Resource Planning & Resource Management
Deployment with system: Reliable resource management software functions in BCS
Resource management is an important part of project management that ensures that the necessary resources (project participants / human resources and material resources) are available in your projects at all times. It is also related to time and cost planning. Your employees are protected from stress, overtime and dissatisfaction by forward-looking resource and capacity planning. Make the best use of your resources: Planning, scheduling and allocating people, financial and material resources is child's play with BCS, as data from all modules is available in real time for resource management. With BCS, you recognize impending resource bottlenecks early on and take targeted countermeasures.
Resource provisioning for projects: Resource Management Software
What if your resource planning software...
➤ could ensure resource availability even before project release in portfolio management?
➤ could map not only project tasks but also line activities in resource planning?
➤ could fill each project role with the right employees based on their qualifications and skills?
➤ would allow not only the project manager but also the team leaders to be involved in the planning process?
➤ allowed you to react to changing priorities in real time and flexibly adjust employee availability in planning?
➤ allowed you to reserve and schedule material resources with just a few clicks?
➤ let you see at any time who is working on which project and how many capacities are free at any given time?
Company-wide resource management can only be successful if resource planning is forward-looking and the necessary database is available centrally in one place. With BCS, the platform for your resource management, you can access all the information you need for holistic resource planning in real time.
Thilo Grawert
Head of IT Operations/Head of DSO, uniVersa Lebensversicherung a.G.
“Depending on their area of responsibility, basic loads, e.g. maintenance (AE), operational tasks (BT) or further training/education, etc. were stored centrally for employees. Vacation planning and appointments lasting several days or absences are also entered and planned by employees in Projektron BCS.”
Alexander Stoß
IT Controller and IT Administrator, DFB GmbH & Co. KG, Frankfurt am Main
“In the first few years after the introduction of BCS, our resource planning in particular has become easier. Projektron BCS helps us to recognize in good time whether we can meet our deadlines or whether the originally planned effort was calculated too tightly. There is feedback. You can learn a lot about effort and incorporate the experience into the next projects.”
Adrian Kamer
Senior System Architect, Deleproject AG
"We have more efficiency and quality in our project work and can deliver more output with fewer resources."
Björn Höhne
Director Consulting, USU GmbH
"For project managers, on the one hand, it is important to be able to take into account available capacities in various skill groups for scheduling at an early stage, but also to recognize potential conflicts with other projects. For HR managers on the other hand, workload management of their employees is essential - both to avoid permanent overload and free employees."
Alexandra Baldauf
Business Consultant, Goodson Softwaresolutions GmbH
"Thanks to resource planning and holiday management, we always have an overview of which employees are available. This allows us to counteract bottlenecks in good time and guarantee our customers continuous project handling."
Thilo Menges
Head of Corporate Development, Medical University of Lusatia - Carl Thiem
"Resources, especially in a technical environment, are limited. Different stakeholders and different activities are involved here: In addition to line activities in IT, strategic projects arise, but they rely on the same resources. This makes prioritization necessary. If certain resources are not available, BCS actively supports the assessment of which activities are important and which activities are urgent and facilitates the necessary reprioritization."
Ralf Junge
Head of PMO, Sandstein Neue Medien
"From day one, leave management and resource management with data updated in real time provided more clarity and speed in our organizational processes. Every employee knows at a glance how many vacation days or "child sick days" are still available. If a vacation is canceled, the corresponding capacities are immediately available again in resource planning thanks to live data. If a team member is absent at short notice due to illness, I have a central overview of all the necessary information to compensate for the absence."
Gabriele Schrenk
Executive Board Member of EANTC AG
Projektron BCS [lets] gears interlock: With Projektron BCS, the effects of our employees’ leave and sick days on project procedures are visible at a glance – copying by hand with resulting errors and inaccuracies becomes obsolete.
Capacity leveling: For realistic planning
In order to systematically manage employee capacities, it is crucial to know the degree of utilization of entire departments and project teams as well as of individual employees.
Projektron BCS determines the degree of capacity utilization not only on the basis of planned project assignments and agreed working hours, but also takes into account other decisive influencing variables for the resource plan, such as effort actually documented as part of time recording, current remaining effort estimates from ongoing projects and tickets, basic loads from day-to-day business, as well as vacation, compensatory time off, public holidays and absences due to illness.
| The stacked workload diagram provides a quick overview: The graphic summarizes the most important information and clearly shows you overloads and underloads of both individual employees and entire company departments. | |
| The Project Effort/Department matrix shows you how involved your departments are in projects and who still has free capacity. Here you can also obtain important information, such as project status, duration or remaining workload. | |
| The workload forecast (resource preview) offers you even more detailed evaluations: For example, if you want to analyze the reasons for an employee's overload, you can simply display his or her appointments, projects, tasks, and tickets in the tool. |
Staff resource planning 360° - workload analyses and forecasts
Utilization analysis: systematically managing resources
You can analyze the workload of your project team or department particularly conveniently in the Projektron BCS workload diagram: The workload value per employee is clearly displayed with colored bars. Highlighted in red, overloads can be quickly identified. You can also display resource planning in the project plan, for example as a Gantt chart, and view the workload of individual users in detail over the course of the project.
Thanks to the practical tree structure, detailed analyses are also easy: If, for example, you want to analyze the reasons for an employee's overload in more detail, simply show their appointments, projects and tasks. BCS simplifies the work of the resource manager in every dimension and gets them to their goal efficiently.
Utilization mountains: mountains and valleys in view
The workload mountain provides a quick overview of capacity utilization. The graphic summarizes the information from the workload analysis and clearly shows you overloads and underloads of both individual employees and entire company or organizational areas.
In the subview of the workload mountain, the workloads of all employees in the selected organizational unit are displayed in a diagram, with the workload sources differentiated by different colors. The diagram depicts basic workloads from operational activities, workload from projects, vacations, appointments and sick days. A blue line marks the utilization limit (upper capacity limit) of the personnel resource so that you can immediately recognize overload.
Projektron BCS automatically distributes the employee's planned effort:
Linear: Effort is distributed evenly over the duration of the task.
Optimized: Planned effort distributed adjusted to existing employee workload.
Efforts can also be grouped by project status, project priority or person type to get an overview of the workload in different contexts. BCS provides you with several filtering options to further customize workload information and perform strategic resource planning, including the "Skills" filter.
Plan ahead, avoid bottlenecks and conflicts
If employees are involved in several parallel tasks and projects, even small changes at one point can lead to major overloads.
By displaying the project plan as a Gantt chart, you can therefore display the overall workload of departments or individual employees over time and, for example, identify overloaded and underloaded employees at the same time. You can quickly replace overloaded employees with other employees.
With BCS as your resource management solution, you can effectively resolve resource conflicts in advance before they arise and ensure balanced resource utilization in the plan.
Workload forecasting: Well-founded forecasts
In order to systematically manage employee capacities, it is crucial to forecast their utilization as realistically as possible. Our project management software determines the degree of utilization of your employees not only on the basis of planned project assignments and agreed working hours, but also takes into account the other decisive influencing variables.
Current workload estimates from current projects in the portfolio and the base load from day-to-day business are included in the automatic workload calculation, as are vacation, compensatory time off, public holidays, and absences due to illness - data that is fed directly and in real time from the personnel management module into resource planning.
BCS offers you every function and the right tools in resource management to give you a holistic view of what's coming up.
Resource know-how: qualitative human resource planning
Best practice in resource management is to staff each task with the appropriate employees. In BCS, you can see which employees have the appropriate qualifications and skills. An employee's skills are assigned to him or her at the employee level. To tasks, you can assign skills that are needed to complete the tasks.
To ensure efficient resource management, it is necessary to analyze the need for both material and human resources at an early stage, while keeping an eye on the price of these resources. If you recognize that your tasks require skills that your project participants do not have to a sufficient extent, this is the best starting point for targeted skills management. With regard to your strategic resource management, this is how you determine which resources you have available internally, which know-how you may need to procure from external providers, and what costs you can expect to incur.
Resource controlling reports
Especially when several projects are carried out simultaneously as part of multi-project management and the project teams are very large, it is essential to maintain an overview of the available resources. With Projektron BCS, you can easily master this challenge. You can
| avoid overloads, | |
| ensure that collaboration in your teams runs smoothly, | |
| check whether existing resources are being used as optimally as possible, | |
| schedule new projects. |
In the case of human resources, for example, you can use a resource report to determine whether resources are still available for another project and whether individual users have been assigned too many or too few tasks. This evaluation therefore not only helps you to understand the workload, but can also provide important insights for planning further projects or for reaction options in the event of problems in projects.
In BCS, you generate numerous reports for your resource controlling at the click of a mouse:
| The Employee Expense Report summarizes employee's expenses in one document. | |
| The Monthly Summary report summarizes an employee's working hours for the selected period. | |
| In the Expense Statement report, Projektron BCS summarizes the employee's project bookings, attendances, work and absence times, and work time balances. | |
| In the Billability Overview report, you summarize employees' billable, reportable, and non-billable effort in a PDF document. |
Our resource management software allows managers to easily track, manage, and control all project activities. With a user-friendly dashboard, you can quickly access all relevant information and keep track of your budget.
Material resources: Available for your team
Is the meeting room available? Are the company car and laptop ready for use? In addition to the procurement of personnel, the procurement of material resources is also relevant for the planning and management of resources. Data from the diverse ERP functions of Projektron BCS can be used directly for your resource management: You manage your organization's inventory items centrally in BCS in the Inventory and Contract Management module.
You can create any inventory item as a linked resource in this area in no time at all and include it in schedules or in your effort planning. One look at the Projektron BCS appointment calendar and you know exactly when and for how long the right resource is available. To make sure you are on the safe side, you can reserve the required resources in advance in resource management in Projektron BCS.
Flexible organizational structures: line, matrix and more
From branches to departments to individual employees: In resource management, you map your organizational structure in Projektron BCS simply, individually and in detail. You can also define flexible groups of people independently of departments and projects.
As a project manager, you assign either individual people or entire groups of people to your project during project planning. In doing so, you can conveniently access the data stored in Resource Management and even display the workload of individual employees or the entire group of people during the project. This gives you the opportunity to keep an eye on the workload of individual employees and thus ensure that resources are used optimally in the company.
The plus for matrix organizations
Whether personnel manager or project manager: The provision of resources for projects can be flexibly adapted to the processes in the company in the Projektron BCS rights matrix.
Equipped with the appropriate rights, line managers without a project reference can determine who should belong to the project team. These assignments can also be changed with just a few clicks, for example in the event of capacity bottlenecks.
A strict separation of resource management and project management can also be realized. If the project manager plans his projects with placeholders, the line manager can assign his employees.
Whether it is internal departments, external employees or directly in the project: Projektron BCS supports you in the day-based scheduling of employees over long periods of time. The Scheduling view shows on which days employees are already blocked via appointments. In this way, you can easily see which employees are scheduled and which are available. The overview also shows which appointments are for several days and where there are appointment conflicts.
BCS is the solution for your resource planning: Personnel and material resources under control
Efficient capacity management with real-time planning and conflict avoidance
Holistic resource analysis for optimal allocation and planning
Realistic forecasts of employee utilization taking many factors into account
Skill-based allocation for qualified resource assignment
Clear resource control through detailed reporting and monitoring
Easy management of material resources for optimal resource availability.
Flexible organizational structures to adapt to individual requirements.
Effective resource planning with consideration of capacity utilization and forecasts.
Take a look at the product and have the resource management functions of Projektron BCS presented to you free of charge and without obligation. Start your Projektron BCS test immediately afterwards.
