Many project-intensive businesses use either silos of spreadsheets or some home-grown tools for scheduling their resources. These solutions are incredibly limiting, time-consuming, and hard to maintain. It creates double bookings, over/underutilized resources, undesirable hiring/firing, low staff morale, improper planning of pipeline projects, etc.

To achieve your limited resources’ full potential, a business must establish an enterprise-level mature resource scheduling process.

This guide has been designed for businesses to get a comprehensive understanding of resource scheduling systems to establish the right processes with the right tool.

What is resource scheduling?

Resource scheduling is the most crucial part of the resource management process. It involves identifying and allocating resources for a specific period to various types of activities.

Resource scheduling is the process of assigning resources such as people, equipment, materials, and facilities to various tasks for a specific period. These activities can be related to project work or non-project work, i.e., BAU, Support, admin, operation, etc.

The main objective of resource scheduling is to ensure that the right resources are available at the right time to meet project deadlines and achieve business objectives.

Project managers estimate the resource requirements needed to meet the deliverables and request the same from resource managers who complete the initial allocation.

In short, resource planning and scheduling is crucial for streamlining resource and project management processes.

Types of resource scheduling methods

Below are the two main types of resource scheduling methods:

Resource-constrained scheduling

The resource-constrained scheduling method is primarily used when an organization has limited resource availability. The goal is to ensure that the project deliverables are completed efficiently without overloading existing resources. It involves adjusting the start and finish dates of tasks to ensure optimal utilization of resources throughout the project lifecycle.

For example, a software development project requires a senior programmer who is only available part-time due to other commitments. To accommodate this constraint, the project manager can alter the timeline of tasks that require the programmer’s expertise based on their availability. Thus, optimizing the project schedule based on the resource capacity ensures that the tasks are delivered as per expectations while maintaining quality.

Time-constrained scheduling

The time-constrained scheduling method is primarily used to manage resource constraints in projects with strict deadlines. In this approach, the project timeline is considered a critical factor, and the goal is to ensure that the project is completed within the specified deadline.

For example, in a construction project with a fixed completion date, the project schedule may be organized in such a way that key resources are first assigned to critical tasks. This ensures their availability and avoids scheduling conflicts. Moreover, managers can also add additional resources to keep the project schedule on track.

Now that we know the types of scheduling, let’s learn about its importance.

Importance of resource scheduling in project management

Every project is an integration of multiple tasks that require certain niche skills to produce tangible results. The onus is on project and resource managers to ensure that the right resource is working on the right task. Or else, it may deteriorate the project quality and also reduce employee productivity.

At the same time, the manager has to keep in check the availability of the workforce. For instance, if one critical resource is booked for multiple projects simultaneously, it will cause over-utilization, eventually leading to burnout.

Adding to that, if the resource’s skills do not align with the project tasks, it will compromise the project’s quality and lead to employee dissatisfaction. These factors contribute to a low resource health index.

Moreover, every project has a definite timeline, and it’s the project manager’s responsibility to ensure that the project is delivered on time and within budget. If the resources are not scheduled before the project initiates, it will result in delays in task execution and, in worse cases, may even bring the project to a halt.

However, suppose managers take a systematic approach to schedule the resources. It will ascertain that resources’ skillset is in-line with their tasks and their utilization is as per their capacity. This will also enable project managers to document a well-defined work breakdown structure with a systematic resource plan in place.

Additionally, modern resource scheduling solutions provide data-driven foresight into various resource metrics like resource availability, capacity vs. demand gap, utilization, etc. Based on this, managers can implement the right resourcing measures and eliminate potential bottlenecks.

Overall, intuitive resource scheduling in project management ensures the timely delivery of projects and within budget enhancing client satisfaction.

Given the importance of resource scheduling in a project environment, let’s discuss its benefits.

How does modern resource scheduling & planning benefit businesses?

An effective workforce scheduling system can resolve several challenges faced by modern businesses with the matrix organization. It will provide immense benefits in the following areas:

Maintains and elevates project quality

Having the right person with the right skills is crucial for a project to finish within budgeted time and without disrupting the quality. Therefore, applying the right resource scheduling methodology helps project managers achieve the same by identifying and allocating a competent person.

In the absence of proper scheduling practices, managers will resort to allocating the first visible resources to project tasks. This may lead to the assignment of under or overqualified resources, resulting in budget and schedule overruns. Moreover, skill mismatches can jeopardize the project quality and result in low client satisfaction.

Ensures timely delivery of projects

Project resource scheduling has two major benefits. Firstly, it facilitates the competent allocation of resources during the project planning stage. When skilled employees are assigned to tasks matching their competencies, it guarantees better quality of work and reduces the risk of errors.

Secondly, it allows project managers to schedule the resources for critical tasks in advance. This ensures the availability of niche-skilled professionals for project initiation. Thus, proactive resource scheduling enables managers to avoid last-minute firefighting and facilitate smooth project execution and on-time delivery.

Allows uniform scheduling with enterprise-wide visibility

A robust resource scheduling system can help organizations achieve 360-degree visibility into the enterprise talent pool and its attributes, such as competencies, roles, cost rates, experiences, locations, departments, etc. It also allows supervisors to foresee ongoing and pipeline resource demand, both project and non-project work.

Moreover, the tool provides visibility into resource calendars, including upcoming vacations, PTOs, paid leaves, etc. Such a granular view of resources empowers managers to facilitate uniform scheduling, ensuring that resources are assigned to tasks based on their skills and capacity.

Empowers proactive capacity planning with data-driven foresight

The system’s multi-dimensional forecasting capabilities can provide foresight into resource demand for pipeline projects. It helps managers gauge the upcoming project requirements against the existing workforce capacity to identify short and long-term resource excess/deficits.

Based on this analysis, managers can create a comprehensive capacity plan to address and bridge the gap. For instance, they can adjust project timelines, retrain current employees, or hire a contingent workforce ahead of time. Therefore, the system empowers proactive capacity planning, helping firms mitigate skill gaps and maintain an optimized workforce.

Enhances productivity with optimal resource utilization

Modern resource scheduling systems can forecast billable and strategic utilization of the workforce ahead of time. The tool leverages real-time Business Intelligence and advanced analytics to analyze past and present project data to create realistic resource estimates for future opportunities.

Therefore, it can help managers mobilize employees from non-billable work to billable or high-priority projects to maximize profitable utilization. Moreover, they can bring forward future projects, sell resource time aggressively, or restructure capacity in different areas to avoid capacity wastage and ensure optimal utilization levels.

Reduces project costs ahead of time with real-time financial reports

The system can track critical project financial indicators like resourcing cost, revenue, profit margins, and overheads. It provides reports such as forecast vs. actual that allow organizations to identify financial anomalies and take corrective action to control project costs ahead of time.

For instance, managers can analyze the cost rates of the employees and create an optimal band mix to reduce project resourcing costs. By maintaining a blended combination of senior, junior, interns, and niche-skilled resources, managers can keep projects on track while ensuring higher deliverable quality.

Helps leverage the shared-services model and deliver more projects with fewer resources

Modernized businesses leverage a shared-services model to optimize their operational efficiency and minimize overhead costs. Such a model emphasizes active cross-team collaboration and engagements, allowing firms to deliver more projects despite resourcing constraints.

With the ability to update data in real-time and maintain a centralized data repository, a modern scheduling tool allows seamless management of a shared-services model.

Moreover, it enables project managers to recruit inter-departmental resources from the internal channels rather than incurring additional hiring costs.

In the following section, we’ll learn about the challenges that come with using legacy tools for resource scheduling.

What are the challenges of traditional resource scheduling techniques?

Most project-centric businesses are fighting against pertinent resource management challenges of the 2020s with systems developed in the 1990s.

It is valid for all types of companies irrespective of size, market share, or market reputation. The tools listed below are some examples of legacy systems:

• Silos of spreadsheets built with macros
• Home-grown half-baked systems
• Windows-based systems of the 1990s
• Entry-level resource scheduling system

Most of these outdated legacy tools have the following challenges:

Easy to develop but difficult to maintain

The ease of developing manual processes, such as updating siloed spreadsheets, often comes at the cost of long-term maintainability. Manual processes are prone to errors, and they cannot be updated in real-time. Over time, as projects evolve, maintaining these siloed spreadsheets becomes increasingly complex.

Furthermore, the lack of automation hampers efficiency, and the risk of inaccuracies grows, undermining the reliability of the data repository. Therefore, what seemed like a convenient solution at the onset transforms into a hindrance in the long haul.

Paying a high price for lost market opportunities

Due to the absence of multi-dimensional forecasting and capacity planning, managers fail to manage resource requirements for pipeline projects effectively. Thus, some critical project positions remain vacant when the project is initiated, eventually compelling the managers to give up the project.

Thus, businesses pay a high price for not having the foresight into upcoming resource needs, impacting their ability to capitalize on emerging market trends and potentially losing out on lucrative projects due to insufficient planning.

Unable to provide forecasting and capacity planning

The legacy tools cannot predict the resource metrics and provide data-driven foresight. This inability to forecast resource demands for future projects creates a significant gap in strategic planning.

Managers find themselves without a comprehensive resource capacity plan, making it challenging to align workforce capabilities with upcoming project requirements. This increases the chances of project failures and also results in client dissatisfaction.

Not designed for improving profitable utilization & cost reduction

Since legacy tools cannot forecast billable and strategic utilization of resources in advance, managers resort to unplanned hiring/firing cycles to meet project demands. Moreover, lack of real-time visibility hampers their effort to manage resource under/overloading and optimize utilization rates.

This reactive approach not only increases project resourcing costs but also diminishes the opportunity for managers to implement cost-effective measures. Furthermore, the inability to align resource planning with strategic business objectives further limits the organization’s ability to enhance profitability and operational efficiency.

Unsuitable for matrixed organization structure

The challenges posed by disparate spreadsheets and siloed data are exacerbated in a matrixed organizational structure. The inherent limitations of these tools hamper the efficient functioning of a matrixed organization, where seamless coordination and data transparency are paramount.

Decision-makers find it increasingly difficult to maintain a single source of truth, resulting in effective collaboration across various departments. Therefore, it often results in data duplication, information silos, and inefficient workforce utilization.

Unable to deliver real-time business intelligence

Most home-grown tools do not have advanced business intelligence capability that can provide real-time tailored reports on every resource KPI. Therefore, organizations purely rely on guesstimations and approximations. Unfortunately, this can increase the risk of project failures.

Without real-time business intelligence, firms are unable to adapt to changing circumstances, identify emerging trends, or capitalize on new opportunities. This lack of agility and responsiveness compromises the organization’s competitive edge in a dynamic business landscape.

Now that the challenges of scheduling are clear let’s understand the factors that one must take into account during project resource scheduling.

Factors to consider in resource scheduling

A resource scheduler can consider several factors that can help expedite resource scheduling and make it effective. Here are a few prominent factors to look into while scheduling resources.

Project requirements and objectives

During resource scheduling, one must consider the project’s specific requirements and objectives. It involves determining the scope, deliverables, and goals to understand the type and quantities of requisite resources to accomplish the project.

Resource availability and capacity

Another crucial factor to consider for a resource scheduler is the availability and capacity of resources. Factoring in the factors like shifts, vacations, etc., is also essential as they can impact resource availability to ensure resources scheduled are actually available when required.

Skill sets and qualifications

A resource planner must consider the skills, qualifications, competencies, expertise, knowledge, certifications, experience, etc., to ensure resources have the potential to execute the assigned tasks effectively.

Dependencies and constraints

The resource planner must find out the task interdependencies, constraints, or limitations that can affect the resource scheduling. Creating a critical path for a complex project can also help identify task interdependencies in project resource management.

Project timelines and deadlines

A resource scheduler must also consider project timelines, duration and sequence of tasks, and deadlines. Considering milestone completion dates and critical deadlines is also vital to ensure resource allocation aligns with project scheduling and tasks are completed on time.

Budget and cost considerations

Last but not least, a resource scheduler must also factor in account budget and cost considerations. They must consider the costs of various resources, such as professionals, labor, equipment rentals, raw materials, etc., and optimize resource allocation to stay within the budget.

Given the factors to be considered while scheduling resources, the following section describes the best practices to make project resource scheduling effective.

Best practices for efficient project resource scheduling

Resource scheduling is not only about plugging the hole by scheduling or allocating resources against the projects. It goes much beyond this process.

A comprehensive resource scheduling system includes enterprise-wide resource scheduling, forecasting, capacity planning, utilization management, tracking actuals, etc.

Form a WBS to create task dependencies and create schedules as per resource competency

Pre-planning is essential for project managers to eliminate potential bottlenecks and unnecessary delays. One of the major tasks is to get the right resource for the project tasks.

Managers can do this seamlessly by creating a work breakdown structure that defines all the project’s nitty-gritty and defining task dependencies along with the skills required. Once the details are in place, managers can schedule resources with the right competencies for the bifurcated project tasks.

Leverage resource optimization techniques to manage projects better

Often project managers are caught in a situation where the resources who are allocated the tasks from the critical path aren’t available. With an overview of their availability, managers can use the resource booking software and implement resource optimization techniques like resource leveling or resource smoothing. It will adjust the project timeline based on resources’ availability or pull-in more resources from across departments to complete one task.

Centralize enterprise resource or workforce scheduling

The system should provide a single schedule for the whole enterprise to establish a single source of truth. For example,

• Resource allocation and scheduling can be done in real-time by multiple stakeholders
• Agile resource allocation can be achieved with easy drag and drop
• The schedule can be viewed in numerous ways in a matrix organization structure
• Ensure there is no double booking

Manage the project delivery in a complex matrix organization

Most of the large organizations have now moved into a matrix reporting structure that has multiple dimensions. The resource scheduling system provides visibility of people’s information across the complex matrix organization structure and controls the rights to modify them. It ensures that no resource falls through the cracks and also facilitates project managers to allocate cross-functional resources and ascertain seamless project delivery.

Track competencies in real-time and allocate the right people to projects. It is critical to keep competency information up to date. The right people are assigned to the right project across the enterprise based on skill, experience, qualifications, location, cost rate, etc. This information can be updated by the concerned user, which can be validated before accepting it. Moreover, competent resource allocation is the stepping stone to faster project delivery and an efficient project management process.

Forecast workforce utilization to increase profitability

The system should provide short- or long-term forecasting of billable, strategic, and overall workforce utilization. So that corrective actions can be taken to protect the effective utilization and profitability of your business. As a result, the stakeholders managing different dimensions can foresee the information required to make the right decisions.

Streamline resource capacity planning to bridge the gap

Advanced software should forecast capacity vs. demand from multiple perspectives, i.e., by role, department, team, location, skills, etc. It helps you identify short or long-term shortages/excess of resources ahead of time and reduce undesirable hiring/firing decisions.

Foresee pipeline project demands and plan ahead of the curve

The system should keep track of future project requirements to ensure that your resource pool is optimally balanced and skilled. It will also make it ready to meet the demand of projects in the opportunity pipeline or approval pipeline. It will help in planning hiring or training-related decisions ahead of time.

Track actuals against forecast for future improvements

A comprehensive system should help you keep track of actual time spent against the estimates. So that future forecasting can be improved and aligned to reality. It will also help you monitor shared resources who are working on multiple activities.

Project managers can also benefit from forecast vs. actual reports. They can implement data-driven measures to mitigate the deviation in the actual and forecasted numbers and combat the project roadblocks.

Ensure effective bench management to minimize bench-time

One of the most important factors to be taken care of is bench management. A project resource scheduling software should predict the resources which are likely to end up on the bench. It will enable managers to allocate the next project tasks to the employees before their current project finishes. It will reduce their bench time and help you find the right resource through internal channels, saving hiring costs.

How can resource scheduling improve profitability & productivity?

Resources scheduling can help a business unleash human resources’ full potential and significantly improve profitability and productivity.

Reduce Project Resourcing Costs

With the help of efficient resource management, overall resourcing cost can be reduced drastically:

• Eliminate under/over skilled resources on projects
• Utilize cost-effective global resources without compromising quality
• Avoid last-minute hiring cost through with proper capacity planning
• Reduce unplanned attrition

Minimize hiring/firing cost

Hiring/ firing costs can be reduced by using workforce forecasting and capacity planning. Forecasting enables proactive smoothening of project workload and reskilling employees. Frequent Hiring/Firing creates a negative image for the organization for attracting new talents. It is also an expensive exercise and affects the existing employees’ morale.

Enhance profitable utilization

A business can improve profitability by implementing strategic and billable utilization across the enterprise using effective resource management. As a result, valuable and critical resources do not get assigned to the lesser important projects or activities.

Improve employee productivity

Resource management can improve employee productivity significantly:

• Employees having work allocated as per their competencies and area of interest
• Resources being able to work on different types of projects across the business
• Staff being reskilled to bridge future resource capacity gaps
• Employees being empowered in the early decision-making process

What should you look for in an ideal resource scheduling software?

Resource scheduling is crucial for the performance improvement of modern business. So, a business should not just look for a solution that replaces the current spreadsheet functionalities. It should go much beyond that and ensure that they have a solution that can provide the following:

A workflow-based resource requisition process

Project Managers often get caught up in the endless loop of email trails to request niche resources from the resource managers. This time-consuming method can cause delays or sometimes even cost you the project. Thus, a modern resource scheduling tool in project management should have an automated resource requisition process. It will streamline the method and also keep every stakeholder, decision-maker on the same page.

Scenario-based what-if analysis

When resources are limited, juggling them between projects to fulfill dynamic project requirements is quite common. Applying different workforce optimization techniques on simulated business scenarios helps visualize and compare various impacts. One can either extend timelines or mobilize resources to a high-priority project before arriving at the best outcome under the given constraints.

Scalable, configurable, and expandable

Every business is different, and so are its resource management needs. You can’t have one size fits all. That is why a business should select a scalable, configurable, and expandable tool to meet future business needs.

Procures Real-Time metrics report

Resource demand in a real-life business environment changes every minute. So, it is crucial to gain real-time business intelligence and reports for informed decision-making. Moreover, real-time reports and analytics help project managers monitor and control progress at all times.

Provides data-driven foresight

Resource management solutions should allow your business to do multi-dimensional forecasting over and above scheduling. It also provides real-time business intelligence to improve business performance, profitability, and productivity.

Allows seamless management of matrix structures

Nowadays, most businesses have established a matrix organization structure to achieve the best utilization of their workforce. So, it is critical for a business to have a software system that aligns with its matrix organization structure.

Integrable with other systems

Most businesses have already invested in enterprise-level systems holding quite a bit of data required by a resource management system. This specific information can be a resource profile, competencies project detail, etc. So, the resource management system must integrate seamlessly with existing systems.

Conclusion: – dos and don’ts of scheduling

Dos

• Stay updated with initial resource allocation, availability, and utilization before scheduling more projects.
• Create a resource band mix keeping in mind the project budget and leverage the global shared-services model.
• Analyze the capacity vs. demand gap in advance and implement appropriate resourcing measures to bridge the gap.
• Use advanced features of a resource scheduling solution to filter and search for the right resource for the right job.
• Stay forewarned of future project demands to ensure systematic management of pipeline projects.
• Schedule generic resources for future project tasks to specify the resource demand and book an actual resource once he/she is available to take up the job.
• Conduct upskilling and training programs for benched/lesser-experienced resources to allow them to take up more opportunities down the line.
• Schedule resources to different functional projects to enable and empower them to explore new areas and grow professionally.
• Compare actual vs. forecast utilization and note the deviation to improve resource scheduling for future projects.

Don’ts

• Don’t use silos of spreadsheets to create resource schedules as it may lead to double-booking and overutilization.
• Do not book highly-specialized resources for low-priority tasks. It will lower down their morale and productivity and increase costs, and other critical projects will suffer.
• Refrain from booking resources to a project that they are not interested in. It will reduce their engagement, and they will not be able to use their skills to the maximum extent. It will impact both employees’ and resources’ performance.
• Avoid under and over-allocation of resources, as they both can lead to unplanned attrition.
• Do not book the resources for 100% of their capacity, as their 20-25% time might be utilized for admin meetings, and so on. Keep a buffer to set realistic deadlines.
• Do not book the resources for 100% of their capacity, as their 20-25% time might be utilized for admin meetings, and so on. Keep a buffer to set realistic deadlines.

The Glossary

SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in providing a futuristic solution for the effective management of resources. It has more than 20 years of experience working with high valued global companies around the world. SAVIOM also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and efficient workforce planning. So, SAVIOM can help your business to establish an efficient system geared towards your specific business challenges.

Struggling to prevent overbooking and conflicts in your resource schedules?

Tired of endless email chains to book resources for projects?

If yes, then you need a robust resource booking strategy to streamline this critical project management function.

Here’s how it works:

Before the project starts, the project manager estimates the type and quantity of resources required to complete the delivery. This resource requisition goes to the concerned resource manager, who identifies and books appropriate resources on the project. After that, it is the project manager’s job to assign various project members to different tasks.

Due to the rapidly changing nature of the project landscape, managers need to alter resource allocation on various activities frequently. It enhances their billable/strategic utilization. It is when the drag-and-drop capability comes in handy while booking resources for tasks.

This article aims to cover the various steps of project resource booking using drag-and-drop functionality. However, before delving deep, let’s get the basics right and begin with the definition and the importance.

What is resource booking?

Resource booking refers to identifying and scheduling various resources for current and future projects for a specific time. Since resources can be either fully or partially available, managers must consider their availability before booking them for various activities.

Some activities, such as juggling members between existing projects or assigning resources to new opportunities before getting rolled off, come under resource booking. It is also necessary for the managers to ensure that the resources are neither overloaded nor underutilized.

Importance of effective resource booking in project management

When resources are efficiently booked, it helps managers to know if the projects are on track for successful project delivery. First, an efficient resource booking process will help managers identify shortages of critical resources and any scheduling conflicts ahead of time. Early recognition of such potential risks will enable the managers to take measures proactively, like training, hiring, adjusting project timelines, etc.

In addition, a well-designed resource booking process helps prevent conflicts and double bookings. It provides a centralized system where individuals can view the availability of resources in real time and make reservations accordingly. This minimizes the chances of overlapping schedules, double bookings and eliminates confusion among teams.

Moreover, when resources are efficiently booked to projects, it ensures that their utilization is on par with their capacity. Furthermore, a resource booking process will enable managers to foresee whether the resources are working on low or high-priority tasks and accordingly mobilize them to billable projects.

Finally, an efficient resource booking process ensures that competent resources are booked for the right tasks, organizations can complete the projects within the stipulated time and budget. This will help eliminate budget and schedule overruns, maintain project quality, and lead to client satisfaction.

Now that you have understood the importance of resource booking in project management let’s look into the drawbacks of using spreadsheets for the same.

Now, let’s explore the various factors that affect the resource booking process.

Factors to consider before booking resources

Ensuring efficient resource booking is vital for smooth project execution and completion. In the following section, we’ll discuss various factors that play a crucial role in achieving this goal. Let’s go through them one by one.

Project requirements

Project requirements play an important role in determining how, when, and which resources are to be booked. Managers must first clearly define the project goals and objectives and create a WBS (work breakdown structure). It allows them to gauge the skill requirements in terms of type, quantity, and competencies for each project phase.

Based on that, managers can identify and schedule competent resources from the internal pool that match these skill specifications. Therefore, determining the project requirement allows managers to align their resource bookings with the project’s goals and ensure successful delivery.

Resource availability

Managers must determine if the organization possesses the requisite resources for a seamless resource booking process. If not, there is a risk of over-allocating or double-booking existing personnel. Further, the situation can turn even more complex if niche-skilled resources are unavailable, given that they are not easily replaceable.

Therefore, managers must ensure resource availability for projects in advance and consider implementing resourcing treatments like out-rotation & backfill or planned hiring. This guarantees that essential resources are at hand to initiate the project on time.

Resource competencies

When booking resources, it is imperative for managers to evaluate resource competencies to ensure seamless project execution. This is because when the right skilled resources are deployed to suitable tasks, they are more productive, less likely to make mistakes, and deliver high-quality outcomes consistently.

However, if an organization doesn’t have the requisite resources, it can either train existing personnel or hire a permanent/contingent workforce to meet the demand. This enables managers to schedule competent resources for projects, ensuring timely project initiation and execution.

Workforce constraints

While booking resources for projects and tasks, managers may encounter several challenges, such as a shortage of niche skilled resources, employee absenteeism, unplanned attrition, etc. Failure to manage these resourcing constraints can lead to project delays and financial losses.

Therefore, creating a well-structured risk mitigation plan to identify and manage these bottlenecks becomes crucial. Managers must forecast project resource demand ahead of time to ensure they have the right people within the organization. Moreover, they must consider employees’ leaves and paid time off before booking them for tasks.

Project and task priority

Managers must carefully consider project and task priority when booking resources, especially in a resource-constrained environment. This approach ensures that scarce, niche-skilled professionals are readily available to work on critical assignments. Furthermore, it prevents the scheduling of over/under-skilled employees to critical tasks, which can result in disengagement, burnout, and sub-par deliverable quality.

Thus, project and task prioritization empowers firms to tackle time-sensitive tasks with approaching deadlines first and optimize the resource booking process. Consequently, it enables managers to efficiently manage profitable projects, prevent unnecessary delays, and ensure on-time delivery.

Now, let’s understand the various setbacks to using spreadsheets to book resources.

Challenges of booking resources using spreadsheets

The market is flooded with a plethora of modern solutions to assign resources to projects efficiently. Yet, many organizations still rely on legacy tools like spreadsheets to book resources on projects. These tools have their limitations and fail to overcome market uncertainties and globalization. Here’s how:

Prone to errors

Spreadsheets are time-consuming and cumbersome. They are also susceptible to human errors during reconciliation, creating erroneous data and a spiraling effect on resource analysis.

According to MarketWatch, “88% of spreadsheets contain some form of errors.”

Creates siloed data

Spreadsheets fail to provide enterprise-wide resource visibility. So, it’s hard to identify and assign the right resources to projects at the right time and cost. Subsequently, delivering projects on time and within budget becomes challenging.

Unable to provide real-time data

Spreadsheets are unable to consolidate data on a single platform. As a result, discrepancies and redundancy can lead to double booking of resources. In addition, without real-time information, decision-makers cannot make timely decisions to improve the organization’s health index.

Difficult to maintain

Though spreadsheets are easy to develop, they are somewhat helpful in meeting initial business requirements only. But as the business expands and changes, spreadsheets fail to meet its current and future needs.

Cannot respond to dynamic market conditions

Spreadsheets lack the functionalities to respond to evolving demands. These tools cannot help determine if a new project can be accommodated within existing constraints, resulting in lost market opportunities.

The solution to these problems is replacing spreadsheets with multi-dimensional resource booking software. Using this tool, one can book resources quickly and effortlessly with an easy drag-and-drop functionality.

Let’s understand the benefits of drag-and-drop functionality in resource booking.

Advantages of drag-and-drop resource booking

As the name suggests, this feature of resource booking software is a fast and efficient way to plan schedules, meetings, project timelines, and resources. Below are some of the top benefits of drag-and-drop resource booking:

Simple and easy to use

One of the main attractions of drag-and-drop capability in resource booking is its simplicity. One can book resources on tasks or projects in just two clicks, proving to be a real-time-saver for managers. Besides, with no learning curve involved, one can start resource planning and booking resources straight away. The drag-and-drop feature is also instrumental in enabling real-time agile resource booking.

Visually easy to comprehend

Drag and drop capabilities enable you to see changes instantly and provide a quick overview. Due to the visual changes, all relevant parties can see the updates in real-time. It means that everyone is on the same page, and there is no confusion about missed deadlines or scheduled meetings. In addition, it saves you from the hassle of spreadsheet reconciliation and double-booking errors.

Instant alert during resource overload

In matrix organizations with resources working on different projects and having multiple reporting lines, losing track of resource capacity is easy. As a result, double bookings resulting in resource overloading are inevitable. Resource booking system consolidates and tracks resource-related information in real-time. So, when a resource overload is caused by a new booking or editing an existing one, the user gets instantly notified. The user can also view the exact overload hours on the schedule chart and reassign accordingly.

Keeps work organized

Unlike spreadsheets, drag-and-drop resource booking software eliminates the endless loop of emails and ensures that any relevant information isn’t lost. While juggling multiple resources and bookings, one can easily zoom in on a particular booking daily or weekly and simultaneously zoom out to track resource engagement over the next quarter, six months, or year. By consolidating all bookings on a single resource plan, managers can easily track project progress, and your team knows what tasks they need to accomplish.

Make changes to bookings effortlessly

Often, when there is a sudden ramp-up activity, finding resources at the right time may not be feasible. Managers can kick-start new projects using resource optimization techniques such as resource leveling or smoothing. The drag-and-drop feature on the resource booking system makes edits effortless and quick. You can also gauge the impact of these changes on other bookings and make modifications accordingly.

Since the benefits of drag-and-drop resource booking are clear, let’s know some of the best ways of resource booking in organizations.

Best practices for resource booking

Implementing some methods can help streamline the resource booking process, improve efficiency, and boost user satisfaction. Below are some of the best practices of project resource booking used across industries. Depending on the situation and requirement, one can apply the ideal one.

Simple booking

This type of booking entails assigning a resource to a single project. One can select the appropriate dimension on the schedule chart and book a specific resource on a project using the drag-and-drop functionality. Depending on the project’s duration, managers can apply suitable timescales like daily, monthly, quarterly, or yearly to book a resource for a specific timeline. One can use a few clicks to define booking details such as project, task, start and end date, effort, role, etc.

Split booking

Overallocation causes employee burnout, compromised work quality, and eventually leads to turnover. Therefore, managers must avoid constantly overloading resources with work. A warning message alerts the concerned manager if a resource gets overloaded with work. They can split their bookings accordingly to optimize and avoid the overallocation. Also, sometimes, resources go on vacations or suddenly leave the organization in the middle of the project. To avoid project delays due to unavailability, managers can split their bookings and reassign them to other available resources.

Bulk booking

In the event of sudden ramp-up activities within a project, an influx of multiple resources is the need of the hour. It can be painstakingly time-consuming if managers have to identify and allocate numerous resources to tasks. Bulk booking can simplify the process by resource scheduling to a project in one go. Using suitable filters, managers can select appropriate resources based on their skills, role, location, and more across the enterprise and book them to a project in just a few clicks. This practice can be a saving grace in the dynamic project management landscape.

Reoccurrence booking

If a booking needs to be repeated later, then a re-occurrence booking is practical. In this case, managers need not create a new booking and simply repeat the booking with just a click of a button. One can also specify the frequency of reoccurrence booking, be it daily/weekly/monthly/yearly, and set the number of times the activity needs to be repeated. This best practice of resource booking saves time and ensures that for a frequently recurring booking, managers don’t end up missing any occurrence.

Generic resource booking

This type of project resource booking system helps fulfill future project demands. Managers can start planning once a project reaches the opportunity or approval sales pipeline stage. Managers can book generic resources first. Once confirmed, managers can reassign these dummy resource bookings to named enterprise resources matching the qualification criteria.

Bulk update

Imagine the following scenarios:

• A single project with multiple resources already assigned to it gets delayed.
• Or, a single resource booked on various projects suddenly goes on leave.
• Due to a sudden high-priority project, the team has to shift their bookings to a later date range.

Editing the bookings individually can be arduous and time-consuming for all these scenarios. In such cases, bulk update, wherein multiple bookings can be revised and updated, is valuable. It simplifies the process significantly, and managers can adjust bulk bookings with just a few clicks.

Bulk copy resource

Sometimes, a new project has a similar structure to a previous one. In such cases, a bulk copy of resource bookings of one project can be duplicated on another project effortlessly without involving the hassles of creating new bookings from scratch. The project manager can directly copy all the bookings of the previous project into the new one in bulk instead of assigning them individually.

Bulk copy by role

This best practice of resource booking is ideal for future and pipeline projects that require similar roles to that of a running project. For such a project, managers can avoid creating individual bookings and generate a bulk copy of resource bookings by role. Once copied, they can simply replace real names with generic ones. Then, when the project probability is confirmed, managers can reassign those dummy bookings to existing resources having the same role and other desired qualifications.

These are some of the best practices that can enable effective resource bookings. Next, let’s see how resource booking software can help in efficient resource scheduling.

Conclusion

To sum up, resource booking software with simple drag and drop has revolutionized how managers conduct project resource planning. Its simplicity and ease of use have made agile resource planning efficient and precise, enabling the successful delivery of projects within time and budget. So, it’s high time businesses still use legacy tools like spreadsheets for project resource booking to invest in modern resource management software. Real-time resource booking systems help organizations enhance profitable utilization and complete more projects with fewer resources.

The Glossary

SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solution for managing your enterprise resources effectively and efficiently. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has created its global presence across 50 countries and helped over 100 customers achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software that is customizable as per business requirements.

Consultants are subject matter experts who provide business advice or even operate alongside the organizations’ workforce, depending on clients’ requirements.

Moreover, they can work with higher efficiency than the organization’s employees because of the following reasons;

• Possessing more experience
• Unaffected by office politics
• Exposure to industry best practices and innovation
• Advantage of working for multiple clients
• And many more

These qualities make consultants a better choice for organizations, but their billable time comes at a hefty price tag. The chargeable hours of consultants cost more than those of the employees of that firm. Then why do organizations have to hire consultants despite their expensive billable hours? It is because the organization needs external support to achieve its business objectives, which otherwise isn’t possible with its existing workforce.

This article will help you understand the definition, advantages, and disadvantages of billable hours in consulting. Let’s dive deep:

What are billable hours in consulting?

Billable hours in consulting firms refer to the time spent on a project or service that is charged to the client at an agreed-upon hourly rate. This concept is prevalent in various service sectors, including IT consultancy, audit and accounting firms, legal advisory organizations, etc. For instance, in a legal firm, attorneys diligently track the hours dedicated to client cases, which are subsequently invoiced as outlined within the agreement.

The primary purpose of billable hours is to enable firms to determine if the consultants are meaningfully engaged in revenue-generating endeavors. Managing billable hours effectively is crucial for consulting firms to utilize consultants productively and enhance the project’s profitability.

What is billable time?

Billable time is an alternate term for billable hours that can be used interchangeably. It refers to the duration spent on a particular service or project that can be charged to a client.

For instance, in an AEC firm, if an architect spends 20 hours designing a client’s new office building, those 20 hours are considered billable time. The AEC firm can then bill the client for these hours as part of their project’s cost. This ensures the firm is compensated for the time and expertise devoted to the client’s project.

Calculating billable hours is essential for businesses who charge for their time or services.

Here is a detailed guide for the same:

How to calculate billable hours and billable value?

To effectively calculate billable hours and billable value, one can follow the steps given below:

Step 1: At the outset, a consulting firm must determine the hourly rate at which the clients will be charged for the services. This rate should reflect the expertise and the market demand for the skills provided.

Step 2: The professional services firm must keep a detailed record of the time that is spent working on projects/tasks that can be billed to clients.

Step 3: The summation of all the billable hours recorded over a specific period, such as a week, month, year, etc., represents the total billable time spent on client projects.

Step 4: If applicable, PSOs must add any extra fees or taxes to the client’s invoice, which would include expenses incurred during the project that are billed separately.

For example, if Steffi, a software developer, works 150 billable hours in a month at a rate of $25 per hour. Therefore, her billable hours are 150, and her billable rate is $ 25, and her billable value would be calculated as follows:

Billable Value = Billable Hours × Billable Rate

Billable Value = 150 hours × $25/hour

Billable Value = $3,750

So, Steffi’s billable value for the month is $3,750, which represents the amount she can invoice her client for her services.

Now that this is clear, let’s understand the difference between billable and non-billable hours.

Billable vs. non-billable hours: What’s the difference?

In consulting firms, distinguishing between billable and non-billable hours is crucial for efficient operations and consistent cash flow.

Below are the ways to determine how they differ.

Billable hours encompass the time spent on projects or tasks integral to seamless business operations, which is charged to clients to receive fair compensation from them. They serve as a primary income source and directly contribute to revenue, client satisfaction, and long-term profitability. Moreover, they are critical to the calculation of billable resource utilization, which is a key metric that allows managers to monitor and assess consultants’ performance.

Billable hours = Total number of work hours – no. of non-billable hours

Some of the common billable tasks include:

• Working directly on client-related projects
• Researching and collecting client-related information
• Brainstorming for client projects
• Responding to client-related emails
• Attending project-relevant meetings

Conversely, non-billable hours are the hours spent on activities that support the overall functioning of the firm but cannot be directly charged to clients. The consultants are compensated for their non-billable work, but the payment typically comes from the PSO that employs them. Additionally, non-billable hours play a crucial role in helping managers assess ways to minimize them and reduce idle time, increasing profitability.

Some of the common non-billable tasks include:

• Attending internal meetings and training sessions
• Regular administrative tasks
• Marketing activities for business development
• Payroll and hiring
• Planning the business goals and objectives

They play a pivotal role in business development, employee development, quality assurance, etc., contributing to business growth, enhancing employee performance, and ensuring high-quality service delivery.

Therefore, tracking them both is indispensable for optimizing business efficiency and achieving clarity regarding the services’ value and purpose within the organization. By managing billable vs. non-billable hours efficiently, consulting firms can deliver high-quality services, uphold client satisfaction, and secure long-term financial sustainability.

So, let’s move on to understand the significance of tracking billable hours for an organization.

Why is it important to track billable hours in consulting firms?

Tracking billable hours is essential for a business as it provides valuable data for decision-making, supports effective project management, and contributes to the overall success of consulting firms.

Listed below are some of the reasons why tracking billable hours are essential:

Facilitates project profitability analysis

Tracking billable hours against the revenue generated helps consulting firms assess the profitability of different projects or clients. This analysis enables firms to identify high-value clients and projects, as well as those that require adjustments to pricing or scope.

In addition, it provides insights into the financial health of the firm, allowing for accurate forecasting of revenue and budgeting for future projects. Moreover, organizations can identify areas where costs can be minimized, and additional resources may be needed.

Helps in performance evaluation and incentivizing consultants

By measuring the actual hours spent on each project, firms can assess individual consultant performance based on tangible metrics. This data-driven evaluation allows for fair and objective performance reviews, as well as identification of top performers and areas where additional support or training may be needed.

Additionally, tracking billable hours provides the foundation for compensation and incentive structures. It enables firms to identify and reward consultants based on their productivity and contribution to the firm’s success.

Ensures effective revenue generation

Accurately tracking and billing the time resources spent on client projects ensures that they are billing clients for all the services rendered. This allows them to maximize their revenue by capturing and invoicing for every billable hour worked by their consultants.

When billable hours are properly tracked, consulting firms can ensure that they are not missing out on any potential revenue opportunities. They can identify instances where consultants have worked on tasks or provided additional services that may have been overlooked or not accounted for in the initial project scope. By capturing these additional billable hours, consulting firms can increase their revenue streams and optimize their income.

Optimizes billable utilization levels of resources

By tracking billable hours, the firm can determine how much time is being spent on each client or project, allowing them to assess whether the allocated resources are being utilized efficiently. This helps the firm identify any potential bottlenecks or areas where additional resources may be required.

It ensures that projects are adequately staffed and completed within the designated timeframes. Without tracking billable hours, consulting firms would lack the necessary data to identify areas for improvement and may struggle to maximize their productivity and profitability.

Enables accurate and transparent client billing

Consulting firms typically charge clients based on the time and effort spent on their projects. By diligently tracking billable hours, consultants can provide clients with precise invoices that reflect the actual work performed.

This ensures that clients are charged fairly for the services they receive, fostering trust and maintaining strong relationships. In addition, it helps consulting firms maintain their financial viability and profitability by ensuring they are appropriately compensated for the time and expertise they dedicate to their clients.

In summary, tracking the billable hours helps in effective project management and contributes to the organization’s overall success.

How does consulting billing work?

There are two billing methods in management consultancy, i.e., billable hour or fixed-rate billing.

In a fixed-rate contract, the client pays the consultant a predetermined price to complete the task within the time constraints.

For the billable hours model, the consultant bills the client hourly, or the client has to pay for the billable work. Generally, management consultant companies charge their clients at the end of every month or after achieving a particular milestone.

How do billable hours work?

While hiring a consultant and signing the contract, both client and the consulting firm agree upon considering what percentage of hours should be billable.

To state a billable hour example, suppose the contract of a ten-hour project states that 80% of the total working hours will be considered billable. In this case, the client will pay the consultant eight hours even if they have spent ten chargeable hours.

Billable hours can be of any percentage value, e.g., 80%, 90%, or even 100%. For example, in100 billable hours, the client pays a consultant for every hour they spend on the project., the client pays a consultant for every hour they spend on the project.

Knowing how consulting billable hours works, let’s understand how to track billable hours with a billable hour chart.

This article explains how a modern resource management solution will assist your business move resources proactively from non-profitable work to profitable work and maximize overall billable utilization.

How to track billable hours using a billing hour chart?

A billable hour chart is a template many consultants use to calculate the time spent on a specific task or project for billing purposes. Please note that depending on the profession, the structure of a billable hour chart may differ.

Enlisted below are the best way to track billable hours by creating a billing time chart:

• Create a chart with columns such as date, task description, start time, end time, and total hours.
• Next, record your time. When you start working on a task, note the start time in your chart’s “start time” column. When you finish working on the assignment, note the end time in the “end time” column. Finally, calculate the total hours spent on the task by subtracting the start and end times.
• Fill in the “date” column with the date you worked on the task. Then, in the “task description” column, describe the job that you worked on.
• Then, calculate billable hours by multiplying the total hours by your hourly rate to calculate the billable hours for each task. For example, if you charged $50 per hour and worked on a task for 2 hours, the billable hours would be $100.
• Review your billable hours’ chart regularly to track your progress and ensure you’re staying within your budgeted time.

To help you understand it better, let’s consider the following example of attorney billable hours example- 

In this billable hour template, the attorney tracks the task date, the task description, start and end times, total hours, and billable hours. For instance, on April 1st, the lawyer had a 1.5-hour client meeting and charged $250 per hour, resulting in $375 billable hours. Similarly, on April 2nd, the lawyer spent 3 hours on legal research and charged $250 per hour, resulting in $750 billable hours.

In conclusion, this attorney billable hours chart can help the consultant keep track of the time spent on each task, calculate the billable amount, and ensure that they are billing clients accurately for the work completed.

This is how the chart can help organizations effectively track billable hours. Let’s know the challenges of the billable hour model for managing the consulting business.

Why is the billable hour model ineffective for the management of consulting businesses?

Consultant management’s hourly rate method isn’t as effective as other professional services companies such as accounting or law firms. It is because of the following reasons:

Lack of performance transparency

There is no reference to measuring the performance of consultants. The client can only track the number of hours in consulting. However, they cannot measure the value consultant adds to the project. Often the junior consultant may not have adequate knowledge and will be learning on the job at the client’s premises. But the person will still be billed at a specific hourly rate.

It is not measurable even if junior staff puts in more effort than experienced hires. Their pay scale and billable hours in the appraisal period would still be significantly lower than that of more qualified counterparts. With unequal pay and stressful juggling between several projects, work-life balance is challenging in consulting firms leading to a higher attrition rate.

Maximize billable hours at the cost of quality

Consulting firms charge clients for billable hours; hence, the more chargeable hours, the higher the cash flow. Therefore, consultants always feel pressured to maximize billable time at the cost of quality work.

The situation worsens when an untrained consultant forcibly maximizes the billable time but does not deliver as per the client’s expectation. Unfortunately, the clients cannot measure performance and must pay for the consulting hours. Eventually, it adversely affects client relationships.

Limits teamwork and professional development

Since consulting firms focus on maximizing billing hours and revenue generation, consultants often deviate from the project and their career objectives. As a result, they are not allowed to take up projects that can add value to their professional growth and development. Instead, they are assigned to the ones which generate additional cash flow.

While filling individual consultant utilization spreadsheets, most consultants focus only on their billable work. As a result, the consultants ignore and deny the need for teamwork to increase their billable time, jeopardizing the consulting firm’s credibility.

Reduces job satisfaction and contributes to high turnover

To achieve the target in the billable hour model, the employees are often made to work long hours. This will eventually cause stress, burnout, and poor work-life balance as the consultants feel the work pressure. Constantly working under such conditions may cause dissatisfaction among the consultants.

Furthermore, when consultants with relevant experience are given opportunities to enhance their utilization rates and juniors with less experience are given fewer options, it leads to disparities in pay and recognition. This can create a sense of inequality leading to job dissatisfaction and high turnover.

These are some of the limitations of the billable hour model. Now, let’s understand some of its benefits to consulting firms.

What are the advantages of billing consulting hours?

This section explains the benefits of billing by the hour in the management consulting business.

Improves individual employee productivity

Hourly rates encourage consultants to work extra hours, especially when the project needs attention. On the other hand, consultants working on fixed rates are not motivated to go the extra mile to achieve perfection. Instead, they settle for an average quality of work, just sufficient to maintain their relationship with the client. sufficient to maintain their relationship with the client.

Consultants working on billing hours won’t hesitate to work on a critical project that demands long hours. The consultants strive to achieve perfection that satisfies the clients and improves their firm’s credibility.

Forecast project resource cost accurately

Management consulting firms can accurately estimate the project resource costs that help their clients to finalize the overall budget. Consulting firms can lay out the hourly charge-out rates and even calculate the internal cost rates to measure consultation revenue. In addition, they can keep track of non-billable hours and mobilize the consultants to billable or strategic work.

Track the in-demand skills and competencies

The future of a consulting firm rests on the evolving skills and competencies of the consultants. The most convenient way to track the in-demand project skills is to identify a high consulting hours rate in accordance with skills capacity.

Consulting organizations can quickly narrow down future relevant skills with advancing technology and project techniques. In addition, it increases productivity by restructuring consultants based on in-demand competencies.

Balance the forecasted and actual hourly cost

Billable hours unify planned and actual costs via consultants’ utilization. Therefore, comparing actual and estimated consulting hours allows consultancy firms to set reasonable billable hours for the clients.

Resorting to a robust resource management tool helps them keep track of enterprise-wide consultants’ billable utilization, as entered on timesheets, and analyze the utilization against planned or forecasted hours. Managers use this analysis to improve future forecasting and align it to real numbers.

Assist in critical decision-making

Clients often engage consulting firms to help them select a specific product or decide on a software solution. Since these require significant investment and are related to strategic direction, they want a second opinion on their choices. Consulting organizations are better positioned to help as they have exposure to similar clients and industries.

These are some benefits of the billable hour model to consulting firms.

Given the benefits of billing hours, the following section elucidates the strategies to optimize billable hours.

6 Effective ways to maximize billable hours

What you do with your billable time determines your current income, but what you do with your non-billable time determines your future. ~ David Maister, an American writer and business educator.

Every professional services firm should aim to increase billable hours and reduce non-billable time for long-term growth and profitability.

Here are six strategies to achieve this critical goal.

Clearly distinguish between billable and non-billable tasks

It is crucial to establish a clear distinction between billable and non-billable tasks right from the beginning of client interactions, both in contractual agreements and within the project team. This differentiation helps build a shared understanding between the service provider and the client, reducing the instances of potential disputes.

For example, a client may express discontent during the billing process when a project meeting with them is considered a billable task. However, by explicitly defining the nature of tasks early on, such disagreements can be avoided. This proactive approach not only maximizes billable hours but also ensures a smoother billing process, fostering improved client relationships and maintaining a healthy cash flow.

Prioritize activities that contribute to billable work

To optimize billable hours, consulting firms should begin by creating a project plan to identify the high-priority tasks that directly contribute to revenue generation. By prioritizing these tasks, managers can ensure that the team focuses on critical and time-sensitive work, maximizing efficiency.

However, it is important to acknowledge that non-billable work may still be necessary within projects. Therefore, it becomes imperative to regulate routine, non-billable tasks effectively, allowing the team to allocate a significant portion of their time to billable activities. This approach not only boosts team productivity but also increases the billable value generated, ultimately improving the firm’s profitability.

Ensure competent resource allocation across all the projects

An organization’s inability to deploy the right-skilled consultants to projects/ tasks can be detrimental. For instance, assigning an under-skilled consultant to a high-priority job often results in project risks such as sub-par deliverable quality, schedule/budget overruns, etc. Consequently, the organization might have to spend extra hours to restore the quality or control overruns, that the client may not approve of. This may lead to uncompensated work hours, reducing overall billable value.

Conversely, deploying a highly skilled resource to BAU or admin tasks instead of booking them to critical and billable tasks can cause billing losses. Thus, allocating the right talent to the most suitable tasks across projects in an organization is essential to optimize resources’ utilization and enhance billability.

Track billable and non-billable utilization regularly

To accurately gauge the PSO’s utilization rates, organizations must consistently track both billable and non-billable hours that their consultants log. This is because professionals engaged in routine admin or BAU tasks do not directly contribute to revenue or billability.

Therefore, it is imperative for the manager to monitor consultants’ activities and distinguish between billable and non-billable work. With this insight, they can periodically mobilize consultants from non-billable tasks to billable work wherever feasible. This approach will help increase billable hours and improve resource utilization, ultimately enhancing the organization’s overall billability.

Automate or delegate non-billable tasks

Implementing task automation and delegation is integral to enhancing a firm’s billable hours and productivity. By automating routine or repetitive tasks and entrusting non-billable responsibilities to suitably skilled consultants, firms can ensure that their core team is engaged in critical and strategic initiatives.

To complement the automation, firms can outsource non-billable tasks to cost-effective consultants to make sure the niche-skilled talent can focus on high-priority work, optimizing resource utilization. This strategic approach to automation and delegation helps maximize billable hours, leading to improved profitability and increased client satisfaction.

Ensure accurate or transparent billing

Service-based firms often struggle to accurately bill clients despite establishing a clear distinction between billable and non-billable work. To address this challenge, it is imperative for firms to maintain a meticulous record of every hour worked, including cost rates and charge-out rates of consultants engaged. Additionally, comprehensive invoices must include a detailed breakdown of billable and non-billable hours.

A well-drafted invoice that helps understand charges payable at a granular level serves as a testimony to the organization’s transparency. It, thus, helps instill confidence in the accuracy of calculated costs, reducing disputes and convincing clients to make timely payments. Thus, the implementation of robust billing processes not only helps prevent revenue leakage but also enhances the service firm’s credibility, fostering strong client relationships.

Conclusion

Because of the cost difference, the first choice for any organization is always to use its internal workforce over a consulting resource. However, lacking the necessary skill sets and tight project deadlines may force them to lose sight of the consulting option. As consultants need to juggle between multiple clients, their job becomes very stressful. As a result, many consulting organizations face high attrition rates.

An organization should hire a consultant to ensure its internal workforce cannot undertake the project. The reason behind that inability can be due to tight deadlines, limited skills, and experience, organizational politics, limited creativity, etc. Most importantly, the organization should hire consultants they can entrust with task ownership, project completion, and fair billing practices.

Having said that, organizations can regularly upskill their workforce to adopt evolving technologies and stay relevant down the line. In this manner, they can become self-sufficient instead of paying hefty bills for consulting hours.

Glossary

SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solutions for deploying appropriate resources to suitable projects. With over 20 years of experience, this Australia-based MNC has helped more than 100 clients across over 50 countries address specific business challenges. SAVIOM also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software.

A study revealed that 53% of decision-makers consider enterprise resource planning an investment priority.

Like every other industry, engineering firms require a systematic resource planning process. Engineering projects demand niche skill sets and need heavy and expensive equipment during various stages of the project lifecycle. Resource managers and project managers strive from the beginning to identify the appropriate resources, understand their availability, and fulfill these demands.

If they fail to form a full-proof resource plan, they may encounter bottlenecks in the future, bringing the projects to a halt.

Thus, engineering resource planning is integral to successful project delivery within time and budget.

This article emphasizes the significance of resource planning in engineering projects and some strategic tips to get the process right.

Let’s get started,

What is resource planning in engineering projects, and why is it needed?

Supposedly, you are building an automobile with the help of automobile engineers, mechanical engineers, some heavy manufacturing equipment, and so on. When the project reaches a crucial stage, you realize you don’t have the equipment to proceed to the next step.

A challenge like this can catastrophically hamper the entire project’s progress, as acquiring new equipment at such short notice can easily blow up the budget. Moreover, since this falls in the project’s critical path, it will also adversely affect the billable utilization of other resources. However, had you foreseen the resource requirements and planned for them in advance, your project’s course would have continued seamlessly.

Engineering resource planning is a process of forecasting, allocating, and utilizing resources for engineering projects and operations.

When managers follow a definite system and equip modern, intuitive resource planning tools to fulfill the project demand even before the project initiates, it keeps these challenges at bay, leading to a successful outcome. In addition, resource planning helps control project financials and timelines and strengthens data-driven decision-making.

Since we have covered the significance of resource planning in project management, let’s learn about the types of resources required in engineering projects.

The required resources in engineering projects

Unlike other industries, projects that fall under the engineering domain require diverse skill sets and resources. Let us understand these requirements in detail:

Human resources

The employees are the most critical asset of any project. Their talent, skills, and capabilities allow the execution of assignments with the best quality and within the deadline. Engineering projects specifically require a wide array of personnel to work on different types of tasks. Here are some of the core competencies vital for an engineering firm:

• Mechanical engineers

Projects encapsulating machine expertise or manufactured technologies need mechanical engineers.

• Automobile engineers

As the name suggests, automobile engineers work in the automobile industry and work on vehicle design and production.

• Electrical engineers

Any project with specific tasks pertaining to power system engineering, instrumentation, signal processing, etc., demands electrical engineers.

• Software engineers

Software engineers are needed for tasks like web designing, software, app development, etc.

• Analysts

With the advent of AI and Machine learning, the demand for analysts has escalated. Any engineering industry that requires the interpretation of data to make strategic decisions needs an analyst.

• Construction workers

Engineering projects involve constructing, installing, and assembling several structures, systems, and components, so they need construction workers with the necessary skills to execute these tasks efficiently.

Equipment

Engineering projects require an array of equipment, machines, and tools to build a finished product. For example, heavy machinery is needed for the automobile manufacturing unit. These tools are expensive, and thus, some firms rent them from other companies and integrate these costs under project estimates. As a result, managers need to carefully plan the projects and determine the equipment required well in advance to prevent last-minute hiccups.

Materials

Materials are the building blocks of the final product and part of the finished goods. For example, construction materials like brick, cement, etc., are the necessary blocks to form the entire tower or database to develop a web application are the materials. Therefore, the onus is on managers to enlist every constituent required and accumulate them before the project’s onset.

Miscellaneous

Other than the above-mentioned primary resources, engineering projects require additional resources like:

• Organizational resources in terms of financials
• Contractors and vendors to procure the unavailable demand from external sources
• Extrinsic software for the overall management of projects
• Facilities like office space or warehouse, etc., to carry out the project tasks.

What are the key features of the engineering resource planning template?

Advanced resource planning software enables organizations to manage their workforce, minimize risks, and steer the engineering project to success. Listed below are some of the key features of resource planning systems in engineering projects:

Multi-dimensional resource planner

With the help of a resource planner, managers can effectively allocate resources like engineers, equipment, materials, etc., to different tasks and activities across the organization. Additionally, it will enable managers to identify and assign the best-fit resources to the projects.

It also helps track allocations across multiple dimensions such as team, department, location, etc. Furthermore, managers can capture the engineer’s time off and vacations, which helps better resource planning for current and future projects.

Forecasting and capacity planning

Forecasting and capacity planning enable managers to predict pipeline project demand and assess the gaps between resource capacity and demand. If any gaps are identified, the resource planner helps managers take corrective measures like training, hiring, adjusting project timelines, etc., ahead of time.

In addition, managers can foresee project vacancies and minimize the bench size by proactively assigning resources to suitable vacancies. Furthermore, forecasting helps managers track critical financial indicators like cost, revenue, and margins and take corrective measures to control project costs.

Resource utilization

The resource planning system enables firms to forecast the usage of engineering resources to optimize billable and strategic utilization. In addition, it allows managers to mobilize engineers and workers from non-billable tasks to billable and strategic ones.

Moreover, a resource planner helps identify and proactively mitigate under/over-utilization of resources. Moreover, real-time visibility into resource utilization will allow managers to optimize resource allocation, ensure even work distribution, and reduce risks associated with resource constraints.

Reporting and analytics

The resource planner offers real-time BI reports and analytics that provides insights into important engineering resource metrics like project performance, productivity, utilization, etc. The BI capabilities enable managers to generate customized reports, configurable dashboards, etc., which helps in data-driven decision-making.

Furthermore, it helps filter out information per the stakeholders’ requirements. In addition, it provides role-based access that helps to avoid information overload.

What-if-analysis & automation

The resource planning system helps managers to create and simulate various engineering project scenarios with what-if-analysis. It enables them to arrive at the best possible resource plan considering different resource-related parameters and then apply it to the actual schedule. Furthermore, the resource planning software streamlines the resource requesting process from requesting approval to allocating the resources.

These are some of the common features found in the template. Next, let’s learn about the various benefits of engineering resource planning.

What are the advantages of engineering resource planning?

For organizations to achieve their goals and ensure efficient usage of their engineering resources, it is vital to have an effective resource plan. Here are some of the critical benefits resource planning offers for engineering projects:

Minimizes engineering project resources expenses

Resource planning enables managers to allocate the right engineers and professionals to suitable projects that ensure the timely delivery of projects within the budget. In addition, it will control resource costs by eliminating the deployment of over/ under-skilled engineers.

In addition, resource planning helps identify potential conflicts between resource requirements in various engineering projects. Resolving these conflicts proactively can minimize the last-minute firefighting of resources, which can be expensive.

Improves planning and allocation of engineering resources

Resource planning facilitates the competent allocation of engineering professionals based on their skills, experience, qualification, cost, etc. Furthermore, firms can leverage cost-effective global resources and control project costs.

Assigning resources to tasks that align with their skills and expertise will enhance the quality of work, reduce the likelihood of errors, and expedite project completion. Resource planning involves a systematic approach to assessing the project requirements, resource availability, and skill sets that ensure the allocation of resources based on project priorities and objectives.

Better planning of pipeline project demand

With resource planning, managers can forecast and effectively plan pipeline project resource requirements. Furthermore, with capacity planning, they can identify shortages/ excess of the workforce and take proactive measures like training, hiring, adjusting project timelines, etc., to bridge the gap. This will eliminate the last-minute hiring activities that can cause cost escalation and compromise the quality.

Resource planning enables managers to evaluate resource skills, capacity, and availability. By assessing the availability of resources, organizations can plan and allocate resources effectively to meet the demands of pipeline projects without overloading or underutilizing them.

Enhances workforce utilization levels

With resource planning, managers can foresee the utilization of the engineers working within the project. This helps to effectively mobilize resources from non-billable to billable/strategic tasks, thereby increasing revenue. Furthermore, tracking and monitoring utilization levels helps eliminate over/ underutilization of engineering resources.

By considering the capacity and availability of each professional, resource planning ensures even distribution of workload, thus eliminating burnout and maximizing their utilization. Regularly tracking and monitoring the utilization levels helps address resource bottlenecks, reallocate resources as required, and make timely adjustments to enhance workforce utilization.

Enables successful project delivery

As the demand for resources in engineering projects is volatile, resource planning identifies and fulfills the requirements accordingly. Moreover, it helps maintain continuity by restricting resource movements within the projects. This ensures the timely delivery of projects within the stipulated budget.

Furthermore, by clearly forecasting resource needs, resource planning helps in the timely procuring and allocation of resources. This ensures that the project has the necessary workforce to move forward smoothly. In addition, efficient resource planning processes help identify potential resource risks and develop mitigation strategies. Addressing these risks ensures that the projects stay on track and meet their objectives.

Knowing the benefits of resource planning in engineering projects, let’s understand the techniques of engineering resource planning.

What are the steps of efficient engineering resource planning?

As mentioned above, resource planning in engineering projects goes beyond managing the workforce; it is a conglomerate of human and non-human resources. As a result, it escalates the complexities of the process, and managers must formulate a solid resource planning strategy.

Here are the steps you can follow to achieve the same:

Document the engineering project resource plan

Meticulous, detailed resource planning is the stepping stone to a successful project. The same applies to engineering projects. Even more so because it entails tasks from multiple dimensions and domains and has a diverse set of resource demands., therefore managers should first document a comprehensive project resource plan. This plan constitutes all the project phases (from initiation to execution), tasks under each phase, and the resource requirement (along with its cost and timeline) against each task.

Consider an example of an automobile project to build a hybrid drone. Its project resource plan will encompass the project tasks like forming a prototype that will include automobile and software engineers with hands-on experience in relevant software. The next task in the execution phase can be assembling the right parts, which is the job of mechanical and automobile engineers, and so on. Along with the workforce demand, equipment, materials, and other resources are also mentioned, including their quantity and timeline. Formulating these details in advance will provide an overview of resource requirements and other attributes, giving enough leeway to resource managers to fulfill the demand.

Find the right engineer for each project task

Now that the project demands are in place and in order, the next step is to find the right resource for the right task. Managers must note resources’ roles, skills, level of expertise, experience, location, cost, and so on while identifying them. This process is tedious when the resource profiles are logged in siloed spreadsheets. Thus, firms must invest in a sophisticated resource planning solution to filter their search and get a centralized view of enterprise-wide resources.

In engineering projects, dedicated engineering resource management software comes handy and is tailored to suit the same industry’s needs.

In addition to finding the right employee, managers must also find the right equipment and materials in the correct quantity in advance. It will give a clear picture of the deviation between the existing supply and demand and allow them to take adequate resourcing treatment in time.

Bridge the engineering skills gap in advance

One of the essential benefits of proactive resource planning is that managers get enough lead time to bridge the skills gap. It eliminates potential project bottlenecks and promotes seamless execution. The next critical step after identifying the resource pool is implementing suitable measures to align the resource supply and demand.

With the resource plan, we know building a drone requires mechanical and automobile engineers with core competencies in operating specific software, heavy equipment, etc. Suppose you have a shortage of 4 engineers and one piece of expensive equipment which cannot be bought due to budget constraints. With enough time in hand, you can hire the resources with niche skills or upskill the existing resource to reduce the project costs. To ensure that the equipment is available during project execution, you can find firms that have it and take it on a lease, keeping in mind the project budget.

Foresee the utilization and availability of equipment and workforce

It’s not always necessary that the resources you found from the internal channel are available to take up the job. They might be scheduled for a high-priority project or applied for a planned leave. It is, therefore, essential to foresee resource (human and non-human) availability and utilization. If critical resources aren’t available during the project timeline, you can take corrective measures to ensure the project position is filled.

Let’s say the engineer responsible for designing the prototype isn’t available or utilized to their total capacity. What would you do? One of the solutions is shadowing, in which a lesser-experienced resource learns from the required engineer. And once the learning is enough to keep the ongoing project on track, you can out-rotate the prototype without hampering the other project’s progress and backfill the position with the resource who shadowed them. Another solution is training the benched resources who have a similar background.

Allocate competent engineers with the right domain expertise to the tasks

After overcoming the resource constraints, it’s time to define the resource schedules. Referring to the project resource plan, managers can see each task’s timeline, and by keeping a buffer of 10%, they can book the resources accordingly. Some tasks that are not interdependent and can happen in parallel can be scheduled on the same timeline. In this case, one resource with appropriate competencies can be booked for multiple tasks eliminating the need to procure more employees.

However, if the tasks are interdependent, ascertain that the resource schedule is aligned with the next task to prevent future discrepancies. Similar to human resources, you should schedule the equipment and materials (or assets) after procuring them from vendors. To ensure that no one else books them during the same course, you can use an equipment scheduling solution to provide real-time visibility to the other managers and avoid conflict.

Implement the right optimization technique to balance the workload of critical engineers

Engineering projects are agile. Not every code or circuit works as planned. Maybe the circuitry you designed for the drone is disrupting the electronic speed controller from doing its job. So, one needs to revisit the prototype and make it more efficient. These processes are time-consuming and may overload the employees, posing a risk of burnout. However, most of the projects are time-sensitive, and delays can have a ripple effect causing the project to fail.

To ensure that it does not happen, managers can procure an additional resource to reduce the workload on one and still get the job done on time. It is known as resource smoothing, one way to optimize the resource schedule. When projects are not time-sensitive, managers can reduce the workload by extending the deadline. It is known as resource-leveling. These resource optimization techniques keep a tab on the resource health index and allow you to ensure that no resource is overutilized.

Given engineering projects’ ad hoc changes and agility, resource planning is always a continuous process. Let’s discuss how one can improve their resource planning strategy,

How can you improve your engineering resource planning process?

Often your estimates and actual attributes are misaligned. It means there is a need to improve the resource planning process. Either the forecasted values are inaccurate, or you haven’t gauged the criticality of the project tasks. To rectify these errors, you can adopt a modern resource planner. It provides robust, data-driven, accurate insights that allow you to plan with precision. You will get precise forecasts vs. actual reports for resource utilization, costs, etc., in real-time, which will give you enough time to do the damage control.

Moreover, you can form a ‘plan before the plan,’ i.e., simulate multiple scenarios by varying resource metrics to get the best-fit resource plan. It is known as the ‘what-if’ analysis. In addition, since experience is the best teacher, managers should learn from similar projects executed previously and note the mistakes made. Learning from history is the best way to improvise the future.

These simple steps and the right resource management tools will enhance the efficiency of the organization’s project resource planning process.

Here is the wrap-up with a small listicle of proven tips to get your engineering projects to the finish line,

Takeaway- Proven tips

• Deploy the right engineering resource management and equipment scheduling tool to suit your business needs.
• Form a work breakdown structure (WBS) or a project resource plan to list the resource requirement accurately.
• Allocate cost-effective global resources to keep the project costs in check.
• Consult multiple vendors before leasing equipment to get the best deal and control the financials before taking equipment on lease to get the best deal and control the financials.
• Review resources’ progress using the resource planning l and forecast vs. actual report…
• Take corrective actions ahead of time to prevent the cascading effect on the project’s progress.
• Implement the right optimization technique considering the project timeline and resource availability to avoid employee burnout.
• Resource planning is a work in progress. Revisit the resource plan regularly to get the possible outcome and maintain the resource health index.

Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in providing an Enterprise Resource Capacity Planning solution. With over 20 years of experience leading the market, Saviom is actively used by over 15 highly esteemed global companies worldwide. The tools within the suite include project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software. It also entails supporting solutions to schedule equipment and assets seamlessly. Re-engineer operational efficiency with a system shaped around your business!

Resource Allocation is the process of scheduling and booking resources for the appropriate project tasks. For overall efficiency, it needs to be coherent and consistent with the resource capacities.

Every activity in an organization requires resources such as people, time, and tools, and the onus is on the Project managers to allocate them intelligently and efficiently. While scheduling projects, if you over-allocate a resource against their availability, it will lead to employee burnout and potential project failures.

In this article, we shall explore the resource allocation challenges and ways to address them.

What is over allocation of resources?

Overallocation of resources occurs when an organization assigns more work or tasks to a particular resource than their actual capacity within a given timeframe. It can result in increased stress levels leading to burnout, compromised quality of deliverables, and even unplanned attrition.

For example, a shared resource is booked and tasks assigned are for 8 hours on one project and 6 hours on another project in one day. However, they only have 8 hours of bandwidth in a day. In this case, a resource is said to be overallocated.

When resources are overworked with multiple tasks, it leads to burnout, declines in productivity, and deterioration of the deliverable quality.

Here is a detailed description of the consequences of over allocation of resources in project management:

What happens when resources are over allocated?

The consequences of overallocation can be detrimental to your projects as well as your organization. Let us look at some of the ill effects of resource overallocation:

Unplanned attrition

Frequently overloading resources with work elevates their stress levels and causes fatigue. If it continues for long, it will lead to burnout, declining their mental and physical health. This will eventually reduce their productivity and lower their morale.

When employees’ well-being is not taken care of, they will feel demotivated and distressed and look for a job change. All these factors lead to unplanned attrition. Such events can halt the project’s progress, causing potential losses to the firm. Unexpected attrition also makes the companies incur extra costs to hire a similar skilled resource without enough lead time.

Employee disengagement and low morale

When the employees are asked to work beyond their capacities and overachieve, without a proper analysis of their schedule, it can lead to distress. It eventually leads to disengagement and decreased morale. The typical signs and signals of dented employee morale include:

• More prone to mistakes- Mistakes happen mainly due to a lack of focus on the quality of work and the fear factor of not meeting the deadline.
• Lack of enthusiasm and ownership- An overworked employee feels disengaged and avoids participation in regular day-to-day activities
• Missing deadlines- The productivity of an overburdened employee decreases. Consequently, they fail to adhere to deadlines,
• Lack of collaboration and engagement- Overallocation causes ineffectiveness and lethargy in the staff leading to disengagement and disconnect.

These factors don’t just affect a single employee’s performance but have a ripple effect on the entire team’s output.

Employee burnout

An employee working for long periods of unending work leads to burnout.

A Gallup study revealed that “63% of employees who experience burnout call in sick more often, and 2.6 times as likely to look out for a job change.”

Some of the signs of employee burnout are: -:

• Overlapping priorities – Employee is indecisive on which task to prioritize
• Decreased productivity – due to lower morale, engagement, and higher levels of stress
• Work-related stress- Higher levels of stress due to additional responsibilities that do not align with the schedule
• Inflexibility- Employees becoming rigid or willing to grow and adapt can indicate burnout.

Increased absenteeism is also one such frequent occurrence of unplanned leaves manifesting from mental and physical stress.

Inability to meet project deliverables

Project deliverables must be well planned and properly executed and clearly defined in the project schedule with the due dates. Due to some critical ad-hoc tasks that require immediate attention, project managers end up setting challenging goals or unrealistic deadlines that may be difficult for employees to achieve.

Here is what happens when employees are unable to meet the project deadlines:

• The inability to meet project deadlines can lead to discouragement and frustration.
• The wrongful execution of critical project tasks will have a cascading effect on the entire project, eventually bringing it to a grinding halt.
• Mobilizing and altering schedules for one project (that has failed) will compromise and affect the pipeline projects.

Such shortcomings make employees struggle to meet project demands and hamper timely delivery leading to budget overruns.

Lack of proper work-life balance

After working extra hours, employees carry home a foul mood and the feeling of a bad day at work. These may seem like temporary problems, but persistent negative attitudes are a serious red flag. When your workforce does not get time to unplug from work, it leads to frustration and creates resentment towards the workplace.

Such attitude harms the entire team and its productivity in ways like:

• Lack of coherence within the team
• Reduced or No ownership of tasks
• Ineffective communication with the team-members
• Internal conflicts
• Lack of productivity can deteriorate the quality of interdependent tasks.

Overall, the work-life disproportion leads to a disruptive workflow and creates an unhealthy work environment.

Loss of business opportunities

An overloaded workforce can significantly erode the brand value of a company. When deliverables are not met on time and task lists are not satisfied, and the project’s quality does not align with the client’s expectations, it instills a loss of trust in the client’s mind.

When your firm fails to enhance client satisfaction, your client will look for other organizations that can do it for them. Such a loss of clientele leads to a decline in overall sales and revenue.

Given the consequences of resource overallocation, the following section explains the effective tips to identify instances of overallocation.

How to identify resource overallocation in an organization?

Resource overallocation often goes unnoticed, especially in a large organization where a multi-project environment is prevalent. However, managers can adopt several effective practices to track and minimize instances of overallocation to avoid their consequences.

Here are a few effective strategies for the same.

Workload analysis

The manager should thoroughly analyze the workload assigned to allocated resources across various projects. They can then compare the allocated tasks with their available working hours and capacity. It will help identify the instances where the work allocation exceeds the available capacity and act proactively to address them.

Time tracking

The manager must implement various time tracking tools or systems that allow employees to log their actual working hours on specific projects and tasks. It can then compare the logged time with the estimated hours to determine the variances and leverage several optimization measures to minimize them.

Conduct regular resource allocation assessments

The manager must create a monthly or quarterly schedule to review resource allocation per the organization’s specific needs and dynamics. Regular resource allocation evaluation helps identify resource-intensive projects that can impact the overall workload, project schedules, and deadlines. It can also help determine if the current resource allocation is realistic and provides sufficient time to complete tasks.

Feedback and observation

The resource managers must collaborate with project managers to understand their perspective on resource allocation, workload distribution, resourcing constraints, and risks. They can encourage team members to provide feedback on their availability, workload, and potential resource conflicts. Considering individual skills and preferences when assessing resource allocation in project management is also crucial.

Now that the ways to identify resource overallocation are understood, let’s learn the effective strategies to prevent it.

6 ways to avoid resource overallocation

Managers need to avoid resource overallocation and distribute work uniformly to enable optimum utilization. Here are some effective techniques to eliminate overallocation.

Forecast resource availability and utilization

Efficient resource scheduling allows managers to assign the right resources to the suited projects based on their skills, availability, cost, among other criteria.

Implementing an advanced resource management tool will give you a birds-eye view of resources, their skills, and schedules. Moreover, the advanced features allow you to foresee the resource demand and utilization ahead of the curve. Based on this data, you can distribute the workload evenly across the organization without overloading a particular resource.

Resource leveling

Resource leveling is a technique where the start and finish dates of a project are adjusted based on resourcing constraints to match the available resource capacity. To ensure that the employee is not over-utilized, managers have the leeway to modify the project timeline according to that critical employee’s availability. critical employee’s availability.

This practice facilitates the employee’s schedule and allows them to focus on other projects or tasks without hampering the quality of work and keeping up the deadline. Implementing this technique will smooth out the workload and will keep you from over-burdening your staff.

Recheck priorities

In the current volatile market, one aspect every project manager needs to be adept at is setting the right priorities. Prioritizing is setting tasks in a particular order so that you and your team can deliver the projects that add more value before the ones that don’t.

It also allows your resources to give their undivided attention to the critical tasks first and not work on all the projects simultaneously. Managers can get an intuitive resource management tool to get unmatched visibility into the current and pipeline projects and further categorize them based on their priority.

Assign additional staff

Resource Overallocation leads to exhaustion and hinders productivity. Even the extra-milers, who are often given the badge of going beyond, struggle to meet deadlines. Resource managers can pull in additional resources with the right competencies to ensure project completion and thereby avoid employee fatigue and burnout.

While doing so, managers must assess and evaluate the resource costs and form the right band mix with the cost-effective local or global resources. It will keep the project costs in check when maintaining the resource’s well-being at the same time.

Diversify employee skills and responsibilities

Studies suggest that upskilling and engaging employees show 21% greater profitability. Allowing employees to build skills through job rotation helps the team to diversify its skillset. helps the team to diversify its skillset.

Overworking on the same tasks adds to the mundaneness and can often lead to disinterest and disengagement. Thus, giving employees different opportunities helps them hone their skills while maintaining their motivational levels.

Diversifying skills also help in succession planning, especially for critical roles in the smooth running of projects. Succession planning helps create a skilled workforce capable of critical roles as the business changes, grows, or develops.

Understand project scope

The project scope includes the project’s goals and objectives, deliverables, financials, tasks, and deadlines. If there is a sudden change in the business requirements and the project manager is still expected to deliver using the same resources, it can lead to resource overallocation.

Defining a proper change control process during the project initiation phase is necessary. Any substantial change in the project scope must be pushed back to the next release. If that is not possible, approval is sought to change the delivery timeline or increase the budget.

Build an on-demand contingent workforce

On-demand workforce refers to the contractors or freelancers who step in while your full-time employees are knee-deep in their existing assignments. Demand capacity planning helps you identify the excess resources needed to fulfill project requirements in advance. Accordingly, a backup team consisting of freelancers, contractual workers, etc., can be a blessing when your employees face an overload and save them from eventual burnout.

Depending on the duration and nature of the project plan, decisions to hire full-time employees or a contingent workforce can be made. For projects with a shorter period, a contingent workforce shall be an ideal fit. There is no lead time involved in hiring them and no permanent overhead costs involved to retain them.

Key takeaways

Resource allocation is vital to efficient project resource management and must be systematically executed. The tips mentioned above will help you achieve optimum resource allocation and enhance employee productivity.

In addition to the tips, implementing a multidimensional resource scheduler could help avoid double-booking and improper allocation with data-driven insights.

Managers must strive to keep their resource’s health in check, as they are the success drivers of your firm.

What steps do you follow to avoid over-allocation of resources?

The Glossary: glossary pillar article

SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solution for managing your enterprise resources effectively and efficiently. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has created its global presence across 50 countries and helped more than 100 customers achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has highly customizable products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software based on business requirements.

A robust training scheduling software mitigates the challenges of finding and deploying suitable trainers to the right classrooms, thus improving allocation efficiency at reduced resourcing costs.

This blog discusses the key benefits of training scheduling software. But before that, let’s know the definition.

What is training scheduling software?

Training scheduling software is designed to create and manage training schedules, track employee attendance, monitor progress, and evaluate the effectiveness of the programs. A training resource can be instructors, classrooms, equipment, vehicles etc.

The training scheduler centralizes information about instructors, skills, current courses, future pipeline courses, resource allocation, vacations, BAU, Support, admin, etc. This helps you build a real-time resource plan across the enterprise, serving as a single truth source. In addition, this complete visibility simplifies your ability to finalize the run of training schedules.

Knowing the definition of training scheduling software, let’s look into the tool’s key features for an organization.

Key features of training scheduling software

Training scheduling software helps firms efficiently and effectively manage training programs. Here are some of the essential features of a scheduling software system:

Calendar interface for scheduling

The training schedule software provides a calendar interface to create, view and manage training schedules. Additionally, it allows for easy scheduling of training sessions, including dates, times, locations, and duration. Furthermore, it supports various time slots, recurring events, and customization options to accommodate different training needs.

Resource management

The training scheduling tool allows efficient resource allocation to appropriately manage and assign training resources such as trainers, equipment, courses, etc. Additionally, it facilitates optimizing the training sessions, resource scheduling, utilization, planning, etc.

Customization

The tool enables setting reminders to notify trainers and trainees regarding upcoming events and sessions. In addition, it provides drag-and-drop features to deliver training at the right time seamlessly. Moreover, it helps create customizable training templates, the ability to define training programs with specific goals and objectives, and the flexibility to adapt schedules as needed.

Automated reports and integration capabilities

The software helps generate reports on various metrics, such as attendance rates, completion rates, feedback data, and performance metrics, to assess the impact of training programs. In addition, the tool can be seamlessly integrated with other systems like Learning Management Systems (LMS), Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), employee scheduling software, etc.

Collaboration and communication

Real-time collaboration tools to facilitate better communication between the trainers and trainees. Furthermore, the training schedule system offers discussion forums, chat functionalities, or document-sharing capabilities to foster engagement and knowledge sharing.

Compliance and data security

The training scheduler system offers capabilities to track and manage compliance requirements and certifications to ensure that employees meet regulatory or industry-specific training obligations and deadlines. Additionally, it helps implement robust security measures, data encryption, access controls, and compliance with relevant regulations.

These are some of the essential features of training schedule software. Next, let’s move on to understand the challenges of the traditional training scheduling process.

Challenges of manual training scheduling

Effective training scheduling is crucial for organizations to ensure smooth operations and skill development. However, manual training scheduling processes present various challenges that can hinder efficiency and productivity. Let’s explore these challenges in detail:

Time-consuming and error-prone scheduling processes

Manual training scheduling is a time-consuming task that requires significant effort and attention to detail. It involves manually checking resource availability, contacting trainers and trainees, and finding suitable time slots. This can be tedious, especially in organizations with numerous employees or complex scheduling requirements.

Moreover, relying on manual data entry increases the risk of errors. Mistakes in recording dates, times, or participant information can lead to confusion, missed sessions, or overbooked training slots. Additionally, when changes or rescheduling are necessary, manually updating and communicating the changes to all parties involved becomes a laborious and error-prone process.

Difficulty in coordinating schedules of trainers and trainees

Coordinating the schedules of trainers and trainees is a significant challenge in manual training scheduling. Different departments, shifts, and locations often have conflicting schedules, making it difficult to find mutually convenient times for training. In addition, managing multiple calendars and trying to accommodate various preferences can quickly become overwhelming and time-consuming.

Furthermore, coordinating availability across different time zones or for remote teams adds an additional layer of complexity. This often results in scheduling conflicts or difficulties in ensuring that all participants can attend the training sessions they require.

Inefficient resource allocation and utilization

Manual training scheduling often leads to inefficient allocation and utilization of resources. Without automated tools, organizations struggle to ensure the optimal use of training resources such as trainers, rooms, equipment, and materials. The lack of visibility into resource availability and utilization makes it challenging to plan and optimize training programs effectively.

Thus, it leads to increased costs and decreased productivity. Without a centralized system to manage resource allocation, conflicts or overlapping training sessions may arise, making it difficult to provide adequate training to all employees in a timely manner.

Limited Visibility and Communication

Manual training scheduling often lacks a centralized platform for communication and visibility. With manual processes, it can be challenging to provide clear and up-to-date information to trainers and trainees regarding training schedules, changes, or updates.

This can lead to confusion, missed sessions, and ineffective communication between all stakeholders involved in the training process. Without a centralized system, important information may be scattered across emails, spreadsheets, or physical documents, making it difficult to ensure everyone has access to the most current information.

Inability to adapt to dynamic scheduling needs

Manual training scheduling may struggle to accommodate dynamic scheduling needs. In today’s fast-paced business environment, training requirements can change frequently due to shifting priorities, emerging opportunities, or unforeseen circumstances.

Since, manual processes do not have the flexibility to handle such changes efficiently, rescheduling or adjusting training sessions manually becomes cumbersome. It often requires significant time and effort to communicate changes, coordinate availability, and ensure all affected parties are informed. This lack of agility can result in delays, disruptions, or missed training opportunities.

Thus, to overcome these challenges organizations can benefit from adopting training scheduling software that automates scheduling, improves coordination, and optimizes resource utilization.

Now let’s look at some benefits of training scheduling software.

Benefits of training scheduling software

Training scheduling software is an integral component of efficient training programs. Here are the top seven reasons businesses require a proper tool to manage training resources.

Eliminates training scheduling spreadsheet

Spreadsheets for scheduling training resources are cumbersome, significantly limiting, and challenging to maintain. Nonetheless, a practical training scheduler can help you establish a unified source of truth, stay informed of all allocations, and have visibility of instructor skills, classrooms, types of equipment, etc.

Achieves agile scheduling with easy drag and drop

In a dynamically changing business environment, it is imperative to have an agile scheduling facility. An efficient visual training scheduler can easily schedule the trainer, course, and classroom, link them and modify them per the changing priorities.

Allocates the right trainer to the right course

Having the right trainer with the right skills and cost is crucial for training to remain time-bound and within financial constraints. A proper training scheduling system can help you instantly identify and allocate competent resources. This can be based on their availability, skills, experience, qualifications, location, team, resource cost rate, and any other criteria your business factors in.

Maximizes the utilization of training resources

Effectively scheduling training programs can help you foresee the effective utilization of training resources ahead of time. So, you can make changes accordingly, like moving your costly resources from non-training work to training work or bringing forward future training.

Forecasts shortfall and excess of resources

A robust training schedule tool can help forecast overall resource demand against capacity. This can give you deep insights into future shortages or excesses of resources. Based on the insights, the business can take corrective actions like adjusting the training timelines, upskilling, hiring, etc., and proactively address resource shortfall or excess.

Reduces resourcing cost

Dynamic training schedule software can help organizations track critical financial parameters like the trainer’s cost, overheads, etc. Furthermore, it helps control costs with forecasted cost reports, utilization reports, etc. Here are some of the ways efficient training scheduling systems can help you reduce resourcing costs significantly

• It prevents assigning under/over-skilled instructors to courses
• Improves the overall utilization of training resources
• Avoids last-minute hiring costs with reliable capacity planning

Gains real-time business intelligence

An appropriate training scheduling software can provide real-time business intelligence reports, analytics, and dashboards. This helps the management to make effective decisions based on up-to-date facts. Moreover, the software for training helps eliminate information overload by controlling the data visibility with appropriate filters, security rights, and portal designs.

Conclusion

Implementing training scheduling software can help you optimize the training programs by intelligently utilizing the resources, effectively scheduling the training sessions, and controlling the costs. In addition, advanced training scheduling software can help organizations identify and eliminate bottlenecks ahead of time and improve their productivity and business efficiency.

Glossary

The SAVIOM solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in Training Scheduling Software and brings 20 years of experience working with top global companies worldwide. A pioneer in resource efficiency suites, SAVIOM ‘s extensive range of solutions comprises enterprise resource management, projects portfolio management, professional service automation and workforce planning software. Our tools are highly configurable, scalable, and expandable. Gear up with a solution that is shaped around your business, helping you beat business-specific challenges.

The above growth is attributed to several macroeconomic factors, such as the increasing complexity of tax regulations, globalization, increased financial frauds and risk awareness, etc. Therefore, there is a growing demand for audit and accounting services as companies worldwide strive to protect their profit margins and stay ahead of the competition.

However, audit & accounting firms face numerous resourcing challenges, such as skill gaps, inability to meet seasonal demands, unplanned attrition, etc. That’s why effective resource planning is the need of the hour to future-proof and optimize the audit and accounting workforce.

This blog discusses the various steps you can implement to create an efficient resource planning in audit and accounting firms.

But first, let’s understand the benefits.

Significance of resource planning in the audit and accounting sector

Resources are the crux of audit and accounting service firms since they generate revenue by charging their clients for the consultants’ expertise and time. Therefore, firms need an efficient resource plan to maximize the billable utilization of their skilled personnel and improve profitability.

Since this sector experiences seasonal fluctuations, resource planning enables firms to meet the sudden rise and fall in demand by comparing the project requirements against capacity. Additionally, it helps bridge the skill gaps in advance, ensuring consultants’ availability before the project’s onset, thus eliminating last-minute firefighting.

In addition, efficient resource planning helps managers create the right mix of permanent and contingent audit and accounting personnel. For example, an upcoming assignment requires a forensic auditor to evaluate a firm’s financial records and collect evidence for legal proceedings. With efficient resource planning, managers can easily deploy a contingent forensic auditor depending on the duration of the assignment, minimizing project resourcing costs.

Overall, resource planning is critical for audit and accounting firms to identify and allocate competent personnel to projects at the right time and cost and deliver high-quality services to clients. In addition, it helps firms to stay competitive in a rapidly changing market and adapt to new challenges and opportunities.

Given the significance of resource planning in the accounting and auditing industry, the following are the best strategies to make it efficient.

Best practices to implement a resource plan in audit and accounting firms

Robust resource planning is the backbone of every project since it redefines business efficiency and helps unlock the workforce’s full potential.

Here’s how you can implement an effective resource plan.

Forecast and bridge capacity gaps of consultants for pipeline assignments

Most accounting/audit projects have a shorter timeline, and usually, practitioners work on multiple projects simultaneously. Therefore, consulting managers in audit and accounting firms must plan the pipeline assignments by analyzing the resource requirements. They must also implement suitable measures proactively to bridge the capacity vs. demand gap.

For example, a pipeline audit assignment needs five auditors to complete the tasks successfully. If the manager has ten available auditors, they can bring forward other projects for the extra five auditors or sell their capacity at a discounted rate. Alternatively, if they only have three auditors, a shortfall of two employees can be resolved with internal channels like implementing out rotation and backfill strategy or training/upskilling. If needed, managers can also request HR to initiate project-specific or skill-based hiring to avoid last-minute firefighting.

Identify and allocate cost-effective audit/accounting personnel to projects

Since the accounting sector often utilizes high-cost specialized resources such as actuaries and tax analysts, it is significant to consider the overall resourcing budget while planning to protect the profit margins. In addition, resource planning enables firms to identify cost-effective auditors/accountants with skills matching project requirements once they receive a resource request.

For example- instead of assigning a senior advisory lead to evaluate business transactions, managers can identify and allocate a skilled junior counterpart for the same. It will significantly reduce the resourcing cost, ensuring successful project delivery within the budget. In addition, they should have a sufficient lead time for carrying out planned hiring activities and create an optimum resource mix preventing budget overruns.

Create the right mix of permanent and contingent audit/accounting staff

The demands for specific skills, such as tax advisory, consultants, etc., witness a surge during the financial year-end. Based on the project nature, firms can form a blended workforce to meet these sudden peaks. During this period, contingent workforce can provide additional support to permanent resources or offer specialized services, allowing firms to fulfill client demands more effectively.

For example, an auditing/accounting firm bags a short-term project on filing client’s tax returns and forms. Here, the managers can allocate a freelancer tax analyst and complete the project within the budget. On the other hand, firms can recruit full-time employees for long-term projects, such as the annual auditing for an insurance company for the next 7 years. This will enable organizations to achieve their goals by keeping costs in check, boosting profitability and sustainability.

Set utilization targets for accounting consultants and track them periodically

As mentioned above, audit and accounting firms usually depend on external and internal resources for project delivery. However, if the utilization targets for the accounting employees are not well-defined, it creates operational inefficiencies and low productivity. Therefore, firms need to set utilization targets for permanent and contingent staff to ensure maximum billability.

For instance, the utilization target of permanent consultants can be set around 70 – 80 % of their capacity so that they can be involved in billable and other important non-billable tasks. On the contrary, an on-demand resource’s utilization rate can be set close to 100% because they are usually hired to perform a specialized function for the short term. These measures ensure that both internal and on-demand audit and accounting staff are optimally utilized. In addition, managers should track their utilization levels periodically and implement measures to prevent under/over-utilization.

Implement training and upskilling programs on a regular basis

The rapid emergence of technologies, such as AI, ML, Blockchain, etc., has made it mandatory for accounts/auditors to stay abreast with the latest skills and technology.

A survey reveals that “57% of accountants find technology literacy the most critical additional skill for future employees in this field.”

For this, accounting managers can formulate several training/upskilling programs, IDPs, etc., to align the workforce’s skills with the latest trends. For instance, CAs can be trained in data analytics, which will help them generate financial reports quickly and accurately using multiple data like revenue, expenses, and account budgets.

They can also implement other learning methods, such as peer-to-peer coaching, job shadowing, etc., for the audit and accounting staff. It will prepare them to take up multi-faceted projects in the future and diversify their portfolios. Further, these initiatives will help bridge existing skill gaps, and improve performance, enabling the firms to stay relevant in the digital age.

Facilitate succession planning for critical consultants.

Research reveals- 94 percent of employers report that succession plan has a positive impact on their employees’ engagement.

If critical resources, such as senior auditors, accounts officers, partners, etc., suddenly retire or resign, the projects can derail in the absence of succession planning. It, in turn, can cause revenue losses and negatively impact client experiences for accounting service organizations. To avert this situation, firms can leverage effective resource planning to review key accounting/auditing roles and resources.

Consulting managers can also track the performance of every consultant to identify the ones to be considered for promotion to senior/strategic positions. Moreover, they can also upskill and train the audit and accounting staff to take up higher roles. In addition, it enhances the level of engagement of audit and accounting personnel since they are more focused and eager to take on critical responsibilities. This way, effective succession planning ensures smooth role transition and business continuation.

Empower auditors/accountants to choose the project of their interest

A study reveals- “1 in 3 professionals reveal that boredom is the primary reason to leave their jobs.”

The above stats hold true for the audit and accounting sectors as well. Most accounting professionals work on similar projects that become monotonous over time, affecting their engagement and productivity. To avoid this, managers can give employees the choice to work on assignments matching their interests by publishing open positions with relevant project details periodically.

This would enable audit and accounting employees to show interest and apply for suitable open positions. Managers can then choose the best-fit consultants for the projects. By working on the projects of their interest, professionals will be more motivated, enhancing their performance. Furthermore, it will increase autonomy and help with their career trajectory, resulting in improved retention.

Now that the strategies are understood, let’s know how an advanced resource management solution will help streamline the resource planning process.

How can a modern ERM tool streamline resource planning in audit and accounting firms?

Advanced resource management software provides efficient resource planning capabilities that help audit and accounting firms utilize their resources optimally.

Here’s how-

• It offers 360-degree visibility into audit and accounting projects/non-project activities such as BAU/admin, leaves, etc. Besides, the software helps maintain up-to-date competency and skill information that facilitates the competent allocation of consultants.
• The multidimensional sorting feature, along with advanced filters, helps managers uniformly distribute the employees according to the work requirements.
• Moreover, the forecast vs. actual and utilization reports helps accounting supervisors implement corrective measures and eliminate under/over utilization. It also helps them mobilize skilled accountants from non-billable or admin/BAU work to billable or high-priority projects.
• The modeling and simulation technique enables accounting managers to create and compare various project scenarios and determine the best-fit resource plan.
• The accounting/audit managers can use the open seat feature of the tool to publish various open positions. It will empower auditors/accountants to choose projects of their interest, thus improving engagement and productivity.
• Further, the tool’s collaboration feature helps managers share the lesson-learned reports after completing the project. This report can be referred to by others while working on similar audit/accounting projects and improve resource planning and cost estimations.

This way, modern resource management software can help streamline resource planning in audit and accounting firms.

The Bottom Line

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” ― Alan Lakein, author

Rightly said, it is essential for audit and accounting firms to create an effective resource plan. It will help unleash the maximum potential of resources and increase their productivity and engagement. However, it is only possible when organizations use robust ERM software to identify and mitigate bottlenecks early. It will help optimize and futureproof the audit & accounting workforce against market volatility, ensuring profitability and sustainability.

So, what’s your strategy to streamline your firm’s resource planning?

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solution for managing your enterprise resources effectively and efficiently. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has created its global presence across 50 countries and helped more than 100 customers achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has highly customizable products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software based on business requirements.

AEC firms leverage a diverse set of experts, from engineers and architects to on-site laborers and workers, to steer the projects to success. While hiring and retaining the right resources is pivotal, scheduling them for suitable tasks determines the timely competition and delivery. It helps enhance overall productivity, profitability, and quality of deliverables.

However, it is easier said than done.

The AEC industry is plagued with varied internal and external issues, such as process delays, budget constraints, climatic changes, price volatility, etc. Moreover, the pandemic has triggered increased raw material costs, global regulatory conditions, skill shortages, and unplanned attritions, making it challenging to optimize resource schedules.

Over one-fifth of the AEC firms globally are experiencing a schedule delay or cost overrun due to the pandemic. – KPMG’s 2021 Global Construction Survey

So, the question is – How do you optimize AEC resource schedules effectively?

This article discusses the strategies to optimize the schedules for AEC resources.

But before that, let’s first understand:

How is resource scheduling unique in AEC projects?

Resource scheduling involves identifying and assigning appropriate AEC resources to various project tasks at the right time and cost.

One critical factor that sets apart AEC resource scheduling is how the workforce is deployed during different phases of the project.

For instance, a budget analyst or financial advisor is scheduled in the Initiation Phase to estimate the overall budget and determine the project’s economic feasibility. At the same time, design architects and civil engineers are also scheduled to create a schematic design and identify the materials and equipment needed.

On the other hand, a ground preparation team is booked in the Pre-Construction and Procurement phase to evaluate the site’s condition and prepare it before the actual construction. In addition, a contractor is also required to rent, hire, or purchase tools and materials needed for construction.

Furthermore, subcontractors and vendors are expected to ensure the supply of requisite contingent workers, equipment, machinery, tools, etc. for the construction activities. At the same time, the architects, project managers, and engineers are deployed to carry out quality control inspections, detect and minimize discrepancies, and approve technical submittals to ensure the final structure is delivered as designed.

Apart from scheduling resources to different phases, AEC workers also work in different shifts, especially for large projects. It ensures that there is continuous activity round the clock and the project can be delivered as quickly as possible.

Moreover, resource scheduling in AEC also depends on the type of contract. For instance, if a construction worker is under a time-and-materials-based contract, they will be paid the agreed-upon price for the total hours or days worked. So, resource scheduling will be aimed at booking every worker for their available capacity to maximize overall revenue. On the contrary, if it’s a Fixed Price Contract, project managers tend to identify competent cost-effective resources, create the right pay-band mix, and control resourcing costs for a healthy profit margin.

Now that it is clear how resource scheduling is unique in the AEC industry let’s understand how it is crucial.

Significance of resource scheduling in AEC projects

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail ~ Benjamin Franklin

And when it comes to preparing for an AEC project, efficient resource scheduling is indispensable as it provides numerous benefits. Some of them include:

• Helps identify and allocate the best-fit AEC resources to every task throughout the construction project’s lifecycle.
• Facilitates resource booking as per the skills and availability of the AEC workforce to prevent issues like under/overutilization, skill mismatch, subpar quality, cost/budget overruns, billing losses, client dissatisfaction, etc.
• Contributes to the completion of the project within the stipulated time and budget through competent allocation and enhances client satisfaction.
• Allows uniform workload distribution to help maintain a healthy resource index and subsequently reduce unplanned attrition of the construction workforce.

Given the importance of AEC resource scheduling, the following section elucidates the best strategies to make it efficient.

How to create an optimized resource schedule for AEC projects?

While firms can use several custom approaches for scheduling, the following are a few proven and time-tested strategies to create an optimized resource schedule.

Prepare a WBS and illustrate task interdependencies

An AEC project often has a high budget, and if not executed efficiently, it can cause substantial financial losses. Therefore, breaking down a project into small manageable tasks and setting milestones to measure progress is essential.

A WBS is a hierarchical representation of the project’s scope and all deliverables, including design, engineering, and services. In addition, it is also vital to understand the dependencies between tasks and determine the ones critical to complete the project successfully.

Here’s a simplified example of a house construction project for a better understanding. The table below shows some high-level tasks involved.

As evident from the table, tasks 1, 2, 4, and 6 lie in the critical path of the project. It implies that any delay in them will impact the entire project timeline. On the other hand, 3 and 5 are called slack tasks as they have some buffers. It implies that they can be delayed but not beyond a certain limit. This way, creating a work breakdown structure helps understand the tasks involved, identify the critical path, and schedule resources accordingly.

After creating the work breakdown structure, the AEC project manager should assess the nature of individual tasks and sub-activities. Based on that, they must determine the required specifications of the machinery items/equipment and skills/competencies of professionals. Further, the percentage of effort or capacity required from every worker or machine should also be factored in for effective scheduling.

Let’s take an elementary example of estimating human resource demands for a farmhouse construction project. The requisites include an architect, a design engineer, and 10 workers for creating the design and laying the foundation. Following that, 50 workers are required to build walls and the roof. Lastly, it requires two painters, one carpenter, a plumber, and an electrician to complete internal and external furnishing. So, one can document human resource requirements for the entire project this way.

Consider workers’ availability and vacation prior to booking

Since AEC projects require workers of varying skills in different phases, it is essential to consider their availability beforehand. However, a failure to do so can result in double bookings and project delays. So,

Managers should check the AEC resource schedule before booking and consider sick leaves, vacation days, and public holidays.

In addition, managing and tracking construction workers’ availability beforehand ensures scheduling per their capacity and avoids work overload. In addition, it helps deploy skilled AEC resources to suitable projects at the right time and cost. It further ensures optimal utilization of every worker, preventing productivity loss and burnout.

Assign AEC professionals with matching skills to project tasks

Once construction managers ensure the availability of skilled resources, the next step is assigning them to tasks based on the duration, criticality, and resources’ skills. Besides, project managers should communicate the responsibilities to the AEC resources. In addition, managers must ensure that the tasks align with the skills and competencies of construction resources.

Assigning an under-skilled AEC resource to a critical task can compromise quality and cause schedule overruns. For instance, if a bricklaying mason is given the job of choosing the right material for the roof and laying it, they may fail to do so efficiently. On the contrary, booking a critically skilled professional to admin tasks like billing entry can lead to cost escalations, lower employee engagement, and result in unplanned attrition. Thus, skills and competencies form an important factor in scheduling professionals.

Create the right mix of permanent and contingent construction workers

Due to high resourcing costs and lack of opportunities, most AEC firms, especially small-sized ones, find it challenging to maintain a steady talent pool, including niche skilled resources. However, the absence of the right skilled workforce to fulfill critical project demands can affect their growth and sustainability. Therefore, AEC firms must leverage a contingent workforce to cater to specific project demands.

For example, a geotechnical engineer evaluates ground, assesses on-site soil properties like slope stability, load-bearing capacity, etc., and determines the type of earthwork needed. These engineers are often deployed in construction projects like building roads, railway lines, bridges, etc. Such critical AEC resources can be hired on demand to reduce overhead costs. Thus, establishing the right mix of permanent and on-demand workers help control project costs and increase billable opportunities, enhancing the bottom line.

Optimize AEC resource schedules to prevent burnouts

In some cases, construction workers might get booked on multiple tasks, stretching their schedules thin, resulting in work overload, increased stress, and burnout. Hence, optimizing AEC resource schedules is essential for every AEC firm to prevent project delays. For that, managers can track their schedules periodically and determine if any worker is booked exceeding their capacity for a given duration.

If there is any variance,

Managers can implement appropriate optimization techniques based on the nature of the tasks to ease out the excess workload.

For example, for tasks with flexible timelines, like selecting the paint, managers can leverage resource leveling to adjust the start and end dates. In case of tasks with stringent deadlines like laying the foundation, managers can implement resource smoothing to pull in additional construction resources to assist the current team and ensure on-time completion. These optimization techniques will ensure uniform workload distribution and increase productivity.

Formulate a risk mitigation plan to address AEC resource constraints

AEC projects are prone to accidental hazards, calamities, natural disasters, etc., resulting in resource constraints at various stages. For instance, workers might get injured due to an on-site accident like slips or falls. Or some workers may go on unplanned leave or quit the organization in the middle of the construction work. In global projects, the supply chains of raw materials may get affected due to socio-political reasons, import/export bans, or civil crises.

Therefore, formulating a robust risk mitigation framework ready to handle these situations is imperative. For instance, managers can create a backup/reserve workforce to replace the professionals when required. They can also train the benched personnel on critical skills to schedule them on short notice. Further, one can set aside a reserve budget to switch to a vendor in an emergency and continue the project uninterrupted. Thus, a risk management framework helps mitigate potential risks efficiently and prevent them from derailing the project.

Given the best scheduling practices, let’s consider how resource management software can come in handy.

How can resource management software help optimize resource scheduling in AEC projects?

An advanced resource management solution is the key to resolving all the resource-related constraints and streamlining scheduling in the AEC industry. Here’s how.

First, the tool provides a bird’s eye view of resources’ skills, competencies, experience, cost rate, etc., eliminating silos of data caused by registers or Excel spreadsheets. It also provides advanced filters to narrow down the search for the right AEC professional for a given job.

Second, the tool provides capacity-vs-demand reports that allow managers to view upcoming demands and determine the existing skill gaps. Accordingly, they can use suitable internal or external channels such as training, upskilling, or hiring a contingent or permanent AEC workforce to fill them proactively.

Moreover, the project vacancy reports help analyze the nature of demands to determine if they are critical/generic or recurring/one-time. Based on that, the managers can hire and build the right mix of a permanent and contingent construction workforce to control the overall project resourcing costs while retaining deliverable quality.

Third, heat maps and Gantt charts provide insights into individual AEC employees’ schedules and real-time utilization levels to identify overworked employees and take appropriate measures to ease the workload.

Fourth, the tool provides reports like forecast-vs-actual financials that help track critical project financial attributes, including costs, revenue, profit margins, and overheads periodically. Based on the insights, the managers can identify any significant negative variance and act proactively to minimize it.

Conclusion

If a building looks better under construction than when it does when finish, then it’s a failure. ~ Douglas Couplar, a Canadian novelist and designer

An optimized resource schedule is one of the pivotal factors in creating a “perfect” building. Following the above-mentioned practices and implementing an advanced resource management solution can help you master the art of resource scheduling.

So, what’s your approach to creating an optimized resource schedule?

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients with their Workforce Planning Software. Saviom also provides tools for Enterprise Project Resource Management, Project Portfolio Management, and Professional Service Automation.

-Job Outlook

The above stat explains the growth of audit and accounting services in the coming years. With this constant surge in demand, organizations find it challenging to meet the requirements of the audit & accounting workforce. Therefore, they need a cost-effective resource plan to counter the same. Additionally, the lack of planning and scheduling results in low productivity, frequent hiring/firing, project delays, budget overruns, etc., hamper project quality and subsequently negatively impact the brand of the firm.

To gain a competitive edge, accounting & audit firms need effective resource planning and scheduling.

It enables them to leverage the maximum potential of their workforce, identify, forecast and allocate competent auditors and accountants to projects at the right time and cost. Further, it helps meet future resource demands, control project costs, eliminate last-minute firefighting, etc.

This blog discusses the various benefits of resource planning and scheduling in audit and accounting firms.

But first, let’s understand the basics.

Audit and accounting firms: types & functions

Accounting and auditing consultancy firms analyze the financial data for their clients to facilitate business decisions. In addition, these firms help companies organize and manage their cash flow, conduct regular audits, and provide tax/financial advisory services.

Accounting refers to the process of capturing, classifying, summarizing, analyzing, and presenting the financial records, transactions, profitability, statements, and financial position of an organization. It is the process of recording the financial transactions of a business.

On the other hand, auditing is a specialized service where an organization’s financial statements and records are examined. It ensures that financial statements are prepared in accordance with the relevant accounting practices.

The different types of audit and accounting firms are-

Full-Service Accounting Firms

Generally, full-service accounting firms provide a wide range of services, like tax preparation, advisory, auditing, etc. As a result, these firms are big in size in order to accommodate clients with various needs.

Tax Firms

Tax firms are specialized accounting firms that focus almost exclusively on tax preparation, planning, and resolution of businesses as well as individuals. Usually, accountants working at these firms are certified public accountants (CPAs).

Audit Firms

Audit firms perform third-party investigations into a company’s finances or other areas. They also conduct annual audits for the corporate sector, small businesses, the government, etc. Some of the professionals working here include forensic accountants, risk analysts, tax consultants, etc.

Outsourced Accounting Firms

Small business owners are often required to outsource their accounting needs in order to avert the costs of maintaining an in-house accounting department. Outsourcing accounting firms provide their clients with full accounting services and handle their finances.

Bookkeeping Firms

A bookkeeping firm keeps records and tracks income, expenses, payroll, and, in some cases, tax returns for business clients.

After knowing a brief about audit and accounting firms, let’s understand how resource planning and scheduling are different for these firms.

How are resource planning and scheduling different for audit and accounting firms?

As a professional service industry, resources in the audit and accounting sectors play a vital role in generating revenue for the organization. Therefore, they need to ensure that the numerous generalists and niche skilled resources, such as actuaries and forensic consultants, are working on billable projects.

In addition, the seasonal demand fluctuations in this sector for accountants, auditors, tax analysts, etc., is inevitable. Therefore, organizations need to plan and schedule their resources in advance to meet these requirements. When they fail to do so, it can result in business loss and client dissatisfaction.

However, most audit and accounting organizations still rely on spreadsheets or home-grown tools for scheduling and planning their resources. This often leads to double bookings, lower productivity, employee burnout, disengagement, and billing losses. Moreover, these legacy solutions lack forecasting capabilities, resulting in last-minute firefighting for competent resources, cost escalations, compromised quality, or loss of business.

Therefore, it is vital for an audit and accounting firm to implement an enterprise-level resource scheduling and planning process to utilize their resources optimally. It enables organizations to identify and deploy competent consultants to projects at the right time and cost. In addition, it also helps to maximize the billable utilization of consultants by mobilizing them from non-billable or low-priority work to billable or high-priority projects.

In a nutshell, resource planning and scheduling enable audit and accounting firms to tap into their workforce’s maximum potential and improve business profitability and sustainability.

Now, let’s learn about the different benefits.

Benefits of resource planning and scheduling in Audit & Accounting firms

Resource planning and scheduling can provide myriads of benefits to these firms.

Here are a few –

Minimizes auditors, consultants, and accountant costs significantly

Since the accounting sector utilizes specialized resources such as actuaries and tax analysts, their resourcing costs are relatively high. Effective resource planning and scheduling help managers identify and allocate cost-effective accounting resources to different activities. For example, instead of assigning a senior financial analyst to create financial reports or review internal controls, the manager can allocate a skilled junior counterpart or an intern for this purpose.

In addition, they have enough lead time to conduct planned hiring in place of last-minute activities and create the right resource mix that suits the project budget. This reduces the consultant cost significantly, thereby ensuring the successful delivery of the project within the budget.

Bridges capacity vs. demand gap of consultants proactively

In audit and accounting firms, the consulting managers are responsible for forward-planning pipeline projects by analyzing the requirements in advance. Since accounting projects have shorter duration and resources work on multiple projects simultaneously, managers need to implement appropriate measures proactively to bridge the capacity vs. demand gap.

If there is an excess of consultants, managers can bring forward future projects, provide training or sell additional capacity. On the other hand, a shortfall of consultants for auditing projects can be mitigated by organizing appropriate upskilling programs for the resources or through planned hiring. Thus, forecasting and bridging the gap proactively eliminates the chances of last-minute hiring and helps in futureproofing the consultants.

Ensures competent allocation of accountants and auditors

An audit and accounting firm may have employees with diverse skills working from multiple locations. Based on that, the auditors and accountants can have multiple reporting line in a complex matrix structure. Thus, to allocate the right employees, managers need 360-degree visibility across the organization.

Resource planning helps managers get a complete view into the present and future bookings of resources and also provides insights into various attributes like availability, schedules, skills, etc. Also, the accounting managers can consider employees’ interests before deploying them to projects. That way, managers can find the best-fit resource with the right skills for the project and ensure a competent allocation.

Helps create the right mix of a permanent and on-demand workforce

A balanced mix of permanent and on-demand consultants helps accounting firms cater to evolving client expectations and prevents last-minute firefighting, thereby minimizing high-resourcing costs. In addition, during resource planning, audit managers can assess the skill requirements and compare them with other pipeline projects to determine if the demand is for niche skilled- resources.

Based on that, they can hire a permanent worker for recurring needs and contingent workforce for a one-off skill demand. For example, during the financial year-end, there is an increased demand for auditors, so the manager can hire an on-demand to complete the project. This will eliminate the challenge of finding suitable projects to redeploy on-demand employees and reduce unwanted firing cycles.

Maximizes profitable utilization of auditors’ and accountants

The billable hours of audit and accounting staff plays a crucial role in enhancing the profitability of accounting firms. Therefore, it is necessary to optimally utilize accounting resources to maintain a healthy top and bottom line. Resource planning and scheduling enables managers to assign audit/accounting resources to billable tasks and maximize profitable utilization.

If there is any deviation, they can take remedial measures to control the situation. For instance, a senior auditor is allocated to work on non-billable or admin tasks like data entry for 50% of their capacity. In that case, the audit managers can mobilize them to billable or strategic audit projects, allowing them to use their skills in revenue-generating work. This will facilitate them to maximize productivity and enhance profitability.

Facilitates timely delivery of accounting projects within budget

Meeting project deadlines and preventing budget overruns are the benchmarks for effective delivery. Proper resource planning and scheduling enables managers to assign cost-effective auditors and analysts with the right skills to suitable projects. This enables organizations to complete projects within the stipulated time without disrupting the quality.

In addition, it also helps managers to periodically review accountants’ performance using actionable insights from various reports in real-time. This enables them to implement appropriate measures in case of variance and prevent budget and schedule overruns. Timely delivery project delivery improves client satisfaction, higher retention, enhanced work rate, and increased brand loyalty.

Optimizes the resources schedules during the seasonal fluctuations

Audit and accounting firms witness a surge in demand during the financial month, where managers tend to allocate work beyond consultants’ capacity to meet the deliverables. They also deal with a fall in demand during the trough period, where finding work for accountants becomes challenging. Efficient resource planning and scheduling helps organizations to prepare for seasonal fluctuations and initiate remedial actions to optimize resource schedules.

For example, while working on tax advisory projects during seasonal peaks, if the tax analysts are over-utilized, then managers can procure additional analysts to the project or adjust the project timelines. On the contrary, to prevent underutilization and increased bench size, managers can implement training programs for tax analysts to prepare for future projects and avoid skill obsolescence.

Now that we know the benefits let’s understand how resource management solutions can help.

How can modern ERM software streamline planning & scheduling in audit & accounting firms?

Advanced resource management software provides efficient resource planning and scheduling capabilities that helps audit and accounting firms utilize their resources optimally.

Resource management software provides 360-degree visibility into audit projects/non-project activities, vacations, BAU/admin, etc. In addition, the software maintains up-to-date competency information to match the skillset with the right task.

Additionally, using resource scheduling solutions, the senior audit managers can assign competent auditors to suitable opportunities. The advanced filters and other selection criteria help them to uniformly distribute the employees working in different departments, like tax, accounts, etc., across projects. It also allows them to deploy cost-effective global resources for different audit projects from low-cost locations.

Moreover, the forecast vs. actual reports and utilization helps accounting supervisors implement corrective measures in advance if accountants are over/underutilized. It also helps them to mobilize skilled accountants from non-billable or low-priority work to billable or high-priority projects.

Further, it also provides managers with lesson-learned reports, which allows them to get past information about the various previous projects and improve estimations for similar future projects.

Apart from this, the modeling and simulation technique provides accounting managers with complete information on how various outcomes of specific scenarios can impact the accounting firm. This enables accounting managers to select the ideal resource plan and make informed decisions on future projects.

The bottom line

Effective resource planning and scheduling are essential for an organization’s sustainability and profitability. It plays a crucial role in keeping the firm future-ready and competitive in volatile and uncertain market conditions. It is only possible to reap the benefits when organizations use a robust resource management solution, which can identify and mitigate bottlenecks. This will also help leverage the maximum resource potential for higher productivity and business efficiency.

Are you ready to effectively plan your resources and achieve fruitful results?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients with their Workforce Planning Software. Saviom also provides Enterprise Project Resource Management, Project Portfolio Management, and Professional Service Automation tools. Boost your remote team collaboration with Saviom.