Resource Management is centered around the principle of maximizing return on investment. It is a very strategic arm of the business as a whole. Because resources are essentially costs and the more you manage to keep costs down, the more profit you derive out of your projects.
Similarly the tactical aspects of resource management involve
- greater productivity
- timely completion of initiatives
- allocating resources to the most profitable ventures
- minimizing bench pool to zero
- prevent conflicts and chaos
- delivering services and support optimally
In summary, Resource Management is doing more with less. It is about effectively planning the optimal utilization of your resources to obtain maximum efficiency
Successful companies are always focused on achieving high customer engagement & satisfaction, technologically advanced products & services and increased profitability.And resource management sits right at the core of these 3 priorities with human resource management being the key focus point.Numerous resource management challenges lead companies to deploy integrated project and resource management system for holistic execution.Project and resource managers’ #1 challenge is to ensure resource productivity and timely project delivery.Having the right resources assigned to the project based on skills is most important.
Each project manager would want a lion’s share of the best resources for his project.This leads to allocation conflicts and becomes more territorial with inter-department issues if the organization doesn’t have a robust matrix culture.Resource managers have a tough time addressing project manager needs across business functions.Hence, it is important that resource allocation is done based on project priority.
Which project will fetch the maximum $$ or lead to a significant rise in market share, customer satisfaction or brand building.Integrated project and resource management will help to iron out such issues proactively and ensure efficient resource allocation across the organization.
And, the universal challenge is we all hate tracking our time.
And the second one being billable vs non-billable hours.These 2 metrics help identify our resource productivity and project profitability.Also, as project managers you know how your resources are performing w.r.t the project schedule.Most project and resource management systems offer non-intrusive time tracking capabilities with automated timers, time entries, timesheets and approvals for improved time management.Tracking spent hours also helps us to see how well are we aligned with the delivery deadlines as well as where are we spending most of our time.Identifying and reducing time spent on non-billable activities is a must practice to improve our processes, increase resource productivity and scale our operations.
Task Categorization and TrackingThere are going to be 100s of activities within a project.
