An Introduction to Resource Management
The effective and efficient deployment of an organization's resources when they are needed; that isresource management. It is advantageous and logically sound for any business to want to use all the resources it has at its disposal in the best way possible.
Resources available to organisations vary depending on the organisation in question, but common resources may include human, financial and production resources, information technology or inventory.
Processes and techniques as to the best way to allocate resources have been developed, when it comes to project management. Resource management is a key element to the successful management of any project that an organisation may undertake.
There are alsosoftware toolsavailable to help automate the process of allocating resources to projects. The tools included in the software may include timesheet programs and employee time-tracking programs. The software automates the selection process of choosing a suitable employee to assign to a certain project. It does so by calculating skill sets, experience and workload. This enables organisations to forecast staffing requirements for projects prior to their commencement.
Falling under the scope of resource management, Human Resource Management is defined as the science of allocating human resources among various projects or business units. The aim is to maximise the utilisation of available personnel resources to achieve business goals and to maintain that workforce through activities such as assessing staffing requirements and intervening when necessary (by initiating recruitment, for example), managing the payroll and benefits of employees, catering to their educational and professional development and administering their work-life needs. All this is to ensure that the workforce is available where and when it is needed, so that the work gets done efficiently and effectively.
Large organisations usually have a defined corporate resource management process. Its main aim is to guarantee that resources are never over-allocated across multiple projects.
One resource management technique used in organizations is called resource levelling. As it relates to inventory, it works by reducing both excess inventories and shortages, aiming at levelling out the stock at hand.
In project management, however, resource levelling is scheduling decisions that are driven by resource management concerns, such as the limited availability of resources.
In performing this technique, a few parameters are taken into consideration. The first is the demands for the various resources, forecast by a reasonable time period. The second is the resource configurations that will be required to meet those demands. The third is the supply of the resources, over a reasonable time period.
In organisations where revenue is not necessarily dependent on product sales, such as legal or consulting firms, the organizations will strive for minimal bench time. Time and expenses are carefully tracked and billed to clients, therefore proper resource management is vital in these organisations in order to fully utilise resources on billable time.
To conclude, effective and proactive resource management delivers the utmost level of efficiency by enabling the proactive allocation of resources, while following business policies. When resources are allocated in alignment with overall business priorities and objectives, utilisation rates increase and business availability risk decreases.
