Resource Management Solutions Provide Valuable Insight Into Project and Enterprise Resource Planning

As they strive to maximize talent for executing projects and enterprise resource planning, organizations need to understand the importance of resource management solutions. Since human resources make up the largest expense item and most critical element of most enterprise undertakings, knowing how to leverage features of existing software packages, like resource management solutions, provide a valuable tool for enhancing enterprise resource planning and project management at no additional cost.

Five Key Elements for Enterprise Resource Planning and Project Management Are Tracked by Resource Management Solutions. In a Practical Five-Step Approach to Project Resource Management, the industry consultant Gartner has described five critical components for successful project resource management and enterprise resource planning. To make the most of these components, companies need to develop metrics to help track how well they are being implemented and to guide improvements where needed. For organizations using resource management solutions, the data for tracking and controlling these elements is already available in their existing databases.

1. Resource Capacity

In order to make the best use of resources, it is imperative to clearly identify generic resources, quantifying their availability, recognize potential bottlenecks associated with high demand resources, and to coordinate the ideal time-sequence of projects. By reviewing data from past projects, resource management solutions provide an objective overview of internal capabilities.

2. Resource Allocation
Appropriately assigning existing assets to a new project is easily accomplished by comparing current assignments and allocations to required new tasks and anticipated completion dates.

3. Resource Work Management
Resource management solutions allow project managers to track progress and spot problems early. If progress differs from what was forecast, impact to other scheduled projects and enterprise resource planning can be immediately addressed.

4. Teamwork Management
The solution reveals at a glance if assigned tasks are being coordinated appropriately within the team.

5. Personal Work Management
Scheduling mileposts clearly indicate if individual team members are completing tasks in a timely manner. Once again, problems can be identified and addressed early in the project lifecycle.

Leveraging Resource Management Solutions Provides Greater Project Productivity And Efficiency for Enterprise Resource Planning. By recognizing and leveraging the tools provided by automated resource management solutions, organizations can better match existing capacity to project demands, create contingencies for anticipated bottlenecks, and identify and address problems quickly. These capabilities enable project managers and those responsible for enterprise resource planning to identify existing assets and pre-position needed resources, thereby increasing efficiency and productivity at all levels.

Mounir Hilal is the Vice President of Professional Services at Tenrox. With more than eleven years of experience, Hilal has acquired extensive knowledge in enterprise software design, development and deployment processes with expertise in professional services, business consulting and project management. In addition, he has a high degree of expertise working with a resource management solutions, enterprise resource planning and with compliance and business process optimization.