For all project-based services organizations, having good visibility and control over resources is important if they are to operate effectively and maximize the revenue they can drive from their people. The recent Professional Services View of the Resource Management and Capacity Planning Benchmark Study highlights that this is an area where many of these organizations still need to improve. This benchmark survey, in which 154 globally-based executives at professional services organizations participated, provides valuable insight into the challenges that many project-based services organizations are struggling to resolve. Learn more about how to optimize profitability of resources.
Customer Requests Can Kill the Company
The key findings of this survey conclude that constant change in customer demand is a significant pain point and is further accentuated when combined with a lack of visibility into the demand in the current pipeline, and the current available capacity of their people. As a result many of these organizations are not optimizing the utilization of their resources.
According to the research, consequences of failing to get the right resource assigned to the right project are:
- The quality of project delivery is impacted
- Customer satisfaction is reduced, and
- Employee morale is affected
With the market for professional services starting to see good signs of growth, it is important for these organizations to keep their existing customers happy and to hold on to their best people. The shortage of quality talent to recruit will be a major issue in this market during the next few years as growth continues.
Management Buy-in and Quality Processes Are Tied
The survey also highlights the importance of mature processes, and having the right software implemented to enable those processes and provide timely and accurate information to help improve business decision making. Process maturity came out as the most significant pain point at 45%, and for the less mature organizations it also highlighted that the ability to adopt best practices and manage organizational change is made more challenging by a lack of vision and management buy-in.
Given that 56% of respondents identified the greatest business risk of not addressing their resource management and capacity planning challenges was lost productivity, it is clearly an issue that needs to be focused on. Lost productivity means less revenue per billable employee and ultimately this impacts the organization’s profitability –– something all project-based service organizations are striving to improve!
To learn more, be sure to download the Professional Services View of the Resource Management and Capacity Planning Benchmark Study.
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