Resource planning in the 21st century
In a modern planning environment, for project orientated organisations, the management and control of a portfolio of multiple projects/jobs is becoming more and more important. How to control resources, costs & profit.

Information at project and executive levels need to be available quickly and flexibly.

For many public and private sector organisations, limited resources – especially labour – are at the core of successful planning. It is vital to understand the profile of resources needed and used, so that timescales and costs can be forecasted with greater accuracy.

More and more organisations are finding good computerised project management to be essential. Resources can also include advanced facilities for controlling materials, plant and equipment, as well as people.

Added to this there is an automatic facility that allows reminders to be sent by email in advance of tasks due to persons that need to perform the task.

Resource planning in many medium to small sized companies falls to managers rather than experienced planners. They, just as much as full-time planners, need software that is straightforward, intuitive, strongly graphical and capable of highly professional output.

• Resources
  Resources can be analysed by skills, location or team and these can be used to filter reports across resources rather than projects.
  
  
• Consolidation
  For centralised planning all projects can be saved on one file and each job is referenced uniquely, so individual projects can be filtered separately. Where planning is diversified throughout the organisation, projects can be consolidated upon demand in order to report on summary timescales, total cost and labour requirements.
  
  
• Resourcing new jobs and what-ifs
  As new projects are agreed, consolidation reports will show where resources are currently allocated and assist in helping managers assign relevant resources. In many cases, where there are conflicts in target dates and resources available, multiple levels of undo allow managers to evaluate different scenarios with or without changing the original plans.
  
  
• Timesheets
  Timesheet data from other sources can be used to update actual time spent on each task to help reschedule the outstanding work and project.
  
  
• Progress reporting to clients
  Progress to date reports, using actual resource time spent or task % complete and baselines, show clients how the actuals compare with the target in terms of the timeline, costs and resources.

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