In modern business, the process of resource management can’t be handled efficiently without the use of properly designed software solutions. But despite that, it’s important to remember that applications are just tools that allow you to bring your ideas to life. Therefore, the absence of understanding the basic principle of resource management cannot be compensated by any technological means. In this article, we’ll share some tips for efficient resource management that, we believe, can become an integral part of your business processes.
Don’t Rush With Gathering Project Requirements
Try to not jump to the process of requirements formulation the next minute after you start working on the project. Getting as more information about the project as possible before it kicks off will help you to plan further actions and manage resources more accurately. Every project is unique, and the list of goals depends on its features. But despite the particular qualities of your business, effective resource management implies that you always focus on relevant deadlines, appropriate success metrics, budget, key competitors, and approves required through the working process.
For effective resource management in business, it’s important to invest as much time into requirements gathering as you can. Remember that everything that you document during this phase will have a strong influence on all subsequent processes and overall efficiency of resource management. If you miss a seemingly unimportant detail, you may face the need to make changes in the middle of the working process which will harm your business and won’t make your employees happy. Therefore, an effective approach to requirements gathering can determine the efficiency of resource management during the whole life cycle of the project.
Define the Principles of Your Prioritization Methodology
After you decide what goals you want to achieve and what tasks you should accomplish to make it, you have to define how the process of prioritization will work. It’s an essential part of resource management since further new activities will appear and you’ll have to allocate your resources according to the chosen priorities. Since every business is unique, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions when we talk about prioritization methodology. But in any case, you should plan how you will separate those requests that are urgent from all the others. Choosing the right categorization criteria will allow you to spend less time on making decisions and allocate resources on critical tasks pretty quickly.
Calculate How Long Tasks Will Take
Routine tasks and processes that remain almost the same from one project to another can be found even in such creative industries as filmmaking, for example. This fact means that you can estimate how long a particular activity will take even before you proceeded to the working process and started planning any resource management routine. To do so, you can simply track what amount of time is required for completing a repeatable work process or consult with specialists from your team to get an estimated value. In any case, most likely you’ll be surprised about how you were under-allocating time for activities thanks to false assumptions. After you get an understanding of how long it takes to make things done, it’ll be much easier to forecast what amount of resources you’ll need to complete a specific task and allocate them accordingly.
Ensure Maximum Transparency
To improve the overall performance of your team, optimize the resource management process, and achieve maximum efficiency, make sure that all staff members are working towards a common objective. If you create an environment where every employee knows for sure that everyone who’s involved is working honestly in its field of responsibility, the dedication of each team member will increase many times. To make it possible, you have to encourage an open discussion between the team members and ensure that everybody feels free to talk about potential risks. Clear and self-consistent prioritization of tasks is also a pretty important part of achieving transparency for better resource management. Make sure that every member of your team knows what particular tasks are important at the current stage of the project and what resources are assigned to them.
To ensure that the whole team works as a single mechanism, you must have the possibility to see who’s working on what task. A centralized software tool can become an excellent solution that will allow you to manage resources across all projects and every team. Such resource management software allows reviewing the schedules of all employees and defining the tasks to which they’re assigned. Also, you can review how long a particular team member was assigned to a specific task and how much time approximately is needed to complete it. Being able to receive this info quickly is an essential part of efficient resource management for every business.
Our project management solution for the construction business company is an excellent example of an app that can improve the resource management process for your business:
This management app with resource planning features significantly simplify the process of monitoring the state of the current projects and allows assigning employees to specific tasks. The list of resources provides quick access to such info as employee’s name, specialty, hourly rate, and more. Having all this info before your eyes, you’ll be able to allocate human resources more efficiently. Another essential part of this app is the resource calendar that enables users to review tasks assigned to a particular staff member:
Ensure Reliable Communication Channels
Reliable collaboration tools are another essential part of the resource management process. Their availability to all employees can allow reducing the probability of errors and increase the overall productivity of team members. The success of your work directly depends on the ability to share and discuss ideas without any obstacles. There’s no better way to suppress creativity than to make a person feel isolated. Also, providing an employee with the ability to share an idea in its infancy and grow it into the complete concept along with the colleagues can become a good team-building practice.
Communication tools may take various forms. For example, it can be a standalone application or an integral module for your custom resource management system. Which option to choose depends on the features of your work, your budget, business processes you use, and other factors.
As an example of a custom-made tool developed to improve the resource management process through communication, you can check our React-based peer-to-peer video chat application:
This solution was initially designed to achieve two goals: provide efficient communication and help our client to keep business secrets safe. WebRTC was the technology that our developers chose to ensure high security of communications. To help team members to communicate with each other we have implemented audio and video chats, text messaging, group chatting, and notification system to inform users about new events. File sharing feature enables users to share their images and documents. This solution allows adding up to 3000 users to text conversations and make group calls for five users.
Be Prepared for Unpredicted Changes
Even if you develop the brightest resource management plan of the century, there are no guarantees that you’ll be safe from unpredicted changes during the working process. Any changes in the middle of the working process will lead to the necessity to relocate the resources. Such a situation will require a mind-shift from your employees which may become quite a challenge. To avoid a stressful situation, it’s important not to put pressure on your employees. Instead, give them some freedom and demonstrate that you trust them in finding their plan of overcoming appeared issues and saving your business from unwanted losses.
Keep Your Team Happy
Resource management in business is not only about strategy but also about human relations. Your employees form the essence of your company that makes your business running and allows achieving a competitive advantage at the market. Spend some time to learn more about the people that you work with, find out what motivates them and what they hate the most about their job. If you keep this info in mind, it’ll be easier for you to make decisions while assessing resources to particular tasks. You’ll be able to define which processes match particular resources. And what’s even more important, you’ll know what kind of activities are incompatible with specific resources. For example, if particular employees do everything possible to not work under stress, it may be a wrong decision to include them in an emergency response squad which intention is to deal with unexpected changes in the project lifecycle.
Keeping your team happy is the investment that affects motivation and allows avoiding employee turnover. Let your team know that you’re open for their suggestions on how you can improve the used business processes. After all, they’re the exact people that execute the work, and the awareness of the importance of their work will lead to a more significant commitment to the business.
Conclusions
Effective resource management is a fusion of strategic thinking and modern custom enterprise software designed by the needs of a particular business. Remember that your actions at the very first stages of the project life cycle will determine the overall success. Start with learning as much as possible about your project. Then, calculate the time required for completing the tasks and plan the process of determining what kind of tasks will require immediate attention in the future.
Custom-made software can become a useful tool that will enable you to improve the collaboration process among the staff members and remain aware of the current state of your resources and tasks to which they’re assigned. Last but not least, it’s important to remember that resource management in business involves human relations. Therefore, make your best to ensure that the members of your company are happy and the job that they perform is a part of this happiness. If you want to know more about custom-made resource management systems and the impact they can have on your business, you can get a free consultation from our specialists.