Market and business trends are evolving at a faster rate than ever before. These emerging trends have directly resulted in an exponential increase in the rate of change of consumer demands. To keep up with these uncertainties and maintain the competitive edge, businesses must stay ahead of the curve.
One of the most critical ways to achieve this is to ensure you have the right personnel on board who are ready to upskill themselves to tackle future endeavors head-on. However, the question is how you will foresee these skill demands? Or how will you analyze and evaluate skill gaps at your firm?
The emergence of advanced tech tools has made this task more straightforward. Implementing a futuristic resource management software will provide foresight into these attributes and help future-proof your workforce.
A survey from PWC reveals that 74% of employees are ready to learn new skills or re-train to remain employable in the future. This article provides an in-depth explanation of how next-gen resource management software can help you attain this goal in this competitive era of 2021 and beyond.
1. Why is resource management necessary for businesses?
Following the best practices to manage resources and adopting the right tools can offer many benefits to businesses. This is because resources are the most high-priced investments of any organization. Therefore, when you implement the best measures to utilize them most efficiently, your firm’s profitability will increase multi-folds. Here is a curated list of the business benefits resource management can offer:
Protects the most significant investment of businesses
As already mentioned, resources are the most significant investment for any business. Resource management software is an enabler that allows managers to unleash the maximum potential of their workforce. Using its advanced features, resource managers can ascertain every resource is utilized optimally on billable and strategic work, thus maximizing the ROI (Return on Investment).
Hire cost-effective global resources across different locations
Resource managers must thoroughly check the organizational talent pool and find the lowest cost resource to minimize project budget overruns. By offering 360-degree real-time visibility of the resources, resource management software makes this task easier. As a result, managers can identify and hire cost-effective competent global resources from different locations while keeping the project quality in check.
Future-ready your workforce against market uncertainties
The growing market volatility has compelled organizations to stay one step ahead of the competition and ensure sustainability. A robust forecasting solution embedded in the tool provides data-driven foresight into the project and skills requirements. Based on that, resource managers can gauge the skills gap, deploy necessary measures such as upskilling or re-training the workforce to stay future-ready.
Forecast and maximize productive resource utilization
The number of hours logged in does not account for productivity as a resource might be accommodated on non-billable or BAU activities. To remain productive and profitable, resource managers need to ensure that their workforce is engaged in billable or strategic projects that will add to the bottom line. A resource management solution helps them forecast the utilization and implement remedial measures ahead of time.
Overcome the challenges of matrix organization
Managing resources in a matrixed organization can be arduous as employees are dispersed across geographical peripheries and have multiple reporting lines. Resource management software can help managers tackle these challenges with a centralized platform and other intuitive features that provide real-time insights.
2. How can futuristic resource management future-proof your business?
Forecasts project resource demand
If a project is set to initiate 2-3 months down the line or reaches a probability stage in the approval sales pipeline, project managers can form a WBS and list the skill requirements with a headcount in advance. It allows resource managers to stay forewarned of the project resource demand and prepare a resource plan well before the project initiation date.
Identifies and bridges the skills gap well in advance
Once the resource demand is made clear, resource managers can use the resource management tool to identify the existing capacity that aligns with the requirements. If there is a shortage or excess of resources, managers will have enough leeway to implement the right course of action and bridge the skills gap well ahead of the curve.
Enables planning of pipeline projects
With resource forecasting and capacity planning, managers get enough lead time to procure competent resources, organize planned hiring, and minimize last-minute hiring/firing costs. In addition, if the pipeline project is of high priority, they can equip out-rotation and backfill strategy to fill the niche positions without affecting the ongoing project.
Forecasts and maximizes billable utilization
As discussed in the previous section, resource management solution forecasts utilization levels. Suppose a resource is underutilized or working on non-billable activities down the line. In that case, managers can take on more projects or mobilize the resources to the strategic or billable work that aligns with their roles. These techniques will eventually enhance productive utilization and profitability.
Foresee people on the bench and implement resourcing measures
The advanced forecasting solution also forewarns resource managers about the resources likely to end up on the bench. As a result, managers can proactively allocate suitable projects to reduce their bench time or form an action plan to upskill or re-train the benched resources. Thus, it will significantly minimize their idle time and prepare them to take on diverse, highly specialized projects.
3. What to look for in a futuristic resource management tool?
Modern resource management goes beyond simple scheduling and covers futuristic functions like forecasting, capacity planning, scenario analysis, etc. The futuristic software will integrate intuitive Business Intelligence (BI) to provide precise, real-time reports to strengthen informed decision-making. Moreover, the tool will entail functions that solely focus on employee empowerment to aid employee retention. Therefore, it’s time resource managers should adopt these trends and stay ahead of the competition.
4. Conclusion
Futuristic resource management software is the way to go for businesses looking forward to beating market volatility in 2021 and beyond. They can leverage the benefits offered by the tool to optimize and future-proof their workforce and stay relevant in the long haul. Experience the future of Resource Management Software by Saviom and learn how it can help businesses stay competitive today and tomorrow.
Mahendra Gupta is PMP certified with over 15 years of expertise in the workforce planning and resource management space. As a Project Consultant for Saviom Software, his experience has enabled many multinational companies across the globe to diversify their project portfolio and achieve strategic goals.