What is Resource Management? 10 Ways to Improve Process

Resource management is the key to ensuring smooth business operations. Properly allocating your company’s talent, budgets, and available technologies can also lead to greater profit margins, more satisfied employees, and improved productivity.

So how can you be sure you’re making the most of your organization’s resources? Identifying company needs, selecting the right software solution, and using proven techniques to improve processes are all crucial for establishing an effective resource management strategy.

What Is Resource Management?

5 Benefits of Resource Planning

Helpful Resource Management Strategies

Evaluating Resource Planning Software Solutions

Improving Resource Management Processes: 10 Techniques

What Is Resource Management?

Good resource management takes advantage of a company’s strengths. More specifically, this involves planning, scheduling, and allocating a company’s resources (which typically refers to its employees, but can also mean money, tech, software, etc.) in order to maximize efficiency. Ultimately this means wasting less time and doing more with less. And with the right techniques in place, businesses can keep projects on track and determine whether teams are capable of taking on new work.

Overutilization, or scheduling work beyond an employee’s capacity, is also a concern for teams. Resource management provides the clarity required to avoid this issue during scheduling.

5 Benefits of Resource Planning

At its core, resource management is all about providing companies with the data they need to determine whether they’re over- or under-utilizing their team members. Keeping this in mind, the associated benefits that come from resource planning include:

1. Balanced workloads. When you have a clear picture of your team members’ capacity, you’re less likely to overload your employees’ schedules. Being able to easily see who can (and can’t) take on more work enables you to distribute tasks as evenly as possible, reducing employee stress and the likelihood of burnout.
2. Optimized utilization. Good resource management considers the individual strengths and skill sets of all team members. When tasks are assigned and schedules determined by playing to these talents, you can ensure you have the right people working on the right projects.
3. More well-rounded teams. The ability to analyze the strengths and gaps of your resource pool presents both training needs for existing staff and the prospect of expanding the team.
4. Increased productivity. Statistics show that employees who are satisfied at work tend to be happier and more engaged, leading to increased productivity. Matching assignments to your staff’s unique strengths and goals, promotes a highly motivated team that delivers impactful results which delight your clients.
5. Timely project completion. According to a recent study, 91.5% of large projects go over schedule, over budget, or both. With resource planning, you can strategically map out timelines based on employee availability and required deadlines, ensuring you have a clear roadmap from start to finish. Plus, once a project extends past its original due date, you can expect that it will ultimately wind up costing more than originally planned. When projects are properly resourced, you’ll gain the foresight needed to keep them on track and avoid budget creep.

Helpful Resource Management Strategies

Now that you know what resource management is and understand why it’s important, it’s time to explore the strategies that you can use in your own organization to maximize your output. To get the ball rolling and start seeing results, try using the following techniques:

• Resource allocation — This process is used to determine how resources are best distributed within a project. A well-allocated project will keep individual workloads manageable by strategically assigning tasks based on the team’s strengths, skills, and utilization.
• Resource utilization — We’ve talked a lot about the importance of keeping employee workloads at a manageable level, but how much work is too much? This is where resource utilization comes in — it provides insight into whether employees are over- or under-utilized by enabling you to see how much work an employee is currently assigned versus how much time they have available.
• Resource leveling — This is another safeguard against overburdening employees’ schedules. It works by balancing the demand for resources against their availability, enabling utilization to be optimized across one or multiple projects.
• Resource forecasting — Planning for upcoming projects is a vital part of resource management. Resource forecasting takes a long-range view of what’s coming down the pipeline and helps you estimate the resources you’ll need to successfully complete those projects. It’s particularly helpful in determining how much work the team can reasonably take on down the line.

Evaluating Resource Planning Software Solutions

At this point, you’re most likely beginning to realize that resource management is a complex process that involves many variables, moving parts, and strategies. This is why companies most always rely on project management software to help them with the task of resource planning.

Though it’s tempting to get right down to it and start comparing features when choosing the solution your organization will use, it’s important to answer some overarching questions before focusing on the nitty gritty.

The first step you should take is to identify the business requirements your selected software solution needs to fulfill. Then, you’ll be better prepared to select the features that will be most useful in fulfilling those requirements.

That said, there are some core features that should be a part of any resource management tool. These include:

• Availability and skills management to ensure you put the right people on the right projects
• Capacity forecasting to ensure that the resources you need will be available when you need them
• Simple reporting so you can easily keep stakeholders informed of progress
• Time tracking for billing purposes, or to get a better idea of how long different tasks take on average
• Workload management to ensure your team stays properly utilized
• Real-time data collection for insight into what’s happening with projects and resources
• Team assignment to keep track of which team members are working on which projects
• Capability to manage multiple projects so you have one central hub for making sure each one is on track and progressing smoothly

Improving Resource Management Processes: 10 Techniques

While the right software solution makes resource management a much more manageable task, there are still ways to improve on your processes. The following techniques can help you boost your resource planning efforts:

• Dynamic resource allocation
• Skills mapping
• Resource swarming
• Exchange program
• Onboarding and offboarding
• Using innovation labs
• Enacting a utilization scorecard
• Performing risk assessments
• Establishing well-being initiatives
• Utilizing exchange platforms

When it comes to your company’s projects, good resource management can make the difference between success and failure. Not only does it ensure that your employees are allocated efficiently, but resource planning also plays a significant role in keeping timelines on track and budgets on target. And with the right resource management software in place, you can be sure that you’re leveraging your team’s full potential.

Ready to start your search for your company’s next (or first) resource management tool? As you consider your options, we’d like to tell you about solutions which bring comprehensive resource management features to the SalesForce platform. Get in touch with our team to find out how we help you meet your company’s unique needs.