Guide To Resource Management Software & Resource Scheduling Tools
Managing your agency or studio resources without resource management software or resource scheduling tools can be a total nightmare. And that’s probably why you’re here. You know there must be a better way to manage your resources and team, right?
Every week you’re busy trying to meet everyone’s crazy resourcing needs. You’ve got the PM’s with their half-baked resource requests, the agency’s management team with conflicting priorities, the primadonna’s who’ll only work on certain clients, and then freelancers too. Trying to get a resource plan into order without some sort of human resource management software is hard enough. Throw into the mix competing projects, insane clients, vacations, and sick leave and you find that getting any work done on schedule begins to get tricky.
Jump straight to the best resource management software tools.
Do you need resource management software?
You might be on board with trying to find the best resource management software, but getting buy-in to change the status quo and replace it with resource management software tools or project scheduling software for your agency, team or studio can be tricky.
After all, do you really, really need resource scheduling software or resource management tools? A quick google search for ‘resource scheduling tool excel’ or ‘resource scheduling tools free’ and you’ll find a whole bunch of resource management templates that do the job — well, kind of. Actually, not really. Yes, they’re a free resource management tool, but no, they are not great.
When agencies start, it’s usually with a handful of resources and so there’s no urgent need for resource management or specialist project management software. Usually, everyone simply gets together for a quick huddle, agrees on the resource management priorities, and works out what everyone is going to work on for the day — or if people are feeling really ambitious, for the entire week.
As the agency grows, resource management starts to get really formal and the resource scheduler becomes a whiteboard. Simples, right? Then disaster strikes as someone accidentally wipes the whiteboard clean, or the office grows to the extent that people can’t actually see the whiteboard, and everyone realizes it’s time for more advanced resource management — it’s time to move to the agency gold standard — the infamous resource scheduler of doom — the resource spreadsheet.
Google docs — the free resource scheduler tool
The truth is resource management spreadsheets kind of work. Most agencies are still using them. And suffering for it.
Everyone knows resource management by spreadsheet doesn’t really work. It’s not really cut out for the job. Everything’s a bit of a hack, they’re clunky and they’re horribly prone to errors. Months pass by and still the resourcing spreadsheet somehow just about manages to keep its head above water.
But everyone feels like they’re drowning. Yes, it enables you to keep moving and it kind of works but everyone knows that despite good intention and some fancy formulas, it keeps on slipping under and it’s not really fit for purpose at all. Unless you’ve got the mother of all resource spreadsheets (that I’ve never laid eyes on) it’s missing a few key features and is a disaster waiting to happen.
Resource management software trumps spreadsheets
At a push, your resource management spreadsheet might tell you how under-resourced or under-utilized your teams are, or even include forecasting, but does it include budget tracking, time tracking, project reporting, send staff notifications, help them collaborate or have a built in process for requesting resources and allocating resources to projects?
And importantly, does it have a change process for when resources get moved around by the resource manager or your rogue project manager colleague? Maybe that’s why no one follows it — it’s considered more of a rough resource management guide than a true resourcing source of truth.
But there’s hope. A growing number of resource management software and resource scheduling software tools have evolved in recent years to fix the problem of the resource management in Excel and actually created something better than the free resource management tools. They’ve made resource management software that works!
The best resource management software & resource scheduling tools
So we listed some of the best resource management software tools for agencies and studios if you’re looking for a replacement for your excel sheet and resourcing management doom. They’ve been picked because they’re tools that are trying to do one thing well — resource management. At a minimum to be featured on this list we were looking for tools which had:
- Resource planning, scheduling, and management — putting the right people on the right projects and moving them around easily on a simple, collaborative, calendar grid that’s as simple as working with Excel or Google Sheets
- Clients and project planning — managing client and project details and having a single source of truth to feed all the other features
- Analytics and reporting — giving insight into capacity, utilization and performance for projects, clients and individuals
It’s worth comparing different resource management software tools as they’re set at different price points, different functionality (such as timesheets, expenses, approval workflows, task management), and different 3rdparty integrations. In this post, we’ve tried to cover a broad spectrum of resource management software tool price points and functionality. But as much as anything, it’ll come down to your agency or studio resourcing workflow and what functionality you need to make that function better. Have a look and sign up for some trials to test-drive and find the best resource management software tool for your agency or studio.
Click here to read the full article and find out the best resource management software tools.
Originally published at www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com on July 15, 2017.
