The goal of any business, irrespective of its size is to make a project successful while spending minimal resources. Yes! No business is looking forward to making a minimum profit after maximum investment right? From planning to resource allocation, there are many factors involved in project management. One of the most important factors that have an impact on project success is resource planning. From equipment to skilled employees, a project needs different types of resources. As you see, if your organisation is handling multiple projects simultaneously if you don’t plan accordingly there may be a serious shortage of resources. Even project management tools like Jira have resource planning as a centre, read more about resource planning in Jira.
Resource planning truly helps project managers in seeing the bigger picture of the project. The efficiency of a project can be improved if you have done proper resource planning for a project. A lot of factors should be taken into consideration for the efficient planning of resources such as the demands of the project, skills of the resources, employee morale, deadlines, etc. Stick to the end of this article to find out the benefits of resource planning for your business.
Identifying the resource gap
One of the main benefits of resource planning for businesses is that it helps them identify any potential resource gaps related to a particular project. For example, you have received a project and have to finish it within 6 months, and one month into the project you understand that your resources are not enough to deliver the project on time. Don’t you think it is too late to take action? You won’t be able to finish and deliver the project on time. Without resource planning do you think you can allocate the necessary resources to finish the project delivery on time? Resource planning allows you to analyse whether you have the right skilled resources and identify the gaps within your resources so that the project progress is not delayed.
Improves efficiency
Without resource planning, you will have to normally keep a track of which staff is working on which project. Over time this will become exhausting leading to accidentally giving your employees too much work to handle. This will have an impact on your employee’s efficiency, productivity, and morale. Instead, with resource planning, all the information you need is at your fingertips. From which employee is working on which project to budget and overhead cost, you can find all the information you need easily. With resource planning, none of your resources will be idle or underutilised and also improves your employee’s efficiency and productivity.
Saves costs
With resource planning, your organisation can increase the cash flow and save costs. Yes! Resource allocation will design an optimal allocation of your organisation’s resources in hand to fulfil your objectives and increase the cash flow. Your organisation will not be losing any money even if you face unfortunate events such as equipment breakdown or employee leave amidst the project. With resource planning, you will be able to budget based on your organisation’s current capacity, demand, and material.
Time-saving
Apart from the money, you can also save time with resource planning. It will allow you to place your resources in the right place at the right time. From employee productivity to budget, resource planning will take all these things and many other things into account so that you can manage your employees, equipment, etc promptly. When everything is under control and you have contingency plans for everything so naturally the need for re-work will be reduced and the project will be delivered on time.
Enhances customer satisfaction
Resource planning will help you in determining how long it will take to deliver a project. Since it takes factors such as resources, skills, deadlines, and budget into consideration it estimates how long the project will take to complete accurately. When you deliver your project on time without compromising on quality then it is natural that your customer’s satisfaction will be highly improved. Resource planning is highly important in project management because apart from understanding your resources and requirements it will also improve your communication with clients.
Keeps things under control
With a resource plan you can identify how long a resource is needed for a particular project. This helps in designing the deadlines of each project and makes matching resources to tasks highly simple. Apart from matching them, you can also get a clear view of who is working on what. By keeping track of these details you can stay in control of the project and identify if you are going over budget or exceeding deadlines. It allows you to keep a track of where you are spending more so that you can take necessary action immediately.
Anticipates the need for scaling
As you already know, with resource planning you can identify the number of resources you need to successfully deliver your project. As your organisation grows, your work volume will also increase. If you are not properly prepared your team will need to work over time. With resource planning, you can anticipate your need for extra hands quickly. It shows how many more employees you need to scale your time. This way you can save yourself and your team from working overtime.
In a nutshell,
When you have the right tools by your side, project management becomes highly simple. Be it a small company or large, if you are using spreadsheets to manually keep track of your resources then it is high time you switch to a resource planning tool that makes things easy for you. From accurately estimating the exact deadline to assigning tasks to employees, a resource planning tool will handle everything perfectly. A project resource planning software can be utilised for both long term and short term objectives. There are many resource planning software in the market with different features. However, before choosing a resource planning tool your organisation needs to choose a tool that matches your business requirements.
