What is resource management software?
Resource management software helps you manage your team’s capacity for work. It provides analytics on who is busy, who is available, and how long projects will take. With these analytics, you can prioritize new projects, identify potential problems early, and save your people from burnout.
The goal is to get enough data on your team, their projects, and their progress to provide meaningful analysis.
Does your team need resource management software?
Consider using resource management software if your team works on multiple simultaneous projects where different people are assigned to different projects. Another good rule of thumb is to use resource management software if your team has more than 10 people. If neither of those are true for your team, project management and time tracking software will probably suffice.
Resource management systems combine project management, time tracking, personnel records, and project accounting to provide analytics across all these areas. Most systems have their own workflows, but it is also possible to integrate the systems you are already using. The goal is to get enough data on your team, their projects, and their progress to provide meaningful analysis.
[Employee utilization] is the single most important metric for managing a successful professional services team.
Different systems have their own ways of providing visualizations and reports, but they all have the same goal: helping to manage employee utilization. Employee utilization is the percent of your team’s time that is spent on billable projects. It’s very important to learn more about employee utilization. It is the single most important metric for managing a successful professional services team.
Choosing your resource management software
Let’s begin with my recommendation: Bric. It’s one of the best systems for managing resources and was created by a small team of data scientists, designers, and developers. But each system has their unique strengths. You have to find the system that works best for you and your team.
Bric
Bric provides you analytics to maximize your team’s time and skills. With Bric you will know who is working on what, how long projects take, and your team’s capacity for new projects. In addition, Bric automatically finds patterns in your team’s timesheets. These patterns are used to recommend more accurate project plans, allowing you to plan projects with a click — just review, edit and activate.
($7 per month per employee, billed monthly)
Mavenlink
Mavenlink is best for teams of 100+ people. The software provides analytics on team utilization, productivity, and resource allocation. With Mavenlink, you will know the impact of every project resource on your bottom line and be able to make more informed hiring decisions when it comes to staffing for new projects.
($39 per month per user, billed annually)
Wrike
Wrike is focused on collaboration and security. While many resource management software have Public APIs, Wrike has built more than 30 native integrations and extensions that allow you to manage tasks directly in Photoshop, login with single sign-on, sync documents with Dropbox, and get alerts with Slack.
($24.80 per user per month, billed annually)
LiquidPlanner
LiquidPlanner was built to respond fluidly to changes in project requirements. Its scheduling engine uses predictive planning to prioritize tasks, maximize your team’s time, and estimate when the project will be completed. All you have to do is provide estimates for the amount of time each task will take.
($39 per user per month, billed annually)
Conclusion
Managers are responsible for making the most of their team’s time and talents. The larger your team grows, the harder it becomes to manage your team’s resources. Using resource management software helps to weave your people and projects together, eliminating waste and burnout. The end result will be happier employees and a more profitable company.
Nice article