How do I choose the right resource planning software?

There are several resource planning software on the market, but it's imperative that you choose the one that's right for your business.

The resource planning of a consulting company will be managed very differently from that of a warehouse or an association, for example.

Before deciding on a tool, you need to identify which solutions are best suited to your needs and your industry.

What criteria should you take into account when purchasing a resource planning tool that's right for your business?

Classic resource management functions 

Resource planning software must be able to recognize your employees. 

To achieve this, you need to be able to enter as much information as possible in the tool, to support your scheduling decisions.

Creating employee profiles

The easiest way to identify your employees is, of course, to be able to create a profile for each of them.

It must contain at least the following data:

• the name,
• first name,
• the name of the position he or she holds.

Optionally, if the software allows, you can also include the date you joined the company, the department to which the position is attached, and even a profile photo.

Skills management

Your tool resource planning must be able to identify the information entered as such: the creation of a database is essential.

It is essential to integrate professional professional skillss of your employees into their profiles, so that you can quickly identify whether or not a person is qualified to be assigned to a specific type of task, or even a specific type of project.

Time recording and timesheet management

In order to monitor production in real time and analyze production reports, all good resource planning software must contain time and activity management parameters.

This makes it possible to compare the initial schedule with what has actually been achieved. Time recording can then be used as a reference to plan future projects, or to analyze productivity.

• Leave and absences : to set up availability in line with legal requirements and different types of contract (part-time, fixed day rate).
• Time entry: it must be fast and adapted to your activity: an agency will need fine granularity, while IT Services will want to position profiles over extended periods. Stafiz lets you manage both options simultaneously.

Allocation of resources to tasks and projects

Search by profile

The integration of skills and time management mentioned earlier will be useful for the task ofassigning profiles to projects.

In fact, with a search baryou'll be able to find the profile(s) corresponding to the qualifications and requirements needed to carry out a task.

Stafiz's profile search engine can be used to assign qualified employees to specific resource requirements.

The search engine must be able to take skills into account, but these search criteria can vary and complement each other.

The experience criterion

It's often useful to include experience in a search: has this profile ever worked on a project for this customer? Have they worked on this type of project before? 

This allows you torefine the search with profiles already trained in the subject, and respond ever more effectively to a customer's needs.

What's more, it canintegrate your employees' preferences so that they can be mobilized for the skills they wish to develop or perfect, or the types of assignments they like.

Availability criterion 

When you are looking to staff a profileit's usually for a fixed period.

But it doesn't have to be full-time for the whole period: it can be on specific days or at specific times, over a period but not 100%, or only on certain days of the week. 

Cases vary, and your resource planning software must enable you to meet these criteria.

It's also a way of avoiding assigning a qualified profile that's already been positioned on another assignment, or is simply not available.

In particular, Stafiz allows you to create personalized personalized categories that you can label and customize to suit your needs and processes.

Here, the training, tools and certifications categories are examples of customized categories.

What's more, it canintegrate your employees' preferences so that they can be mobilized for the skills they want to develop or perfect, or the types of assignments they like.

Employees with visibility of projects can indicate their interest.

And that's good for employee satisfaction!

Ease of resource allocation

For stay productiveAllocation doesn't have to be a headache! That's probably one of the reasons why you've decided to swap your excel spreadsheets for the right software.

Stafiz allows a high degree of granularity in the timesheet fillingfrom hours to half-days to full days.

You can modify your project schedules from different locations in just a few clicks, reducing the time spent on navigation and technical planning.

Intelligent suggestions 

With a solid, comprehensive user database, you can save even more time and precision in your scheduling thanks to automatic suggestions.

The Smart Matching from Stafiz is an excellent example. From the moment you create a project or simply perform a search, the most qualified candidates available are automatically presented to you, so all you have to do is validate your choices.

This algorithm has been designed to help youoptimize your loading ratesto help you gain in productivity.

Visibility into resource planning

Resource management software must provide teams with full visibility: employees must have better visibility of their schedules, and managers must also be able to easily manage employee assignments project assignments and tasks.

Visibility for employees and connection to calendars

It's important to give employees visibility over their planning and objectives. 

So when management assigns the employee to a projectresource planning software must notify the employee or subcontractor.

Ideally, the briefing associated with this assignment complements the information on the schedule. Employees should be able to easily access their schedule by logging on to their mobile application.

When the resource planning software is also connected to the employee's visibility is even greater.

The resource planning tools that connect to the diaries enable resource planning to be modified in both directions if necessary: from the tool to the diary and from the diary to the tool.

Visibility and control for management

On the management side, it's the global views that are most valuable, allowing you to filter by role, by team, and know who's assigned to what. 

The resource management tool must make it easy to reassign the workload from one employee to another, or to shift assignments from one date to another if the project falls behind schedule.

A clear view of planning, availability and workloads must be available to project managers.

Stafiz load tracking gives your management team complete visibility of your teams' activity.

Visit rights management is very important here: how much visibility can the manager be given? All the company's profiles or just those of his team?

If your resource planning software allows, you can set rights levels can be defined.

Workload and capacity functionalities

A well-distributed and balanced load is necessary to maintain the right level of productivity. 

That's why your resource planning software needs to give you visibility in real time, but also in advance.

Load balancing

To improve team efficiency and productivity, the key success factor lies in optimizing optimized load distribution.

This must be smoothed out as much as possible between collaborators to avoid bottlenecks and delays. 

Being able to identify these load problems at a glance enables managers to reorganize work so that work is better distributed.

In addition to productivity gainsgood workload management increases employee satisfaction. No more inconveniences caused by overload or lack of activity!

Load planning scenarios

One of the major advantages of resource management tools is that they provide anticipation.

They provide an overview of any capacity shortfalls. It is then possible to decide what action to take to fill these skills gaps: recruitment, training, collaboration with freelancers... The possibilities are numerous!

They should make it possible to scenarioize future workloadsby taking into account the whole of the occupation: customer projects, internal projects, absences, but also opportunities and projects that could be brought on stream.

Visualization of forecast workload, taking into account projects with a certain percentage chance of being signed in pre-sales in Stafiz.

Depending on the scope selected, theimpact on load may change.

Ideally, you can pre-staff profiles on projects that are still in the pre-sales phase. Depending on the percentage chance of success, the additional workload is taken into account.

This allows you to read the forecast workload by deciding whether or not to take pre-sales elements into account.

Creating needs

Employees, whether in sales or project management, need to be able to create their own resource requirements by meeting certain criteria.

Creating a human resources request in Stafiz

These needs must then be referred to the people in charge of resource planning. This implies that the resource management software offers a "need creation" functionality that allows to indicate :

• competency criteria ;
• experience criteria ;
• charging period ;
• any other customized criteria you may require.

Monitoring production and its financial impact

Monitoring future production

By assigning profiles to projects or tasks, you systematically produce and update, without necessarily knowing it, the financial forecast.

A resource planning tool with financial and reporting functionalities can bring you even more value than just assigning a profile:

• calculating project progress and associated sales ;
• calculating the impact of forecasts on profitability;
• sending all elements to an ERP system to update the forecast.

This eliminates the need to update the schedule on one side, then redo the job by updating the remaining work.

Calculate margins throughout the project

If your resource planning software allows you to set up costs for each user (a salary for an employee, or a cost price for a project-specific supplier), then load management will enable you to calculate future project profitability.

If you can staff subcontractors and indicate their cost, it's even better, because you can forecast future production and subcontracting costs.

Other costs can have an impact on your project: product purchases, travel expenses that can't be re-invoiced... To be able to integrate everything and obtain a reliable, real-time reliable, real-time financial tracking of your projectmake sure that the solution resource planning solution you have chosen.

You can connect your timesheet tool to your resource planning software to obtain the actual (time already worked) and the forecast. If your software, like Stafiz, integrates time management, the calculation will be automatic.

Native native integration of actuals and forecasts is still the ideal way to avoid the data problems and other bugs that connectors can sometimes cause.

All that's left is to read the project dashboard and check whether the profitability forecast is close to target, or whether the project's margins are slipping.

Connecting resource planning software to an ERP system

Visit updating of projects must be regularly integrated into the ERP system.

Ideally, employees work in a simpler, more intuitive solution such as the planning tool, before data is automatically sent via API to the ERP system.

The finance functions can then take over to prepare the accounts closing.

Possible integrations with Stafiz