of the month there is a need to recognize revenue and do billing. And how does that happen?
Revenue recognition depends upon the timesheets resources are filled in the projects where they are allocated and also it is important that they are filling their timesheets against the right build rates etc. So, the project management and resource management pieces are very critical.
Secondly, even in fixed-price kinds of projects the timesheets are used for project cost calculation, and which kind of by the POC method calculates the revenue recognition and all of this revenue recognition, and the same process is adopted in the billing.
So, it’s really important that we have done the resource management right.
Today the project teams and especially the delivery managers, the project managers, they are spending a considerable amount of time compiling the data which is often a very cumbersome process and often inaccurate and this results in the rejection of invoices revenue leakages, and all that things.
These processes are actually downstream processes but are dependent on the resource management done well.
So, if I understand you correctly, what you’re saying is resource management is feeding data into downstream processes and depending upon the quality of that data, these processes like revenue recognition and billing, are affected.
Now that we have talked about resource management and the problems organizations are facing and its impact, let me ask you who is responsible to get it right in the organization. Is it the management?
Is there a specialized resource management group function or is it the project manager?
Well, in my mind resource management is really the foundation of any organization. So, this must and must be prioritized by the CEO and the top management and once they have sort of prioritized it and make it a mission-critical activity, then I think different functions have a role to play in it.
For example, the customer-facing teams like the sales, presales, or account management teams, have to input the right information in terms of opportunities that are coming up or which are most likely to get closed in the next weeks because this will lead to resource forecasting.
And then the specialized RMG teams or the PMO teams depending upon the organization, have to work very closely with project managers to find the right resources for each project and get them allocated.
Now the RMG team especially also has to work with the talent acquisition teams to sort of plan the hiring thing based on the forecast and make sure that resources are onboarded proactively so that we minimize the revenue loss.
So, I would say that it’s an initiative driven from the top and then supported by different functions. This is really required and once all of these acts come together you sort of build the source management culture and that’s really very important.
Oh! that’s something substantial, resource management culture. Now let’s talk about how to get there. What are the possible solutions and what are the options, what is available, can you explain that?
Absolutely. This is the part I really get excited about. I mean the problems, everybody has problems but then what’s the solution? So, first things first, just to give comfort to our audiences.
The solution is very much possible and it’s not as hard as it may sound. So, first of all, there are two or three parts to it.
So, the first thing the organization has to do is I think the problem is they have to start with the acknowledgment of the challenges that they are facing a problem, that’s the biggest hurdle out of the way.
And once they have acknowledged that then they have to sort of define their process right from the opportunity to get the order and then starting the project and executing the project and closing it.
So, they have to sort of get their process right and identify the challenges and especially the ones which are related to resource management.
So that sort of blueprint is drawn. So that is number one. Number two is now they have to find the right technology solution for this.
So, the solution as I rightly earlier said that resource management includes capacity planning, forecasting and then allocation and utilization timesheet leave management, attendance management, bench management, and the skills and competency management resume.
So, these are different pieces of these solutions. So, they have to find sort of right technology solution for that. And if I look at that and then of course it should have linkages with the HRMS and also the downstream finance solutions. So that is very important.
Now, what are the possibilities? Right, so there are two or three kinds of solutions available in the market.
One is like a sort of quick point solution which is doing certain things and it’s quick and dirty but they can take you only that far. That is number one.
Number two then there are sort of generic solutions available which can do resource management for anything.
There is no industry knowledge in it, so they are not specific to your industry, or your business use cases, you have to customize them a lot and all those things.
So that is another kind of then there is the third category where there are industry-specific solutions.
So, for example, for the IT industry where there is a lot of domain knowledge put into the product and there is a good chance that typically 90% – 95% of your business use cases are already covered in it.
So, it has advantages that it’s a mature solution for your industry and also the time you will save by this kind of solution.
OEMs also had a lot of domain knowledge so they come as a consulting partner also and they will save you a lot of time and money to get started so the time to value gets reduced significantly.
So, this is about the technological solutions available and what are the choices. And the third piece I would say in this is that organizations need to understand that it is not an overnight success, it’s a journey.
So, they have to start this journey once they deploy a certain solution then there is a lot of visibility, and a lot of maturity in the process people will start thinking at the next level of the problem. So, it’s a sort of Iterative process.
So, in my mind. The blueprinting of the solution. The right technology partner and the journey thing.
If these three things are put together and that’s what will result in a sort of digital culture that will take you toward that business excellence journey.
That’s a very big journey. A very long journey and for me the takeaway in this is the domain knowledge that gets built in if there is something that is based on that and this means accumulated learning gets into various processes the way they are supported and that saves time for new people.
New companies are undertaking that journey.
But I’m not very sure whether companies looking at this journey, whether they really place important value on this because they have these, as you said, quick point solutions and that gives them some results quickly, and then they don’t see, I mean at least probably they find it difficult to attach a value.
So, can you explain what kind of benefits people can see? Can you sort of quantify the value expected out of these kinds of undertaking a journey as you mentioned?
Yeah, and I can relate to what you are saying. I have seen companies they sort of invest in some point solution and then obviously it does only so much and then they announce that this kind of solution doesn’t work, and they continue to sort of face challenges.
But having said that and the question you are asking what value can we expect out of an initiative like this?
So, if I have to quantify it and my quantification is based on real use cases I have seen in the industry. So, let’s take an example of a $50 million company that means around 375 crores in Indian currency and so this roughly would be around 1500 people company.
Now, once you deploy a solution like this, what we just described, the resource management, and then you have the forecasting, I would expect that minimum, they would have a 2% better resource utilization minimum.
And if I just consider being very conservative in my numbers, and if I say two to five and this will result in an additional million to $2.5 million of additional revenue and that is typical if I say, even if you spend a certain amount of this initiative, it’s about ten X ROI you will get on your investment and it doesn’t take like few years to get there, right?
Within a year, within six months to one year. And if done right with the right tool, you should be able to achieve that. And that, I think, should really excite the CEOs and the management to go for such initiatives.
ROI numbers Look very tempting.
Absolutely.
Hemant
But some companies may feel we are still small, it’s too early for us and it’s too big a journey for us. So, do you want to suggest or recommend the right size of the organization for this journey to start?
Yeah, I would say like yesterday. Right. Because wherever you are, when you are a young company, it’s easier to change things, and it’s easier to build culture.
And once the culture builds in, then every new person joining in falls into that culture. But having said that, in my experience, once you are about 150-200 people, the problem of resource management is considerable.
To the extent that Excel spreadsheets and all are not supporting you, you have the opportunity of making more revenue with the same resources as we discussed.
So, I would say 150 to 200 is the right size you should start at. And if you have missed it, then obviously as early as possible after that.
Well, that’s good guidance to many companies who are still probably hesitating to go for this kind of journey.
I have heard, and I think I agree with this, saying that resource management is both an art and a science. And while listening to you, I am beginning to understand why.
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a very good sort of proverb you are bringing him. And if I may modify it a little bit, basically building science into the art of resource management. Right?
So now the science is the technology part which is doing, but then there is an art where you are visualizing the solution, your opportunity to cash, and the different places where the challenges are there, then putting them on paper and then actually sort of deploying it. That is the art piece.
Both are equally important. And once executed well, as I said, you will build a culture of excellence and the whole company marches toward business excellence, which creates sustainable and exponential value for the organization.
Achieving business excellence is the ultimate goal of any organization. That’s what I think. And you are certainly shown away on how to do this, how digitalization of resource management processes can help get organization closer to that journey.
Thanks a lot, Sandeep, for taking out your time and explaining resource management subjects with such great clarity.
Thank you. Thank you, Hemant, for having me on this podcast. I do enjoy your questions and the logical way you sort of guided this entire podcast just for the audience.
My email is skumar@productdossier.com in case anyone wants to reach out. And also, I’ll be happy to hear about any experiences from any one of your audiences who have embarked on this journey. And once again, thank you so much, Hemant.
Thanks, Sandeep. And this brings us to the end of this podcast. Thank you for listening.
