Most leaders find it hard to make sure their team doesn’t feel overworked or underutilized at the same time. In a world where organizations move quickly and are often virtual, it’s easy to forget about how much work employees have. By making a plan for managing your resources, you can keep an eye on the workloads of both your individual contributors and your team as a whole. It lets you keep track of all your resources and see how your team will reach its goals in the big picture.

What Is Resource Management? #

Resource management is the process of planning, scheduling, forecasting, assigning people, and allocating technology (software) and budget to a project. Resources are anything needed to complete a task or project, such as personnel skills or software. Different projects require different methods of resource management. If you’re hosting an event, you may need to schedule personnel, choose vendors for marketing materials, invest in technology to register participants, and spend on freebies and catering.

Importance of Resource Management #

Managing resources as part of project management is all about getting more done with less. Waste is a no-no in any industry, but especially so in the corporate world. The focus of resource management is on optimizing and maximizing productivity. Having a clear picture of what you need to get a project off the ground will help you better understand how to allocate your resources. In Short, why resource management is important for business? Simply because resource management is a key part of making a business more profitable and sustainable.

Advantages of Resource Management #

Resource management seems challenging to many companies. There is a frequent belief that resource management involves a substantial investment and a fundamental shift in both process and culture. This is simply not true. Companies that focus on resource management see instant rewards. Depending on the structure and actions followed, projects are often completed on schedule and on budget.

Let’s examine how resource planning management may contribute to the top and bottom lines of any company.

1. Help decrease project resource expenses #

When running a project, cost reduction is one of the important things to implement. With enterprise-wide insight, resource managers can employ assets from reduced regions that are cost-effective. Having the appropriate combination of locally and globally resources helps reduce project costs. Allocating the appropriate resources to the appropriate project allows them to execute delivery on schedule and within budget. Costs can be controlled by resource managers spreading important resources equitably across all projects as opposed to a single high-priority project.

2. Enhancing effective and billable resource usage #

Resource management software, like FoxPlan, enables managers to anticipate the use of their staff. Accordingly, personnel can be shifted from non-billable to strategic and billable tasks. When project resources are rolled off, there is sometimes no suitable work to occupy them. Consequently, these assets are eventually placed on the bench. Prior to assigning them to acceptable billable or strategic initiatives, managers can immediately engage these personnel in non-billable tasks.

3. Prevents burnout #

Burnout can be avoided with effective management of resources, which enables you to avoid “overallocation” or “dependence” of resources by getting insight into the task that your team is responsible for.

4. Proactively bridge the capacity-demand imbalance #

Problems and gaps can be identified and addressed before they even become an issue if you take the time up front to familiarize yourself with all of your available resources and carefully plan out how you will put them to use.

As a component of project resources planning, demand forecasting enables managers to anticipate resource needs in advance. It allows them to examine and appraise the skills gap within the given infrastructure. After recognizing the shortage and excesses, managers can design a plan of action to proactively close the gap between capacity and demand.

5. Utilize limited resources efficiently inside a matrix structure #

The resource management approach allows successful sharing of highly qualified personnel in a matrix structure by bringing transparency to communication. The limited resources should be allocated to multiple projects as opposed to a single high-priority project.

6. Monitor and enhance the organization’s health index #

Employees look to their supervisors and managers for guidance on how to further their careers. Failing to motivate and give possibilities for career advancement will typically result in decreased participation, productivity, and unplanned turnover. Monitoring their skills and productivity on a regular basis might help them develop and contribute greater value to an organization.

7. Provides a safety net #

Suppose the project was unsuccessful due to insufficient resources (this could happen). Planning and managing your resources shows that you made the most of what you had. So, the will understand that they probably need to add more resource for the similar project next time.

8. Increase transparency #

Increases transparency by allowing other teams to view the bandwidth of your team and make appropriate adjustments to their plans based on whether or not your team is operating at full capacity or is open to taking on additional work.

Consequences of Bad Resource Management Strategy #

Poor resource management strategy can harm the company’s reputation and resource pool. And these can leads to:

• Project costs have risen as a result.
• Reduced employee productivity
• Employee turnover is high.
• Failure to meet deadlines on a project
• Client dissatisfaction
• Loss of business

What Types of Businesses That Would Require Resource Management? #

Matrix-based, cross-functional, and shared-services organizations need Resource Management. Size and function determine the complexity of their business operations. Today, every organization manages resources. IT companies, architecture, engineering, audit and bookkeeping, and even professional services have introduced resource management processes. Companies with several ad-hoc projects also need resource management. They face shifting project priorities, resource availability, and budget constraints.

Managing these complications requires enterprise-wide transparency and real-time changes. They must manage their resources and complete projects on time and within budget. Companies require resource management systems to successfully use their resources, regardless of industry.

However, you need to understand that only half the battle is won by creating a resource management system. Equally critical is implementing this plan with a suitable resource management technology.

What are Resource Management Techniques? #

People are the most difficult to manage since there are so many factors that influence how best to optimize them, such as skill sets, availability, location, and cost. The following strategies for resource management are frequently used by organizations to help executives make better resource decisions by providing transparency.

Let’s examine how to implement resource management in your projects now that you know what it is.

1. Resource allocation #

Allocating resources maximizes their use. Resource allocation is the practice of employing team members’ abilities and capacity to tackle projects efficiently. Project managers utilize resource allocation reports to understand allocation. These can give a high-level or detailed perspective of resource availability, preventing schedule delays and budget overruns. Better reporting capabilities increase project transparency and efficiency.

2. Resource utilization #

Resource utilization is a technique that gives you visibility into your team’s capability over time and identifies overutilized or underutilized resources. Overused resources experience burnout, according to studies. Utilization reports highlight where personnel are spending their time, allowing you to identify ways to increase their efficiency, performance, and productivity while maintaining acceptable workloads.

3. Resource scheduling #

Scheduling resources requires allocating them to project tasks for a certain period. These duties may be billable, non-billable, or business as usual. Resource scheduling avoids spreadsheet silos with centralized Gantt charts. It helps you deploy the right resources to complete the project on time and within budget.

4. Resource leveling #

This technique seeks to find underutilized or inefficiently utilized resources in the organization. For example, if you have a content writer with video editing knowledge, you should ask if he or she can help the creative team by completing short videos for content marketing tasks. This means that the creative team  won’t need to recruit freelancers if they receive a sudden influx of short video editing requests.

5. Resource forecasting #

Resource forecasting predicts resource needs before a project begins. During project planning, resource management software can forecast scope, limits, unforeseen expenses, and risks. To create these forecasts, project managers must know the project’s life cycle, objectives, and available resources. Project management software, like FoxPlan provides visibility and simple access to projects and resources.

6. Resource and capacity planning #

Resource planning plans, forecasts, allocates, and uses the workforce effectively and sensibly. Resource capacity planning analyses and closes the capacity-demand imbalance in advance. These two factors are essential to ensuring that no project openings go fulfilled and no extra capacity is lost. Resource and capacity planning maximizes project use and timeliness.

7. Business intelligence and reports #

Business intelligence analyses data to generate actionable insights. Real-time data generates personalized reports and dashboards on resource management metrics. These reports help managers make better decisions and monitor resource health.

Project Portfolio Management Software for Resource Management #

FoxPlan Project Portfolio Management Software allows enterprises to achieve control over resources in a way that would not be feasible without it. Using resource management software, you may alleviate a number of problems associated with managing money and people. These obstacles may include job overload, scope creep, and missed deadlines due to time constraints.

The following are important resource management issues that FoxPlan can help you overcome:

• Managing and prioritizing requests for project work and establishing clear expectations among key stakeholders
• Managing capacity vs demand and knowing who can take on more work.
• Understanding what internal or external responsibilities and/or skill sets are required to meet stakeholder obligations.
• Using available resources on the main focus projects that match with the organization’s strategic goals.
• Scheduling projects when the relevant resources are available is optimized.
• Work capture and planning with resource assignments so managers can prioritize, reduce overuse, and forecast expenses.
• Ability to monitor work and change priorities rapidly
• Progress and expense tracking to guarantee strategy-aligned work balance
• The capacity to suggest how businesses should utilize resource capacity to generate the greatest commercial value.
• Centralized resource view for reviewing, approving, modifying, and scheduling
• A standard workflow for resource requests so that project managers and resource managers can talk to each other and work together.

Summary #

So, should you develop a plan for resource management for your project? The answer will be YES!

The management of resources is an essential component of project management and cannot be ignored. Resource management is essential for supporting your staff and preventing burnout. The time required for resource scheduling will be vastly outweighed by its benefits. In reality, the quantity and quality of projects that your team can manage depend on it. As the project manager, you have the chance to maximize efficiency, prevent overwork, and effectively manage your team’s workload through resource management.

Start managing your project resources today by using FoxPlan Free Trial or contact us to experience FoxPlan in action!