Resource Management Tools and Techniques That Really Transform your Business

The importance of time cannot be reiterated enough. We all know that time is the most precious resource of all. As a project manager, you would be aware of how the clock keeps ticking and chasing deadlines becomes so stressful. But other than time, what’s the other important factor that contributes to the success of projects? Your resources; isn’t it? Resources include equipment, facilities, finances, and most importantly, people. Not only is finding the best resources important for the success of your projects, but also how effectively you use them. If resources are mismanaged. It could result in low productivity, delayed timelines, reduced quality, etc. So, what can you do to improve your resource management? The key to this lies in finding resources with matching skill sets and who have an interest in a particular project or task. Resource management tools are the best solutions for all these challenges.

Best Resource Management Techniques That Really Work

But first, let’s look into some top resource management techniques that can really help in transforming your business.

1. Resource Plan

The first and most important resource management technique is to do resource planning. Before scheduling your resources for various tasks, you should first have a proper plan. Start with making a detailed list of resources that are needed to get a project completed. Involve your team and gain their insights into what they might need to get the work done. Take stalk to all the equipment, material, and type of people you need. Timely planning can save you to acquire resources at a lesser cost. But if you realize that you need extra equipment or people at the last minute. You may need to pay a premium price. Therefore, thorough resource planning is in a way financial planning.

2. Resource Allocation

The next resource management technique is resource allocation. How is it different to resource planning? Resource allocation is the process of managing your projects by using the people, equipment, and budget you have in the best possible way. This is generally dependent on the skills of resources and their availability. With resource management software, you can pull out resource allocation reports. These reports offer detailed insights into your projects and resources. This helps you avoid timeline delays and budget overruns. Your reporting capabilities improve when you use a resource management tool. The report provides you with better visibility over your projects.

3. Resource Scheduling
   

Resource scheduling is a resource management technique that can calculate resources. You need to complete a task or project within a given timeline. You can identify consumable resources like money, materials, etc. Reusable resources like staff, equipment, facilities, etc. So, how to go about resource scheduling? This process involves three steps –Allocation, aggregation, and scheduling. In the allocation phase, project managers determine the resources needed to complete the task. Aggregation involves spreading these resources over the entire timeline of the project. Lastly, in scheduling, you need to consider the limited availability of your resources. You can address these limitations through processes like resource smoothing or resource-levelling.

4. Resource Utilization

Resource utilization helps project managers make the most of their available resources. Efficient utilization of resources is vital to get better productivity. It also prevents the employees from burning out due to being over-burdened. So how can you track or calculate resource utilization? Here is the formula:

Resource utilization of a resource = Busy time / Available time

Hitting the maximum utilization of resources leads to a better ROI. Also, It allows project managers to be quick in rescheduling resources to avoid issues from becoming worse. These days, most organizations have moved from spreadsheets to resource management tools. It enables you to easily compare bookings or people with availability. The tool also provides metrics to find if your team members are over-or under-utilized and you can easily compare billable time with staffs’ logged work time.

5. Capacity Planning

If you want your project plans and resource scheduling to be more accurate, then the other important resource management technique is capacity planning and management. When you do capacity planning, you will have resources that fit the bill perfectly. In other words, you will have people who possess the right skills for the project. Also, as a manager, you need to keep your team occupied and completely utilized but ensure that they are not over-utilized. This where the team’s capacity planning and monitoring resource capacity helps, and a resource management tool is your best bet for this.

6. Resource Forecasting

Resource management techniques are imperative for getting the most out of employees, materials, and the budget at hand. Resource forecasting is the process when you predict your resource requirements in advance. If done during the planning stage, resource forecasting can help establish the project’s scope, probable constraints, and likely risks. Therefore, the project manager should be as accurate as possible when making predictions regarding the project lifecycle. So, how can that be done? It requires an all-inclusive understanding of your resources, what they’re working on, and how are they progressing.

Top Five Leading Resource Management Software

Resource management tools offer you various benefits in managing your resources. It provides a more realistic insight into the demand and resource capacity that is required. needed to be delivered by the company. It also manages and helps to prioritize all your work requests and determine which resources will be available at what time. So, read on to find some of the leading resource management software available today.

Mavenlink

An enterprise-level tool, Mavenlink enables you to do powerful resource and project planning. It possesses strong scheduling features with which you can manage your resources effectively. It comes with built-in project templates and facilitates creating resource estimates in a few easy steps. With the help of these resource estimates, you can analyze your profit margins. You can also assess if your current resourcing decisions are working well for you or not. This resource management tools also enables you to calculate your future resource requirements and availability depending on your existing capacity.

Enbraun’s eResource Scheduler

Enbraun’s flagship creation, eResource Scheduler (eRS) is an award-winning resource management software with an intuitive interface. With brilliant features like drag-n-drop planning, user access rights, Gantt chart view, etc. this resource management tool adds a lot more efficiency and transparency to your processes. You can try it in Cloud or On-Premise version and let this resource management software guide you at every step – be it resource planning, project planning, teamwork scheduling, or calculating and managing utilization. 

eResource Scheduler provides clear visibility to all stakeholders, like your project managers, team members, and even clients. With this tool, you can easily assign the best-fitting resources to various projects, plan and manage their schedules, and do project deliveries within the timeline and budget. Including advanced reporting features, this resource management tool various important reports for you. You can pull out availability reports, utilization reports, and financial reports in real-time. All this and more in tailor-made and cost-effective plans suitable for your specific requirements.

Float

This robust resource management tool offers variable resource scheduling options. Wondering how? It provides the drag and drop functionality and can split and duplicate various tasks on the calendar. So, if you want to change some schedules or requirements, these functions will be beneficial. The tool also offers live schedule updates, through which the schedule changes are updated automatically in real-time which provides a heads up to everyone involved. If you want to find a resource for a project, find the right person using its powerful search and sorting filters. You can also envisage your team schedule by using its detailed day view or a 12-week forecast.

Hub Planner

If you want help with resource scheduling, project planning, or time-tracking for your team, Hub Planner is used and trusted by various organizations globally to manage their resource management. This resource management tool offers advantages such as transparent resource scheduling, vacation management, timesheets feature, project management, resource requests, and report creation. All this with a single, easy to use, an online platform that makes resource and project planning simple.

10,000ft by Smartsheet 

If you are looking for a system for matching resources to various project requirements, then this resource management tool is a great choice. With 10,000ft by Smartsheet, you can easily view various reports and data and then make decisions regarding your resources and projects. It provides you easy steps to manage accurate project planning, track multiple teams, schedule projects depending on your team’s capacity, and also forecast the pipeline. With this tool, you can manage your resource allocation, resolve any staffing conflicts, and create the best project team.

Teamdeck

A popular resource management software with features that help you breeze through resource scheduling, time tracking, and project, and leave management. It enables project managers to quickly and easily assign bookings depending on the availability and skill set of the team members. The resource management tools also tracks your team’s resource utilization and accurate billable hours for transparency. Teamdeck can also be used as a leave management system. It helps managers to approve or dismiss leave requests easily from the software. The tool adds the approved leaves to the calendar view which helps in keeping resource booking in line with resource availability.