The corporate ecosystem thrives on dynamism. From the high-octane hybrid workforces that have amalgamated the finesse of cubicle culture and agility of remote work to automation, a lot has changed in the enterprise landscape in the last decade. However, one thing that’s still the same is that organizations scramble to manage resources. There’s no denying how enterprises try the hit-and-trial method and dabble in different technologies for managing resources. However, so far, using strategic resource allocation with automation has proven to be the most effective. How? Here’s a guide to help you get started!
A report by Deltek suggested that 49% of agency leaders were open and prepared to allocate substantial funds for hiring more talent in 2022. However, did that solve employee retention and productivity issues entirely? No!
HRs and Project Managers think acquiring new talent is the key to solving resource scarcity. However, even when you have the budget and scope to accommodate new employees, resource management won’t be easy. Why? Because you are already missing a detailed definition of relevant skills and a mechanism to distribute workload, acquiring new talent makes little to no sense. That’s where automation comes into the big picture. Using resource allocation software can solve a major chunk of issues associated with resource allocation.
But are organizations prioritizing it? No!
According to the PMI or “Pulse of the Profession” survey, only 26% of companies use resource management to allocate and estimate resources. The result? Cluttered data pools with issues of time theft, missed deadlines, employee burnout, and whatnot.
There are many challenges associated with resource management that careful allocation can solve. These include:
Budget constraints aren’t a new problem hovering over enterprise operations. They have been there since the dawn of business. Businesses of all sizes struggle to manage limited resources within confined budgets, and mismanaging resources due to budget constraints can be a massive blow for businesses because this can lead to potential delays in project delivery due to insufficient funding, low-quality work, and client dissatisfaction.
How do you know the best person in your organization to do a certain task? Organizations often miss out on potential opportunities because they do not assign the right people to the right tasks or projects. In addition, leveling out resource distribution isn’t a cakewalk either. At different points in time, while some resources are idling in their cubicles, others are overworking. Tracking employee work hours and using the data from resource allocation software can help troubleshoot resource optimization issues, but until you do it, it can lead to inefficiencies and employee burnout.
Acquiring and retaining skilled talent is a perpetual challenge for resource managers, and matching the required skillset with existing resources is also daunting in large teams. Although training and development programs play an indispensable role in bridging skill gaps, they require time and investment. On the other hand, using an efficient resource allocation mechanism can help manage skills and talent without any disruptions or impacting project continuity.
Implementing and integrating suitable technology and tools for resource management is an enormous challenge for organizations in the 21st century. Many organizations struggle with outdated systems or disjointed tools that hinder effective resource tracking, allocation, and utilization. Introducing new technology like a resource allocation tool can help improve productivity in the short as well as long term.
To understand resource allocation, let’s consider this simple analogy:
Cooking for your family of four can be easy. However, when you cook for a lot of people, it’s challenging to comprehend how much everyone will eat and will be throwing stuff out when you cook with extra ingredients.
However, when you don’t cook enough, someone else might go hungry as well. Undoubtedly some people will offer to help, but how are you supposed to know who’s a good cook and who’s more likely to burn a dish or two?
Well, if this riddle of confusion feels familiar to you, you might be scrambling with a classic resource allocation debacle. If cooking is your work project, you must identify people with certain skills (who can cook and who’s good at setting the table), what resources you require (ingredients), and if you can allocate enough time to finish the project on time (having enough food on the table when everyone’s hungry).
In the work environment, resource allocation is all about figuring out how to make the best out of the resources at your disposal to maximize business success. If you have questions about what allocation is , it can mean a whole lot of things. From evaluating who has the most expertise to handle a new project to assessing who took on what and assigning work with a buffer time, strategic allocation invariably and implicitly means efficiency.
In today’s tech-driven era, outmoded workflow methodologies have no place. Businesses that use a manual approach for budgeting, employee workflow management, or workload distribution don’t just struggle with siloed workforce and poor resource management, they lose a lot of money in the long run and fall prone to the risk of compliance issues. Resource allocation has numerous benefits; however, before we dive into the benefits of resource allocation , do you know who or what counts as a resource, and what are the challenges to skillful resource allocation? Here are the answers!
The simplest answer to this question is that anything you can use can be termed as a resource. Whether we are talking about people, time, money, space, technology, or skillset, anything that’s beneficial for your organization is termed as a resource in the work context. Even departments and teams can also count as a resource depending on what your analysis is based on.
• Inadequate communication: When information isn’t shared universally, it becomes challenging to allocate resources effectively. A lack of insight into project specifics leads to uncertainty about resource requirements.
• Resource awareness: Team members facing ambiguity about available resources encounter difficulties in requesting what they need or utilizing resources efficiently. Assigning tasks that mismatch skills or lack necessary resources leads to disengagement and subpar performance, emphasizing the importance of clear communication in resource allocation.
• Resource scarcity: These are the instances where there's a shortage of time, finances, or personnel, or difficulty in determining priority resources. This often occurs in environments with numerous concurrent projects or high demand for specific skills, emphasizing the significance of effective prioritization.
• Scope expansion: Scope creep is where project boundaries continually shift, demanding more resources than initially estimated. Managing this ensures avoiding excessive resource consumption on projects that expand beyond their scope.
If you value the significance of teamwork, you probably already know what it’s like to do all the work on your own. Undoubtedly, working with a lot of people at once can seem challenging, but for complex tasks involving more than one responsibility, it’s crucial. How?
Imagine lugging a giant pile of groceries from the car to your doorstep in one single trip, all on your own. In the process of doing so, you will most probably hurt yourself; there might be a messy aftermath of spilled milk and a bag of mashed fruits all over your driveway, and a bag will most definitely break.
However, imagine the same scenario when you split the work with one or two people. The job can be done skillfully in one trip with shared effort between you and the other people and you will also mitigate the chances of waste, spills as well as injuries. Now, that’s what we call a win-win!
This simple analogy is just an example of the advantages of resource allocation . When you tactfully distribute resources by understanding what allocation is , your resources can help you be more efficient, reduce the waste of time and funds, and get things done according to an immaculate quality.
There are several advantages of strategic resource allocation . Some of them include the following:
When you run an organization, some people might be good at some things, whereas others have their own strengths. If you are in a leadership or managerial role where you are delegating tasks, it’s always clever to play to people's strengths. resource allocation is all about putting people who are best at coding in your team when you are handling a development project. They can finish the work quickly, using less money and of course limited resources. However, if you divide your team into 60-40 coders and designers, you end up paying for their billable hours, when the delivery time stretches beyond what you committed. You waste time and resources on a project when you could easily have achieved maximum efficiency and productivity if you understood what allocation is .
Do you know the amount of money organizations blow on static resources? Yes, you heard it right! While many companies are downsizing to save resources, some businesses are blowing a huge portion of their yearly budget on recruiting new talent. This simple issue can be handled with resource allocation . How? By automating the allocation of tasks, organizations can make the most out of talents they have readily available on deck and stop wasting money on hiring new employees. The budget you save on hiring more people can then be reallocated to a project that needs more resources. Simple as that!
Let’s picture a scenario: You have 2 content writers in your marketing team. While one writer handles the social media strategy as well as content for a bunch of your renowned clients, the other one is just a trainee. However, you are still paying the intern and making the experienced writer do all the work for nearly the same amount you are paying the newbie. The reason? You think someday you might need the communication skills and creativity of the new intern. If you don’t want to lose your resources and avoid employee burnout, resource allocation can be a great idea to level out workload distribution without causing more stress on employees.
So, the question is: how do you do it? resource allocation is no child’s play, and especially in a large-scale organization or a budding startup, you always need a helping hand to distribute resources properly.
Most people wonder why they should invest in resource allocation software when it is all about considering the available resources for a project at a certain duration. Well, let us tell you something, your project might be a short-term goal for your business, but the resource allocation software or the technique you use can have long-reaching effects for your organization.
Although most businesses have moved to automating their pre-existing resource allocation approach, you can deploy other techniques along with software to allocate resources efficiently in a realistic time frame.
No chef starts putting random ingredients together before deciding what to cook. resource allocation is no different. When you have to allocate resources for a project, outline the scope of your project and define:
• Essential tasks and determining what falls beyond the project's boundaries.
• Restrictions imposed by project limitations such as financial constraints and timeframes.
• Structure of the project's timetable, including key checkpoints and timelines for achieving specific stages.
• A clear idea of the project's expected results or end products.
The insights you gain from the project scope can help you to understand your project at a new level. You can always use the information to:
• Level out workload distribution and dice up one gigantic project into smaller tasks.
• Decide how you are going to assign tasks to your team members.
• Plan the number of resources you might need to complete the project within the destined time frame.
Just like choosing pizza toppings requires knowing what's on hand and everyone's preferences, selecting the right resources for a task demands understanding each person's strengths and preferred tasks.
In project planning, it's crucial to grasp your team's abilities and the quality of available resources, as this enables you to allocate resources where they will yield the highest impact. Identify their strengths and specialized skills, and align your project needs with resources capable of fulfilling those requirements.
You have a clear plan of action in front of you, and you understand your team’s capabilities. However, how do you know if everyone on your team is working at their most efficient version? That’s when you start tracking the time and performance of everyone on your team. When you track who’s handling what and which employee has how much work on their deck, it can immensely help you to reduce burnout and increase productivity.
By doing so, project managers can get a clear view of the team or employees falling behind, when the team is at its peak hours of productivity, and if there’s a need for a new resource distribution strategy to improve overall productivity. In addition, when you are using resource allocation software to analyze time and resources, it can also help you to set goals better and determine realistic deadlines for future projects without causing overload in your team.
The amount of time employees spend on non-billable work stuff is insane. How can you forget about those hour-long meetings with agendas that could easily have been an email? Besides there are also team activities, brainstorming hours, and employee break sessions. If you want to cut out inefficiencies and see through the time data, continue to review where your employees and spending data are and stick to the blueprint you made at the start of the project.
There are several ways in which eResource Scheduler can be a game-changer for resource allocation. This includes:
Whether we are talking about manpower, equipment, or facilities, one of the biggest headaches for organizations is ensuring resources are optimally used. Managing resources manually can be daunting. However, with eResource Scheduler, businesses can orchestrate this process and get a bird’s eye view of their resource pool to make allocation efficient. From managing project timelines to assigning tasks with leveled workload distribution blueprints and structured timesheets, eRS can do it all!
How often has your organization faced the issue of resources clashing or overbooking? Well, if you are managing a large team, eResource Scheduler can offer you a crystal clear view of who’s sitting idle, who is swamped with work, and who’s just on the brink of being overloaded. With the real-time data from eResource Scheduler, you can improve decision-making, and analyze your most efficient resource base.
Using eResource Scheduler can be a game-changer for businesses because it helps them master resource allocation. Instead of working with cracks in the workflow, the software can help you get a remarkable boost in productivity by simplifying workload distribution. You can assign the right task to the right person and this ensures all your tasks are completed within the pre-specified timeframe and with precision.
Are you over-recruiting employees in your organization to combat the issue of resource unavailability? Well, with eResource Scheduler, you can avoid issues like overhiring or underutilization of resources, so you don’t extend the annual budget set for your company.
As a project manager or team lead, do you ever feel like some of your employees are drowning in tasks, whereas others have nothing to do, or are sitting idle? Well, if this bothers you, eResource Scheduler can help to bring balance to your workforce. The software can enable you to distribute workloads evenly and keep your top performers motivated without any hiccups.
Around 80% of conflicts in the organizational landscape arise due to miscommunication. Irrespective of the hierarchy, miscommunication can burn bridges of productivity between employees, teams, or between employees and their superiors. However, when you have a tool like eRS that acts as a centralized pool of data for everyone to collaborate effortlessly, communication gaps will be less frequent. From notifications for resource allocation to updates on availability, the software can streamline everything for better teamwork.
In today’s business ecosystem, organizational needs are changing like a rollercoaster ride. No one can tell when they have to shuffle priorities or move to another task midway through a project. However, with eResource Scheduler, adaptability won’t be an issue. The tool helps you to pivot resources swiftly, so your workflow can be flexible for sudden changes without breaking a sweat. In addition, you can also use the data from the software to analyze historical allocation patterns, resource utilization trends, and performance metrics for smarter, data-driven decisions.
Wondering what makes eResource Scheduler a revolutionary technology for streamlining resource allocation? Well, the answer is its features, that include:
You can make scheduling easy with convenient and easy to understand Gantt charts. eRS allows you to swiftly view existing schedules according to resource availability, so you can track the number of resources in your organization and the resources you will need. You get a clear overview that illustrates overlaps and dependencies for setting realistic deadlines and expectations and balancing multiple projects at once without any setbacks.
If you were searching for software that’s easy to use and can effortlessly align your workflow with your productivity objectives there’s no better option than eRS. You get the drag and drop scheduling feature that makes it easy to schedule resources on tasks and projects and you can effortlessly shorten, expand, and reassign bookings across different resources. Shift schedules, make quick adjustments or uproot an entire resource base for another task without any hassle with the simple drag and drop feature.
If data is power, eRS helps you wield this power with real-time resource availability. With the schedule charts, you can instantly get the overview of resource availability getting updated in real-time, so you can create and modify schedules as per the requirements of your scheduled project work and resources and fine-tune allocation strategies.
Want to identify the resources that are overworked at best? eResource Scheduler can help you! With its resource overload indicator, reorder assignments and instantly alter an existing schedule or create a new one. You get the flexibility to schedule work in any month or hour view and the split bookings work like magic for last-minute transfers, inclusions and alterations.
It’s a wrap! Resource allocation plays a substantial role in handling organizational dynamics and if you understand what allocation is and why you need it, it’s high time you switch to automation! Searching for an intuitive, easy-to-use, and efficient resource allocation tool? Contact the professionals at eResource Scheduler today and watch your organizational efficiency reach new heights!
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