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Spinning plates, herding cats, keeping multiple balls in the air: there’s no shortage of creative terms to describe just how challenging it is to keep complex projects with lots of different parts running smoothly.
When you work in a fast-paced, constantly changing environment like an agency or professional services firm, it’s essential to keep those plates—err, projects—on track. You need to be able to flexibly respond to change, understand at a glance who’s doing what, and quickly know if you have capacity to take on more work without burning out your team.
This is where resource management comes in. Using a resource management system lets you monitor, analyze, and optimize how resources are used across your business, making it a must-have for busy teams who are always in flux. Read on to learn:
What is a resource management system?
Resource management is the process of measuring, organizing, and allocating all of the resources available to you, such as people, time, and budget. A resource management system is a digital tool or platform that facilitates this, usually with helpful features like dashboards, workload planners, and reporting to give you greater insights.
Why are resource management systems important?
A resource management system is crucial for agencies, professional services, and consultancies, because you need to optimize the way you work in order to be profitable.
As an agency, resources are finite—but client requests can be never-ending. You have a limited number of team members, who each have a limited number of working hours in the day. Your job is to assign those hours to client work to meet deadlines, satisfy clients, and maximize revenue.
If you have more work than resources available, you risk burning out your team or missing out on valuable business. If you have more resources available than work in the pipeline, you could be losing money.
It’s a delicate balance, but resource management systems can help. With a clear overview of which resources are at your disposal—combined with historical project management and time tracking data for more accurate project and task forecasting—you gain a big-picture understanding that lets you prioritize, adapt, and work more efficiently.
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7 benefits of resource management technology
Resource management systems unlock a whole range of benefits that help you streamline operations, improve efficiency, and boost revenue. Here are seven of the most impressive benefits of resource management technology.
1. Become more profitable
Resource management and profitability go hand in hand. Effective resource management improves your agency’s bottom line in a few major ways, by letting you:
Forecast future work to identify if you can take on new clients or projects
Optimize business capacity by allocating resources at peak utilization
Plan—and mitigate risk—for potential projects by mapping them out at a high level in advance
Prepare for upcoming work by ensuring the right people have capacity at the right time
Predict what revenue and utilization will look like three, six, and nine months down the road to ensure you meet business goals
Identify when you need to sell more work or hire an employee to keep work on track
The result? More projects delivered more efficiently—and more profitably.
2. Optimize your workflows
To really get the most from your resources, you don’t just need to maximize your available hours; you need to maximize your available billable hours.
There’s a lot of work that goes into keeping projects organized, up to date, and on track. And while this work is crucial, it’s not always directly profitable—or, let’s be honest, enjoyable.
Using resource management systems breaks down how much time is being spent on which types of work, so you can identify ways to streamline your operations. Then, leveraging workflow automations and other time-saving tools (like repeatable project templates and integrations with the other software you use every day), you can cut out tedious, repetitive, non-billable admin for your team and win back more valuable time for strategic, creative work.
3. Simplify time tracking and reporting
Effective resource management needs accurate data. Using a resource management system with native time tracking capabilities, you can encourage your team to log their time against tasks and projects so you see where every minute goes. Set automated alerts to remind them to log time without micromanaging, and add descriptions, tags, and mark time as billable or non-billable for more granular insights.
Use the resulting time reports to understand how time is being spent across your agency. Zoom out to monitor overall performance—like the ratio of billable to non-billable hours—and zoom in to find blockers impacting specific teams.
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4. Flexibly adapt to change
Life happens: team members get sick, scope starts to creep, clients get client-y. But once you know exactly which resources you have at your disposal, you can better respond to these last-minute changes or requests.
Using a resource management system, you can assess team bandwidth, deadlines, and priorities at a glance, and redistribute work as needed to meet your goals.
⭐ Pro tip: Use a flexible resource management and project management platform (like Teamwork.com—that’s us!) to stay agile. With all of your project and client information centralized in one place, it’s easy for new team members to get up to speed and have all the context they need to hit the ground running.
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5. Forecast and invoice with greater accuracy
When we surveyed over 3,600 agency leaders about time management, our research found that a whopping 61% of tasks are estimated to take longer than they actually take. (For web development agencies, this rises to 75%.)
This is a problem, because when you overestimate how long tasks take, you block out time that can’t be used on other client work—i.e. lose money.
With a resource management system, you can track exactly how long different tasks take and use the historical data to make more accurate forecasts. Compare your estimated vs. actual time spent across tasks, projects, and clients to understand where you need to make adjustments. Plus, generate invoices from your billable hours based on custom rates for more accurate, easier billing.
6. Avoid employee burnout and turnover
Poor resource management leads to employee burnout, which has compounding consequences. At best, your top players start to display performance issues because they’re overworked, leading to frustrated clients and extra time needed for amendments. At worst, they decide to leave—which puts further pressure on the rest of the team.
Using a resource management system lets you avoid employee burnout. It reveals how long work actually takes your team and who’s working on what, so you can resource projects accurately, assign and re-assign work based on individual capacity, and find the utilization sweet spot.
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7. Provide better client experiences
When you’re not scrambling for resources behind the scenes, you can dedicate more time to the things that really matter: creating great work and growing your client relationships. Resource management systems give you the visibility you need to deliver projects on time, within budget, and in scope, so you can win your clients’ trust—and their repeat business.
How to choose the best resource management software
With so many resource management tools on the market, how do you know which one is right for your business?
Firstly, you’ll want to look for some key resource management features. Make sure the tool you choose has the following:
Workload management to give you full visibility of each team member’s availability and assign (and re-assign) tasks
Built-in reporting, like utilization and profitability reports, to get real-time data and make informed decisions
Native time tracking, to easily log, monitor, and analyze how time is spent
Custom budgets for each project to track resources used against profitability, with notifications to alert you when you hit certain thresholds
Integrations with the other tools you use, like your invoicing software, to streamline workflows and save time
You should also consider your business’s specific requirements. For example, agencies, consultancies, and professional services have unique needs that traditional project management and professional service automation apps can’t meet.
That’s why many teams prefer to use a platform that was purpose-built for managing client work, combining powerful project management, resource management, and operations in one intuitive system.
“With Teamwork.com, we get more visibility over the team’s capacity and resources available, as well as more visibility in terms of who owns a task and what exactly needs to be done."
~ Nicci Beacham, Project and Quality Manager, Liberty Marketing
7 top resource management systems and tools
Now that you know the features to look out for, here are some of the top resource management systems to consider.
1. Teamwork.com
Teamwork.com is an all-in-one platform that was designed to help you resource, execute, and deliver client projects. It offers robust resource management capabilities and flexible project management, giving you complete visibility over who’s doing what, when.
Use the Workload Planner to see your team’s assigned work vs. their available time. Click on individual tasks to get more details, like the task’s estimated time and any attached files, time logs, and comments. Quickly see who’s over- or under-utilized for more effective capacity planning.
As well as day-to-day resource management, you can also plan resources for the future with Resource Scheduler. Map out potential projects to stay prepared and forecast pipeline, so you’re ready for any scenario.
Teamwork.com gives you everything you need to deliver projects on time and provide exceptional client service. Centralize all project communication, increase visibility, automate workflows, and collaborate with context to help your team work more productively, further improving your resource and workload management.
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Key features
Resource Scheduler to map out tentative projects, scenario plan, and reduce risk
Unavailable time and available hours so you can work around your team’s schedules for more accurate capacity planning
Roles to organize your team based on their skillset or function, so you can strategically assign the right people to the right job (and ensure they’re available at the right time)
User rates to track the cost rates and billable rates for each person on the project, enabling you to calculate costs, monitor profitability, and generate invoices
Native time tracking to record, manage, and analyze the hours spent on each project
Reporting to unlock financial and utilization insights that help you optimize your revenue, profitability, and budget health
“We're focused on proactive management of people's schedules, and the planning tools allow us to fill in weekly tasks based on remaining capacity and balance that among the team."
~ Hannah Taylor, Director of Digital Operations, Interactive Strategies
2. Saviom
Saviom is a resource management tool for enterprise businesses. It’s particularly suitable for firms focused on accounting, auditing, law, architecture, engineering, and construction. It provides a combination of resource scheduling and capacity planning to enable large businesses to utilize their global workforce and combat market volatility.
Although powerful, some users note that features can be difficult for beginners to understand.
Key features
Resource allocation and scheduling
Capacity planning
Forecasting
Talent planning
3. Mosaic
Mosaic is an AI-powered resource planning, management, and forecasting tool. It gives you visibility over team capacity so you can address workload imbalances, and provides hiring suggestions based on in-demand roles. Its AI-powered resource allocation makes suggestions on how to staff project teams based on system data.
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Users note that it can be complicated to use, lacks integrations, and that the AI-powered tools can make the system slow.
Key features
Resource planning
Resource allocation
Workforce intelligence
AI-powered forecasting
4. Resource Guru
Resource Guru is a simple resource management tool that lets teams manage people, equipment, and meeting rooms. Filter available team members by department to find the right people for the job at hand, and assign approval workflows so you can manage who works on what. Equipment management and meeting room bookings avoid the delays caused by double-booking, enabling you to track how all types of resources are being used and see which ones are in demand.
Users note that while it’s easy to use, it’s more of a functional high-level calendar, and lacks project management features like the ability to see project statuses or track estimated vs. actual time.
Key features
Simple resource management and scheduling
Capacity planning
Leave management
Equipment management
Meeting room booking system
5. Teamdeck
Teamdeck is a lightweight resource management solution for creative and technical teams. It provides a simple view of team utilization so you can balance workloads. It offers built-in time tracking so you can measure how time is spent across your small business. It also has leave management so managers can approve or deny employee time-off requests directly from one place.
Teams may find that the features and customization capabilities are limited or basic. More importantly, Teamdeck has no project management capabilities, meaning you need to integrate it with another tool to fully manage your work.
Key features
Resource scheduling
Time tracking
Availability management
Leave management
6. Forecast
Forecast is an AI-powered resource management system. It offers some project management features, like project scoping, baselines, and milestones, as well as resource allocation.
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Unlike platforms like Teamwork.com, it doesn’t offer a free trial, and you need to contact their team to learn about pricing. They also only offer one pricing tier, meaning their one-size-fits-all price might not fit your team’s needs.
Key features
Project scoping
Resource allocation
Time tracking
Revenue recognition
Integrated AI
7. Hive
Hive is a project and resource management tool built by users for users. It lets you track projects, tasks, and time, so you can reach key goals. It offers basic resourcing and time management features to help you optimize team capacity, understand utilization in real time, and plan future projects.
Key features
Project management
Time tracking
Resourcing
Proofing and approvals
Help your team do their best work with Teamwork.com’s resource management system
Understanding how resources are used across your business is the first step to improving your efficiency. With the right resource management system, you can spot blockers, identify new opportunities, and ensure you’re always working at maximum profitability.
Resource management systems – FAQ's:
What are the key components of a resource management system?
Some components and key features of a resource management system are:
Workload planning
Resource scheduling
Capacity planning
Utilization reports
Forecasting
Time tracking
The best resource management systems combine these features with project management and client operations capabilities, so you can manage your entire project workflow from one central place.
What are some popular resource management systems?
Some popular resource management systems include:
Teamwork.com
Saviom
Mosaic
Resource Guru
Teamdeck
Forecast
Hive
What are the benefits of resource management systems?
Implementing a powerful resource management system helps you improve profitability, optimize your workflows, reduce team burnout, and deliver better work.
More on resource management:
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