Professional services firms often find themselves juggling multiple projects, deadlines, and obligations and frequently end up with a mess of software or resource management solutions that become difficult to navigate. With resource allocation software, your business can simplify the process and make life easier for your team and your clients.

In this guide, we’re going to cover resource scheduling in software project management and explore the benefits of resource scheduling software when used in your organization. We’ll cover BigTime’s resource allocation software as an industry-leading solution many businesses use, go over the benefits of scheduling in project management, cover resource scheduling techniques in project management, look over resources in project management, and discuss different methods your business can use to make resource scheduling a breeze. Let’s begin!

Features of BigTime’s Resource Allocation

When it comes to resource allocation, BigTime has developed an industry-leading solution that allows your business to plan all of the staff hours required to complete your projects with ease and simplicity. You can use utilization reports to syndicate budgets, time, and staff members, and give your project managers the ability to see all of your staff’s availability to take on work. Resource scheduling in software project management is often a tedious task, but it can be made far more simple with the appropriate tools.

Using the resource dashboard, your project managers can quickly assign task hours and projects to staff members, organize and sort your internal data, and customize the reports your PMs see.

Benefits of Resources

Resource management has a plethora of benefits, ranging from reducing the time you spend planning staff capacity, consolidating your resources, and eliminating the need to track everything using custom Excel spreadsheets. In the next few sections, we’ll answer the question, “What is resource scheduling?” and how it can help your firm.

Save Time in Meetings

You’ve likely had a day or two where you dread the number of meetings you have to attend, and constantly think about everything else you could accomplish if it weren’t for those pesky meetings! Fortunately, resource management allows you to reduce time spent in any extra meetings where you plan staff capacity and determine which staff members should be assigned to which project, task, or department. This is one of the primary benefits of scheduling.

When you have a resource management software solution that allows you to quickly determine staff availability and assign your team to where they need to go, all of the time you save can be used on your most meaningful work.

Consolidate Resource Data

Having data split up between different software packages, documents, or hard copies lying around the office isn’t the ideal way to go. With resource management software, you’ll be able to consolidate all of your data into one location.

When you use resource management software such as the software package provided by BigTime, you can see everything you need and search for data on-demand from one simple dashboard.

Remove the Endless Spreadsheets

Similar to consolidating your data, getting rid of all of those endless spreadsheets can simplify your life and make it easier to find the information you’re looking for. While spreadsheets are great at organizing, processing, and analyzing data quickly, they can become a mess when you have hundreds of different spreadsheets all stored in different locations.

Use resource management software to import all of your spreadsheet data and track all of your resources from one easy-to-use interface. Why make your life harder than it needs to be? Eliminate the manual Excel sheets and start tracking resources the smart way.

Quickly & Easily Find Staff Availability

Finding staff availability information is a tedious process that involves asking about everyone’s availability individually and having each individual input their out-of-office days, busy days, or vacation days into a central location. Whenever your staff doesn’t follow all of the required steps to manually submit their availability, you can find yourself stuck in a situation where you aren’t sure which staff you can schedule or assign.

Resource management software lets you get rid of these headaches once and for all. You’ll be able to quickly and easily find all of your staff, their availability, and sort by their department or role. Now you can schedule everyone quickly and easily without the hassle of meetings or asking everyone on an individual basis.

Resource Scheduling in Project Management PDF

PDFs have become one of the most common document formats used today for scheduling resources in project management due to their simplicity, portability, and availability. Think about how your business is run today – do you have hundreds, if not thousands, of PDFs scattered across email accounts or server locations? The importance of resource scheduling and using the appropriate tools to do so cannot be overlooked. You may have some project planning and scheduling PDF files, or project scheduling techniques PDF files that are lurking on server locations within your firm.

If so, you could benefit from resource management software in order to transfer all of your resource scheduling or planning from PDFs into a simple software suite that gets the job done without any hassle.

With PDFs, you don’t have the ability to version control the documents you create, and you can’t easily pull reporting information or analyze financial data and metrics of interest in real-time. Optimize your scheduling resources and costs in project management by using resource scheduling software instead.

Resource Scheduling in Project Management PPT

We’ve all used PowerPoint (PPT) for business presentations and organizing data and information, but what if there’s a better way? If you’ve never tried using resource management software in your business for resource scheduling purposes, you might be pleasantly surprised by the benefits and what the software can help your organization do. Whether you’re doing multi-project resource scheduling or just need a resource scheduling system that works, using the right software will help tremendously.

When you substitute your PowerPoint presentations with resource scheduling software, you’ll be able to store all of your data in one central location without worrying about finding each PPT file and remembering where everything was saved. This will ultimately improve your firm's resource allocation and scheduling abilities, through the use of a proper resource scheduling system. There are all types of resources in project management PPT files that can now be carried over into a centralized system.

Furthermore, you’ll have version control abilities, and save time by seeing all of your staff’s availability instantaneously without having to set multiple meetings in order to narrow that information down. All in all, resource scheduling software is an ideal solution when compared to using PowerPoint since it lets you simplify your organization’s workflows and also get real-time reporting such as metrics of interest and financial data.

Resource Scheduling Methods

If by this point you’re wondering, “What are the different methods our business can use to simplify and make our resource scheduling more efficient?”, then you’re in luck!

Resource scheduling software such as the software applications provided by BigTime help your company plan and prioritize projects while fully understanding capacity and staff availability. There are a large number of benefits of resource scheduling in project management your company can take advantage of.

Here are several resource scheduling methods utilized by the BigTime resource management software to help you with resource scheduling from start to finish.

Prioritizing & Planning Projects

One of the primary use-cases and benefits of resources when it comes to resource scheduling is to prioritize and plan all of your projects and tasks in detail. This can be done much more simply when you use resource allocation software, as it lets you schedule every step of every project you have, and see when it’ll be complete and how your deadlines may be affected by any schedule changes or delays.

Planning out your projects in as much detail as possible is key to getting your projects completed on time and anticipating any curveballs or bottlenecks you may encounter during project execution.

Know Your Capacity

Do you know if your firm currently has the staff available to work on a new project? Can you allocate certain team members to work on a specific task or project? This question can be answered with just a few clicks when you use resource scheduling software to accompany your project management efforts.

You can make vital capacity choices without worrying about scheduling a meeting and getting everyone’s feedback and input since you have all of the data you need to make an informed decision right in front of you.

Know Your Numbers

Does your business frequently look at your numbers, key performance indicators (KPIs), and how your projects are performing? One of the main challenges to frequently looking at and knowing your numbers is having the ability to see clear reports that detail where everything in your firm is currently at.

Resource allocation software can help you stay informed by letting you run and generate clear financial reports, staffing reports, progress reports, or task reports with just a few clicks. Think about how much time this method will save you compared to tracking down all of your data individually, and then sitting down and extracting the useful bits of information you need.

Resource Scheduling Software

Resource scheduling and tracking don’t have to be done manually or through an Excel spreadsheet. With the advent of resource allocation software, such as the software packages provided by BigTime, your firm can quickly and easily perform resource scheduling, see all of your company’s data as it comes in, and make informed decisions based on the data you’re provided. Can you get resource scheduling software free? Yes, but resource management tools and techniques within resource management software that are paid and frequently maintained can give your business more reliable resource scheduling.

When you combine resource management tools and techniques with a software package that lets you work more efficiently and save both time and money, you’re further setting up your business for success and driving results in the long run. Finding the best resource management software isn’t easy, but it’s well worth it in the end.

If you’re interested in a resource allocation software suite that can simplify your business and help you get resource allocation right, request a demo of BigTime’s software today and we’ll show you what we can do for your firm.

Resource scheduling doesn’t have to be a drawn-out and tedious process – start using smart tools today in order to simplify your life, make you more productive, and get your business the reporting and data it deserves to have available to make informed decisions.