Resource Scheduling – allocating the right resources to the right projects and tasks – is a critical element of project management for professional service companies. Using a best-in-class resource scheduling tool is imperative for professional services businesses to optimize their efficiency and profits.
Let’s take a look at the features and capabilities such a resource scheduling tool should have that will make life easier for scheduling managers and business executives:
1. Part of an integrated PSA suite
A resource scheduling tool that is part of an integrated professional services automation suite (PSA) is the best choice for project managers. A PSA suite integrates project and task management, time and expense tracking, invoicing and resource scheduling on one platform. This allows you to configure and plan projects, allocate resources and tasks, and track progress in one centralized place.
It also enables you to streamline workflows, and eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing administrative time and greatly improving productivity.
2. Drag-and-drop scheduling
Resource scheduling tools that have a drag-and-drop feature are considered the most user-friendly out there, as they allow project managers to easily schedule tasks and appointments for their team. This feature allows for visual and intuitive scheduling, eliminating the need for manual data entry and complex scheduling workflows.
Here’s how the drag-and-drop feature works in a tool like Avaza:
The project manager can simply select a date range, and assign a team member to a project and task on the calendar view. If the resource is already scheduled for that time, the project manager can choose to reschedule the task or appointment to another day and time by dragging it to a different slot on the calendar. The project manager can also adjust the duration of the task or appointment by dragging the start or end of the assignment.
This saves project managers time and effort, making scheduling quick, simple, and efficient. It also provides visual representation of the team’s schedule, making it easy to see who is available and when, and reducing the risk of scheduling conflicts.
3. Flexibility of Project and Team Member Configuration
Efficient capacity management begins with the correct settings and configurations for your projects and resources (team members). Your tool should allow you to configure and view a flexible range of settings related to projects as well as team members.
At team member level, you should be able to configure details like skills, experience, location, department, job title and standard working hours. Similarly, you should be able to configure cost and billable rates to facilitate schedule profitability.
At the time of scheduling, you should be able to access project and team information, and filter by various fields including customer, project and user level tags, and project categories.
All this flexibility at the time of scheduling will give better control to managers to improve resource utilization, maximise budget and reduce the risk of scheduling conflicts.
4. Customizable scheduling views
The ability to switch between daily, weekly, and monthly views as well at project vs team views provides project managers with a greater level of control over how they view and manage the schedules of their team members. By customizing the views to their needs, project managers can ensure that the scheduling module works best for them and their team, improving productivity and reducing administrative time.
Avaza also allows scheduling managers to switch between Team View vs Project View when scheduling resources.
Team View: Scheduling Managers can view team members and projects they are responsible for on the Team Schedule page, as well as create new assignments, add leave information, and edit existing entries.
5. Synchronization with project management
On an integrated PSA platform, you should be able to seamlessly sync any update to a project task, and the associated booking of a resource on the task. Any changes to fields on the task, for example who it is assigned to, the start and end dates should automatically apply to both the task and the scheduling assignment.
5. Time-tracking for scheduled appointments
Resource scheduling often goes hand in hand with time-tracking. The top resource scheduling tools integrate with a time-tracking tool on the same platform, allowing team members to track the actual time spent on projects and tasks.
In Avaza, team members can view activities they are scheduled for, and convert a scheduled assignment into a timesheet with one click.
It also gives project managers better visibility into project progress in terms of estimated vs actual time tracked, and help with project budgeting.
Avaza allows professionals and teams to track their time, and monitor how close their tasks and projects are to using up their time budgets and estimated hours. You can visualize time vs budget at project or task level, and filter/group tasks by priority, section or assignment
6. Quick Glance at your Schedule
Life would be easier for your resources if they were able to get a comprehensive view of their scheduled assignments daily when they log in on the PSA platform. This would lead to better teamwork as everyone would be clear about their tasks and associated timeframes. On Avaza, your resources would also be able to create timesheets from the same view to track actual time vs scheduled time.
7. Gantt Chart Visualization
The best project management tools allow the use of Gantt charts to visualize and manage the allocation of tasks over a given period of time. The Gantt chart displays the tasks to be completed, their start and end dates, and their dependencies in a graphical format. This allows project managers to easily see which tasks can be worked on simultaneously, how long each task will take, and how any changes to one task may affect other tasks in the project. Using Gantt charts in a PSA suite that includes resource scheduling helps project managers make informed decisions about resource allocation, identify potential bottlenecks, and track progress toward project completion.
8. Leave and Public Holidays
A good tool for resource scheduling will allow you to plan for and factor in leaves and public holidays smoothly, so there are no scheduling mix-ups, and confusions are clarified well in advance.
9. Insightful Reporting
With accurate cost and billable rates easily accessible, you are able to forecast scheduled revenue and profits – no less than a project management superpower. An integrated PSA suite like Avaza gives you the advantage of having insightful reports at your fingertips, including project profitability, staff utilization reports, and scheduled vs actual time tracked by resources. You gain insights into where you are losing money on the table, and can easily visualize your utilization rate in terms of time and billables.
These 9 features and capabilities will provide a gold mine of benefits for business owners and project managers, allowing them to complete projects within time and budget, not to mention making the whole team’s work life so much smoother and better.
