As common as the term might be in today’s business environment, many professionals are still not sure exactly what is meant when people talk about or refer to “resource management.” While the term may be used broadly to refer to all organizational resources, including people, money, physical assets and even information, most enterprise organizations use “resource management” to mean the development and effective assignment of its human component in particular—its employees, contractors, and in some cases, vendors.
The larger and more complex an organization is, the more attention it needs to pay to how it hires, trains, deploys and manages the people who work on its internal and external projects. Most large companies today use a resource allocation management system to keep track of employee assignments, time utilization and performance. These systems are especially important in organizations where employees might be assigned to multiple projects at the same time, and in which no single manager can be expected to know everything about an employee’s work.
Visibility, Accuracy and Flexibility
While many organizations may once have used separate systems to track resource allocations and project activities, high-performing companies are moving toward project management solutions like Planview AdaptiveWork that deliver advanced resource management features along with the ability to manage project tasks, budgets, timelines and communications. No matter what approach your organization takes, effective resource management depends on a few key factors:
- Visibility: If you don’t know how your employees are spending their time, you can’t identify potential problems with workloads that are too heavy or too light. Simple knowing what an employee is scheduled to do is not enough—project managers and resource managers need to know what is actually happening day by day and week by week. Planview AdaptiveWork provides real-time reporting capabilities that let organizations track employee allocations across the entire enterprise, ensuring an accurate view of utilization and availability.
- Accuracy: The more detailed your assignments, schedules and time records are, the more confident you can be that you have an accurate view of project and portfolio health. Organizations that are searching for resource management solutions should look for software that can handle multiple resource role definitions and schedule formats, so that the data truly represents what is happening on each project.
- Flexibility: Priorities can change quickly on enterprise projects, and managers need the ability to respond quickly to new resource demands. Planview AdaptiveWork’s resource management features provide the ability to model potential changes in resource allocation and make an accurate assessment of the impact that any changes might have, before any final decisions are made.
If you’d like to learn more about how an integrated project management and resource allocation management system can benefit your organization, take the time to explore Planview AdaptiveWork’s powerful, flexible project management solutions today.
