5 Best Resource Planning Tips and Best Practices ThatWill Save Your Time

What’s the most expensive component of any business? It’s the resources as without them you cannot operate your processes. But managing the resources at hand to complete the tasks proficiently, on time, and on a budget is not easy. In fact, planning and managing people, equipment required, and facilities can be very daunting. So, how can you ensure that your project plans succeed? Having a realistic view of all your employees is the first step. Then, keeping a tab of their competencies, qualification, experience, availability, etc. is important. However, that is quiet and time-consuming. Due to this, the project managers face various challenges. The right resource planning tool can be a life-saver for you. It enables you to streamline your resource planning, scheduling, and management in a few easy steps. But before that, let’s take a look at the top 5 resource planning tips to save your time.

1. Identify and Decide all the Roles in Advance
   If you plan your project before deciding on all the key roles, then it can lead you to a lot of challenges. When you are starting a project, you should first determine what type of resources you need and what are skillsets they
   should have. This is the best way to kick-start a project. Begin by creating an outline of all the roles you will require. You can also check some earlier projects’ histories and check out if there are some similarities between the tasks and resources. At this stage, it could be a simple role structure and not a detailed sketch.
2. Build a Resource-Priority List
   The next best practice is to discuss your project with the relevant teams, and then identify your most indispensable participants or people. This will also help you identify any potential pain points. For instance, is the one most important team member out of the office or on a planned leave at that time? Or is he or she occupied with another project? Finding all this beforehand rather than at the last minute can help you do better resource planning. Before your project starts or gets close to deadlines, you could hire a contractual resource or make some arrangements to effectively manage the project with your timelines. But how can you foresee all this? The right resource planning software can do all this for you in a few clicks.
3. Utilize a Single Resource Pool
   Imagine how misleading and confusing it can be to use multiple resource pools? Many times, project managers create and use data from various repositories for every project they do. This can result in a lot of chaos and they would need to keep comparing data in those repositories to check if there are any double entries. What if you had a single resource pool or centralized repository with information about all the available resources in your organization? Won’t your job be a lot easier? Just log in to that one repository and check the availability of the resources depending on their skillsets, experience, qualification, etc. eResource Scheduler is one such Cloud-based resource planning tool that can act as a centralized repository for all your projects and resources.
4. Refer Previous Projects and Create Templates
   Suppose your organization has just got a new project. The first step should be to check if there are any similar past projects that you could use to draw insights from. Though all projects are unique, past work can still be your best indicator of the issues and challenges you may face. Especially when you set out to do resource planning, it’s important to work with your experience. When talking about project management, missed deadlines are usually because of resource issues. So, if you look at an earlier project or resource plans and analyze them well, you can recognize patterns and plan more efficiently. You can also easily estimate where the resource pain points lie. This helps in working out your resource and project plan efficiently instead of a last-minute rush. The right resource planning software such as eResource Scheduler helps in creating templates using past projects, which come in handy when you do resource planning for new ones.
5. Use the Right Resource Planning Software
   Gone are the days when project managers relied a lot on lengthy and cumbersome spreadsheets to manage their resource planning. Not only do spreadsheets involve manual work, but they are also highly error-prone. And with all data, project inputs, and dependencies being so dynamic, you need a tool that can help you to manage it all effectively. Be it accounting for your resources, project plans, flagging any potential issues or probable conflicts, or some impending risk to the project. If you choose a visual and
   best-in-class resource planning tool like eResource Scheduler, it can enable you to sketch all your detailed plans on a timeline. This tool provides Gantt charts that help you predict your resource capacity and utilization throughout the project. This helps you in doing resource planning in an accurate manner and delivering each project on time and within budget.

Enhance Your Resource Planning with eResource Scheduler
eResource Scheduler is a well-rounded, intuitive, and robust resource planning software that helps you to proficiently manage both your resources and projects. Want to build the best team for a complex upcoming project? Fret not! This award-winning tool helps to achieve your project milestones and budgets and forecast any future requirements. The client-server architecture helps team members located in different places or geographies to collaborate and easily share data in real-time. What’s more? You can configure eResource Scheduler easily as per your requirements. Schedule employees or other custom-defined resources such as official vehicles, meeting rooms, etc. in just a few clicks.
Streamline your resource planning, maximize resource utilization, get detailed reports and dashboards, and benefit from its other amazing tracking features. Your project managers will get a clear idea of who is right for a task, how much time can it be done, and what’ll be the cost. This way, you can accomplish much more with the same resources. So, if you wish to have a single online platform that can help you do resource planning, scheduling, allocation, project management, and a lot more, then eResource Scheduler is the best bet. Sign up now for a free trial and let it optimize your organization’s
resources and processes.

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