Once Saviom ERM was deployed, GWS was able to:

• Achieve 20% more projects with 10% fewer resources
• Ascribe niche personnel qualifications and improve skill-matches for projects
• Gain enhanced control over resource and capacity planning measures
• Perfect their demand forecasting and staff scheduling processes

Saviom Enterprise Resource Management Software is designed to give businesses unconditional internal visibility as well as map upcoming project demand, thereby making it a specialist resource management solution.

From its dedicated utilisation and capacity against demand reports to its sophisticated, multi-functional advanced filters that let you sift through an extensive database, each of Saviom’s features has been diligently conceived to cater to the needs of today’s competitive businesses.

Built to engineer efficiency, Saviom’s customer-centricity and quick turn around time are others factors that attract organisations like GWS to its flagship ERM tool.

Your staff productivity too can reach its peak in no time.
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Today, with Saviom ERM, the process has had a comprehensive revamp. Spread across Australia and New Zealand, they schedule and manage over 100 engineers with the tool. Our chat with Rod Burton, their Electrical Engineering Manager who has been with the organisation for over 15 years, helped us understand how this transformation transpired.

The Struggles Of Unscientific Methodologies

Earlier, even as the project managers communicated amongst themselves, the resource divide was proving to be a huge roadblock. Different teams would require the same set of resources and it was getting increasingly difficult to make divisions on a short notice.

“Urgent issues would arise and take priority over slated projects and project managers would often compete for resources. This led to project slippage, excess hours among other repercussions of juggling resources around”, said Rod, with regard to the scheduling situation that prevailed before they deployed Saviom.

In addition, their forecasting was a very speculative process that involved ‘guesstimating’ from cumulative data derived from different spreadsheets. Such tentative figures did not really help draw solid conclusions and even with their best efforts they were unable to reach the level of forecasting maturity that they really wanted to.

However, the team’s interest in wanting to switch over to a more sustainable solution speaks volumes about their own solution-driven approach.

The Resolution That Saviom ERM Provided

Having deployed Saviom ERM, team Scott Automation is not only able to plan well ahead of time but also forecast with absolute precision. So much so, having started in their Australia region (Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne) the software got swiftly implemented into three of their New Zealand offices as well.

The Gantt chart’s unconditional visibility has helped teams juggle around and shuffle resources easily. Their managers have clarity on their staffing situations and can easily book them onto upcoming projects. Besides this ease of shuffling, they are also intuitive enough to forecast 3 to 6 months’ worth of project work with absolute precision as they now rely on data-driven capacity vs. demand reports.“It is a software that allows you to schedule who is doing what, when and lets you forecast your future capacity vs demand, which basically shapes your forecasting process. That has been the our biggest takeaway and it would also be why we’ll recommend it to others, as well” sums up Rod.

This has directly translated into heightened efficiency levels as well as an overall increase in productivity. Considering how the team saves a lot of time and effort, it directly reflects as an ability to perform better. “People knowing what they need to do next, where they are working and the planning involved in finding what the person has to do is done well before time, instead of everything being ad hoc. Considering efficiency is all about saving money and time, we can definitely say that it has improved,” he signs off.

Rods’s insights are a testament to the four pillars of successful Resource Management, (visibility, forecasting, utilisation and finding quality talent) just as they are to Saviom ERM.

Much like Rod, you too can manage your teams efficiently and achieve more projects. Simply sign up for a demo right now to find out how!

Having studied those patterns for years, the founding fathers of Resource Management have prescribed the following four as the pillars of successful Resource Management:

• Absolute visibility of all resources and their projects
• Being able to allocate the right person to execute the job at hand
• Optimizing the utilization levels of all resources
• Forecasting future resource requirements

Certain pillars maybe important for certain project types; like constantly balancing skillsets with requirements becomes very important for volatile accounting projects as resources shift, while unyielding construction projects may do better with enhanced forecasting capabilities.

Over the years, we have had the opportunity to work with some of the most prestigious corporations of the world and this has led us to study the transformations that successful implementation of these pillars can cause. Here are the findings of our study.

FTI Consulting-Business Advisory:

The Company: FTI Consulting is a business advisory firm that specializes in corporate finance and restructuring.

The Roadblock: Weekly scheduling meetings at FTI used to be a time suck purely because they had no way to access their staffing situation. They basically lacked organization-wide visibility in terms of resource commitment levels and project statuses. This came in the way of finding the right person for the tasks at hand as well.

The Solution: Gantt charts are one of the best ways to have an organization-wide view of projects and resources. They not only provide visibility but also make individual files accessible. With Saviom’s advanced search filters and sophisticated Gantt Chart, FTI’s scheduling procedure, thus became a breeze.

Global Wind Services-Turbine Technicians:

The Company: Established in Denmark in 2008, Global Wind Service (GWS) installs and maintains onshore and offshore wind turbines for customers in over 30 countries.

The Roadblock: The GWS team was working with multiple Excel spreadsheets and missed having a unified view, that could align multiple project statuses, at one go. As a result, they could neither optimize output levels nor track pipeline projects such that they could plan well in advance.

The Solution: Enterprise-level ERM solutions make real-time modifications as well as tracking, very easy for managers who use them. Saviom, goes a step ahead with its data-driven utilization reports that lets managers track individual resource output statuses and allocate their tasks. As a result, GWS unlocked a potential to complete 10-20% more projects with 10% lesser staff.

Siemens AG – Global Conglomerate

The Company: Siemens Corporation, a company with employees in over 200 countries and 165 years of experience is a global technology powerhouse.

The Roadblock: Forecasting future requirements is essential for business to be both smart and agile. Having realised the importance of such intuitiveness, Siemens had tried everything from multiple Excel spreadsheets to developing their own tool for resource management. But nothing gave them the required ‘scientific’ edge over future requirements.

The Solution: Comparing future capacity against demand is a sure shot way of landing yourself with insights that will empower long-term as well as short-term decisions. Saviom’s capacity vs demand reports provide accurate data on forthcoming requirements. Along with this, the booked vs actuals and the timesheets features also helped Siemens develop the intuitiveness to forecast as much as 6 months ahead.

How has Resource Management changed things at your organization? Tell us with your comments below.

Considering RMA, a multi-disciplinary engineering firm, believes in having a sleek management, such flawless collaboration was crucial to their success. However, with the logistical confines of networking between different locations and clunky spreadsheets, their workflow structures were not always as productive.

As a part of an organization that was averse to micromanagement, Tony, who comes with over 40 years of coding experience, was on the lookout for a specialised tool that would empower RMA’s workflow meetings with precision and data-driven decisions. And it makes us really proud to document their Saviom journey that has gone on to redefine their workflow structures.

Workflow Woes

Their biggest struggle was the Monday ‘workflow’ meeting. As an organization with over 70 resources spread in 3 different offices, their typical workflow meeting had team leads toiling with different spreadsheets and databases. The meetings were long and unyielding, so much so that it was failing to give them the direction it was meant to.

This resulted in a lack of clarity on overall and individual workloads. Updating spreadsheets was also a constant struggle for the managers.

As Tony sums it up, “We are good at sharing workload. We often have different people working on the same project from different locations, but it was getting difficult to understand who was busy and who wasn’t. Every Monday morning, we had team leads from across three offices video conferencing to sort out resourcing. We wanted a quick way to see how busy we were.”

Other than the obvious cost overhead this caused, it was a productivity loophole that RMA was determined to solve.

Tony Loveday, Principal Engineer, RMA Engineering

How Scientific Scheduling Turned Tables

The level to which Saviom has been integrated with RMA is testified in the progression of the number of users they have. The count multiplied over the months.

So what prompted them to get as many licenses? To quote Tony, “We now wrap up workflow meetings in under 30 minutes. We assess what different teams are up to, who needs a hand and reshuffle everything within that timeframe.”

From workflow meetings in which spreadsheets were not updated and people weren’t sure about timelines and allocations, they are now on a platform where everybody knows the position of their respective teams with absolute clarity. Their team leads all have Saviom open and can reshuffle within minutes.

Also assessing individual utilization through the reports is something they have found to be of great use. “Our meetings are far more productive than they used to be. We have come a long way from earlier meetings where people weren’t really prepared,” Tony quips.

Considering it is a team of perfectionists, they were specific about customizing the software to suit their needs and spent quite a while on getting it right. Their hard work paid off and ever since then, they haven’t had to change anything about the way Saviom functions.

The Verdict…

Tony and his team have been active Saviom users for over a year now. And, chatting with them about what they think of it, makes us realise why we are in this industry….

“We find it very useful. While video conferencing, everybody has a view of the workflow with twin screens. We flip through bookings and different teams. Each team leader opens up his screen and we look at schedules, overloads and other things. It is very easy to see what is happening. The software is simple and quickly shows where the under/overloads are.

I would absolutely recommend Saviom. It is simple, easy to use and not too bloated. The user interface for resource allocations, in particular, is terrific.

The software makes it very easy to see all the resources that we have. We use it for scheduling as well and have found it to be very useful,” he concludes.

The company has grown quickly in eight years, thanks to the many public and private organisations that continue to look for environmentally friendly methods to generate energy. Among the teams that have grown particularly quickly are the technical teams. These consist of over 500 engineers across Europe.

The problem with Excel

Microsoft Excel is a powerful piece of technology, but it is not fit for managing multiple resources across multiple locations:

• It doesn’t force users to keep it up to date, allowing unintended mistakes to creep in.
• It’s difficult to enforce a single template, which makes consolidation and collaboration difficult.
• You cannot easily gain a real-time view of the ‘truth’ across all business units.

The challenge: Managing 500 technical resources in a high-sales business

Until recently, GWS relied on a number of complex, manually-updated Excel sheets to coordinate its 500 technicians.

John Kamphorst, co-founder and project manager at GWS explains: “We had 15 project managers and 10 supporting staff members who required a view of how our various projects were scheduled.”

Each team used its own project management spreadsheet, which complicated matters as Excel could not offer a single, unified view of resourcing or a clear picture of engineer allocation across all projects. This made it difficult to align projects to sales activities, and to forecast resource requirements in advance.

GWS needed an easy-to-install, purpose-built resource management solution that could be adapted to meet the organisation’s unique resource and scheduling requirements. A single solution, used in a consistent manner across the company, would bring a standardised approach to engineer allocation.

The solution: A simple way to streamline project management and increase productivity

In second half of 2015, GWS simplified and accelerated its approach by deploying Saviom Resource Planning.

Saviom Resource Planning is a specialist resource management solution that helps organisations efficiently plan and manage their workforce scheduling.

One of the features that convinced GWS to implement Saviom was the solution’s ability to ascribe multiple parameters to personnel within the system. In this case, some engineers had over 30 certifications that would determine their suitability for different projects.

Saviom worked closely with GWS to implement the solution and get it up and running in the shortest possible time.

The estimated result: 20% more projects are completed with 10% fewer technicians

By early 2016, Global Wind Service had said goodbye to a multitude of Excel spreadsheets and whiteboards and welcomed for the first time a single, unified view of its resources. Saviom Resource Planning was deployed with little disruption to GWS’s existing planning and working practices. “After a couple of months, people realised that things were running smoothly. We all felt much less frustrated,” says Kamphorst.

All project teams now have clear visibility and project managers are able to forecast and schedule resources for upcoming jobs. As a result, and although not really measurable as the initial systems could not register, Global Wind Service found that after just six months it was running approximately 10-20% more projects with 10% fewer technicians.

At least no technicians were sitting at home any more due to being under the radar of the OPS staff which increased the efficiency significant.

“Saviom Resource Planning offers the perfect price vs. quality balance. What is also really helpful for us is Saviom’s fast response time when it comes to modifications and sorting out issues specific to Global Wind Service.”

“As a project manager, I feel we have much greater control of the booking and planning process. We started to have the right discussions on a managerial level about how to deal with things such as capacity and demand, as well as how to solve problems and support our management.”

Outotec, headquartered in Finland is a global leader in minerals and metals processing technologies. Outotec Australia was facing difficulties in scheduling it’s 200 resources across its 15 different locations using multiple spreadsheets. Three years ago, they decided to shift from traditional spreadsheets to Saviom’s Resource Planning and Scheduling application. We spoke to Gavin Shim from the Outotec IT team who has been closely working with Saviom’s product for the past 3 years.

The Spreadsheet Plight

Outotec was interviewed for the prominent reasons that made them to look for an alternate solution. As a fundamental pain area, scheduling critical resources using spreadsheets was identified as a cumbersome and outdated method. “In the past we were using a spreadsheet which didn’t update itself”, mentioned Gavin, outlining how it became necessary to manually update a spreadsheet for viewing results. In case any detail in manual updating was skipped, the results would be misleading.

“Scheduling before (Saviom) was very archaic since we were only using paper based solutions”, added Gavin. Spreadsheets, by nature, are not intelligent to assist seamless management decision making. For example – features like views based on organizational roles and business intelligence capabilities are not default in spreadsheets.

Thus, a mundane routine in scheduling via spreadsheets was not only strenuous from an individual manager’s perspective, it was risky and obsolete from an organizational perspective as well.

Saviom – The Saviour

The spreadsheet mode comes as an immediate scheduling tool, however, as Outotec discovered; it is primitive and no match for a specialized Resource Scheduling application.

A visual delight

Gavin said that “The best feature (about Saviom’s product) is the graphical representation through their Gantt chart”. A Gantt Chart, typically, helps in visualizing resources across several levels of details like resource type, timeline, project type etc. Since the application is visually intuitive, it is easy to operate and visualize the effect of changes instantly.

He added, “By dragging and dropping our bookings with Saviom, you’re able to immediately see the impact”. This real-time impact analysis is grossly missed in a spreadsheet.

A planning wonder

Saviom works wonders for resource planning. Gavin further explained stating “By being able to search for particular skills of resources, it makes it easier for scheduling people onto a job”. The filtering option with respect to skills, capacity or other constraints, helps at immediately identifying the right resource for the job.

The fluid design

For something as important as scheduling, it is imperative that it amalgamates and integrates with the organization’s requirements. Saviom’s product is highly configurable and can easily suffice to needs and policies.

Gavin has been extremely happy with the performance of the software application and does shy off saying – “Yes, in fact we have recommended it to other branches of our company. We had chats with people in Canada and also in South Africa”. The application is built on a highly configurable architecture to meet specific scheduling needs throughout their different businesses. He mentions “Configurable, easy to customise” as key attributes of Saviom’s product.

The Verdict

Saviom System has helped Outotec in allocating, scheduling and managing its resources in an efficient way. Replacing the pain of dealing with spreadsheets, the application is very easy to use and intuitive in nature.

Outotec describes Saviom’s product through a one liner – “It is powerful and simple to use”. It is definitely the way forward when it comes to scheduling for operational excellence, cost reduction and enhanced profitability.

Anna has been closely working with SAVIOM for close to one year to transform the way FTI Consulting thinks about resource management and are now scheduling about 200 employees in their office in the United Kingdom.

The decision to move for a flexible Resource management tool

FTI wanted a flexible tool for their scheduling needs. They were using another resource management solution, however that did not yield results as they wished. Anna says, “The other tool we used was clunky, for example- if you want to make any changes to anything to do with the system, it is very difficult”. Schedule changes are part and parcel of any business and they need to be updated in the system. If the tool does not allow you to update your scheduling changes, it’s a perfect recipe for disaster. Clearly the tool did not cater to FTI’s customized requirements.

The scheduling process at FTI consulting was intensive as well. Their scheduling process was completed on a particular day of the week. Anna recalls, “My general procedure is that I usually send a copy of the schedule once a week to my employees and to the Engagement Leaders and the scheduling is usually done on a Friday or Monday”. You can sense scheduling was an intense and critical process for FTI. For their requirement they wanted a tool that was highly configurable in nature, something that specifically met their unique requirements and save them the time they were spending.

How Saviom worked wonders for FTI Consulting

The management decided to go for Saviom Resource Management. It’s been close to a year since the team has switched to Saviom and their management and team is highly impressed with the tool.

The Resource Managers at FTI now have a complete view of their resources and projects, making their scheduling activities a lot easier. Anna says, “It is a very visual tool. It gives you a full picture of where you and your staff are, letting you know the current staffing situation straight away”. Clear visualization of resources through Saviom helps Anna to find the right person for the right job.

Since scheduling process at FTI was intense, they wanted a tool that was flexible. A tool that worked the way they wanted it too. In Anna’s words, “The tool is easy to program and configure, for example- setting up parameters is intuitive. You can also make it work the way you want it to work and also make it look the way you want it to”. Saviom was just what the doctor ordered for FTI.

As Anna says, “I have a huge amount of experience in resource planning [15 years!] and this is the tool I definitely prefer”.

Verdict

Saviom has helped FTI consulting in scheduling and managing their resources effectively. With an intense scheduling process and customized scheduling requirements, Saviom was just what the doctor ordered. Anna says, “It is the best resource planning tool that I have ever used. Its light, it doesn’t have a lot of systems behind it, so it is easy to operate”.

That’s why we sat down with one of the users within the process industries and drives division of Siemens Corporation, a company with employees in over 190+ countries and 165 years of experience as a global technology powerhouse.

They have been closely working with SAVIOM for the past two years to transform the way Siemens thinks about resource management. They are now scheduling 300 resources in four countries around the world with our Resource Management system and are happy about the switch.

Making the decision to move past the spreadsheet nightmare

One of the biggest struggles global companies face is finding a sweet spot for tracking utilization levels and forecasting future resource requirements.
In an effort to hold it all together, it’s not uncommon to see firms juggle multiple excel documents for this purpose.

Before getting their hands on the power of SAVIOM, Siemens was using a go-to MS project approach for planning purposes – which meant a lot of inefficiency. As they realized all the complications this was causing, they decided to move on to a self-made excel tool which they stuck with for the next two years.

However, this new tool wasn’t quite sophisticated enough to meet their requirements either. The user recalls, “Our excel tool wasn’t convenient and the reports it generated were limited. The changes and modification capabilities were limited, so we couldn’t use that tool”.

Read More
How Outdated Resource Scheduling and Management Tools are Hurting Businesses?

It was time to find a more robust solution, and based on a recommendation from their counterparts in Australia, they thought the SAVIOM tool might have the potential to help.

In the user’s words- “It was the combination of features, easy-handling and price making, that made it attractive to management”. So, Siemens purchased SAVIOM and installed the software at the end of 2012. They began running it seriously in 2013.

How did SAVIOM measure up against other resource management tools in the end?

By using SAVIOM to better track utilization and forecast future resource requirements for their resource pool, Siemens was able to streamline the process for finding the right resource for the right job. “The main task to use the tool was to look into the future and see people’s utilization levels. We are using it as a short to mid-term tool so we can see our outlook for the upcoming 6 months or so. It was necessary for us to have a tool that gave us the capacity to make such future decisions”. Most importantly, this allowed line managers to make more confident and informed decisions and develop a better outlook over time.

Read More
How to Select a Perfect Resource Management Software

But the user’s favourite feature in SAVIOM turned out to be the way it improved handling of bookings. “We are partially using this for booked vs actual analysis, which we are using for a variety of countries around the world. In certain areas, we are using the timesheet function which allows you to see the utilization of our resources”. This is especially important for our counterparts.

Finally, he mentions how SAVIOM gives them the flexibility to use it for other types of resources such as apartments.

We can define and manage anything important to us as a resource. It is just this flexibility that makes this software such a great fit for such a wide range of users.

Verdict

“It’s inexpensive and an easy to handle tool that satisfies our requirements. The utilization aspects and the analysis and the combination of price and features make it very good”, says the user.

Form and function meets price…can’t beat that.