Resource Forecasting in Professional Services

What is Resource Forecasting?

Resource forecasting is finding ways to maximize your resources by predicting future demand for materials, and labor. The key is that resource forecasting is an inherent function of project planning— not a separate step. In the following article, you will learn how firms implement effective resource forecasts and their methods for overcoming potential barriers.

The process of predicting and analyzing the number of resources that may be required to complete a project is termed resource forecasting. It analyzes past performance, market conditions, business operations, and other factors to predict future resource needs.

Forecasting is conducted for all aspects of a project, including

Time
Costs
Resources
Profits
Benchmarks

A forecast helps indicate whether the project will be completed on time and within budget. It can also help identify potential risks that could impact the business or tasks before they happen.

Why Resource Forecasting is important?

Resource forecasting is important because it can help identify areas of a business or project at risk of failing, allowing the business to increase budgets and ensure the success of projects. Forecasting will also help a company predict future workloads, which allows for determining whether they have enough resources and people to complete planned projects. A forecast will also assist businesses in planning for growth.

Resources are the foundation of successful projects, so you must forecast the number and type of resources you need. Resource forecasting can be done by counting available resources or modeling what will be required and it’s essential to do before you start your project to ensure you have enough people with the right skills.

The Result You Want By Forecasting Resources

It might seem obvious what you want the result to be – such as on-time completion and a satisfied client or customer. But it’s important to state this clearly in your forecasts, so the team involved knows what constitutes success. The success criteria for each project are different, but all will depend on the task at hand and the organization’s overall strategic plan.

Your Actual Results from Resource Forecasting

After you know what constitutes successful completion, it’s feasible to forecast how many resources you’ll need. What types, such as staff members, contractors, or a combination of both, have specific skills? How much each help will cost to hire might take more work to forecast. That depends on job qualifications, experience, and personal qualities that are important for the particular project. Resources are also necessary because you can only forecast your labor needs once you know how many staff members you need. There needs to be more point in firming up the number of resources before you know what type of project your organization is involved in.

For example, let’s say a new corporation asked its human resources department to produce a way to predict how many staff members it would need in different departments if it decided to start expanding its business overseas.

What Are the Benefits of Resource Forecasting?

The benefits of resource forecasting include increased efficiency, better workforce planning (and, in turn, happier employees), better allocation of resources (which saves money), improved inventory management due to shorter lead times, increased customer satisfaction, and reduced waste.

Increased efficiency

Resource forecasting is about predicting the future, so it’s harder to forecast resources than raw materials. So resource forecasting results in better use of resources. It also helps a company plan ahead, so they get their resources quicker. This means they can react faster, like buying new equipment when needed – reducing work-in-process inventory, and having less scrap. This increases efficiency and decreases costs by eliminating waste/averaging, poor or delayed resource allocation, or excessive inventory. This leads to better productivity and higher levels of customer satisfaction. Better staffing planning will lead to satisfied employees (which means more efficiency and less overhead), eventually leading to lower costs and more savings for the company.

Better allocation of resources

For a resource forecasting system to be accurate, it must consider many factors like scarcity in one area, and its effect on other areas like sales, etc. Depending on the role of resources, planning can take place in multiple stages like planning, executing, etc. This way, various stages of the process can be planned depending on demand.

Maximize resource utilization for billable and strategic work:

This involves looking at the entire process. Resource forecasting manages resources throughout the whole process. This helps to minimize delays and make way for new projects.

Effective management of pipeline projects

Resource forecasting helps to manage pipeline projects effectively. This is because it allows you to plan the whole timeline from start to finish, so there is no chance of exceeding the estimated hours. This will result in a more profitable business with a good reputation which leads to more sales and happier and more efficient employees.

Improved customer satisfaction:

Resource forecasting results in better availability of resources as and when needed. This prevents shortages and keeps your customers happy by providing them with the quality of service that they expect. Your customers will recognize this and return to you, making you more profit.

How to Do Resource Forecasting?

Forecasting is projecting future economic conditions and events based on available information and using historical patterns to predict likely outcomes. It helps in making decisions on investment, and many other things in business, finance, and economics.

It is a prediction that uses official data collected during the past years and months to predict the amount of a good or service needed in the future to allow sufficient time for manufacturing or buying it before it is necessary for current demand.

To do resource forecasting, you must collect data about the resources needed for each project and correctly analyze the data. The information that should be considered is how much material, man-hours, and other resources will be used for each milestone of the project and, therefore, how many resources to be provided.

Resource forecasting can be automated with software that tracks information from previous years and months based on currently available data. The forecasting software uses this data to predict the future needs of resources.

The process of manual resource forecasting is complex and requires painstaking analysis of the production data.

Resource forecasting is imperative to prevent any problems in the future. If not enough resources are available, there can be a problem that may lead to erroneous results or might terminate the project. You must continue resource forecasting, or else you will face severe problems. Every company needs to do resource forecasts to ensure it has enough resources for current and future projects.

Conclusion

Business owners can use a few simple techniques to improve accuracy when forecasting. Regression analysis uses historical data to predict future outcomes. Business owners can also use consensus forecasting techniques to determine the most likely outcome.

Forecasting is necessary for businesses of all sizes that rely on projects and events to drive their income and existence. It is essential for business owners to understand the importance of forecasting and learn about methods that can help increase the accuracy of their forecasts so that they can prepare adequately for future challenges.

With Juntrax, you can easily track your project and analyze project costs, resources and others. Juntrax will also enable business owners to adjust budgets or plans necessary to maintain success within a project or portfolio. This way, you can easily reach your goals and objectives with a planned budget line and forecast new plans.

4 Ways A PSA Solution Can Help Reduce Security Risks For Your Engineering Services Firm

Professional services automation software can be of immense use in solving various problems including the security risks that exist in the organizations.

Professional services automation or PSA refers to a full-scale software suite specifically developed to assist employees in service and project-oriented businesses such as engineering services, software development, IT consulting, creative agencies, and more.

The market size of the PSA software industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.7% and is predicted to reach over $16 billion by 2025. More and more companies are using PSA software as it gives them the necessary tools to track several KPIs for their business and helps them accumulate insights in a way that assists in allocating resources intelligently for increased profitability and reduced costs.

The main objective of PSA software is to churn data and offer the service professionals with real-time updates of the entire business, allowing them to scale systematically. This is primarily achieved by developing various metrics across the entire business to help professionals evaluate basic business processes.

For engineering services firms, specifically, the professional services automation software can be of immense use and is flexible enough to offer solutions to various challenges, including the security risks that exist in these organizations.

4 Ways PSA Solutions Can Help Minimize Security Risks For Engineering Services Firms

Here is how engineering services firms can tackle security risks better using PSA solutions –

1. Minimize the Cost and Risk of Running Your Own Servers

Using a good PSA software in engineering services firms translates to seamless cloud adoption that eliminates the costs associated with buying and maintaining your own servers, database software, and operating systems.

Further, it also removes the hassle of regular system updates, security threat mitigation, and patch management. Thus, empowering the engineering teams to solely focus on supporting the core business goals of their organization.

2. Data Security

PSA applications for engineering services firms ensure that all the data is protected within data centers that are certified by the highest industry standards for data security, operational reliability, and privacy control.

A well-made PSA software is designed in a way that is controlled via a common security model, giving teams centralized control of access and much higher visibility to data at a granular level.

Additionally, single sign-on enables engineering services teams to access all platform applications, reducing the risk of a security breach from managing multiple usernames/passwords.

5 Reasons Your Organization Needs a PSA Software

3. Better Performance

Leveraging a professional service automation solutions platform offers clear transparency to both service availability and performance via a real-time view of system status. It allows the engineering services firms to minimize various security risks by demonstrating a clear track record of a trusted and scalable service, supporting multiple transactions done by the users.

4. Effectively Dealing With Sensitive Information

A good PSA software allows you to implement more efficient methods for delivering project sensitive information to all your stakeholders. This leads to multiple benefits, including timely project delivery, reduced security risks, and maximized profitability at the same time.

Further, sorting out the operational side of delivery streamlines the accounting of projects and gives you real-time visibility into your costs, including earned revenue and orders. This allows you to systematically track new levels of accountability from the people charged with the delivery of your projects.

Bottom Line

With an increasing number of engineering services firms struggling to adapt to the demands of customers, your firm can capitalize on new revenue models and appropriately respond to disruptive new technologies. PSA offers an excellent solution to help professional services companies streamline operations, optimize efficiency, and attain greater profitability.

Engineering services firms can use the framework offered by the PSA system to build a predictable service-based business and minimize the security risks to a great extent. The ability of PSA software to see demand early, utilize resources optimally, and accurately track project delivery helps in creating the necessary conditions for confident forecasts. This kind of improved predictability not only leads to better decision making but also helps to build the confidence of stakeholders, including investors and senior leadership.

If you’ve been looking for a powerful, secure, and intuitive PSA software, Juntrax is a leading name that specializes in cloud-based solutions specifically for the project and service-focused organizations.

5 Reasons Your Organization Needs a PSA Software

Here are five ground-breaking reasons how a PSA can transform your organization, and give it the much-needed push.

Automation is no longer a luxury but, in fact, a necessity that is fuelling organizational growth. Sensing this opportunity, several professional services organizations (PSOs) are turning to professional services automation (PSA) platforms to make their tasks easier. But is it all mere hype, or is PSA a genuine trendsetter that will revolutionize the future of the industry?

Here are five ground-breaking ways a PSA can transform your organization, and give it the much-needed push.

1. Project Management at lightening fast speed

Even the most basic PSA systems help in the efficient planning, management, and execution of projects. Engineering services firms can use it to gain a holistic overview of any project, its progress, and its status. Executives can evaluate the projects that are in the pipeline and predict their resource requirements or cashflows accordingly. At the same time, Project Managers can build a workforce that will suit the project and prepare a repository of crucial data to lay a solid foundation for the project.

Most importantly, it establishes closed-loop channels so that different teams, members, and leaders within the SMEs can effortlessly communicate with each other.

2. Gives You Full Control of Project Cash Flow

PSA software can keep a tab on the project costs at a granular level, which eliminates the need for accounting or ledger maintenance services. In addition to project cashflow management, it also keeps a minute-by-minute track of the time spent on the project and other ancillary costs. Thus, small and medium businesses can gain a comprehensive insight into every form of investment involved.

At the same time, a PSA also allows you to compare the planned budget with the actual expenditure.

3. Helps Streamline The Project Lifecycle

A suitable PSA platform can automatically manage all stages in the lifecycle of a project, right from assignment to execution. As a result, an engineering services firm can focus on various qualitative measures to deliver an unparalleled service experience to clients.

Several PSA platforms can seamlessly integrate with other automation tools, such as CRM or accounting software. Thus, the introduction of PSA eliminates the need for any manual intervention.

Coronavirus and work from home

4. Enhances Resource Allocation And Utilization

As stated previously, PSA can offer the Project Manager a snapshot of the projects in the pipeline. Based on these inputs, executives can gauge future demands and schedule and allocate resources accordingly.

With a robust PSA tool, your company can assign the right talent for the right project at the right billing rate. Even if the team comprises of members scattered across the company, PSA acts as a unifying collaborative platform for them to work together.

Furthermore, you can locate the underutilized resources and take appropriate action accordingly.

5. Supports Real-Time Data Visibility And Decision-Making

Through the centralization of all service processes, PSA offers a bird’s eye view of the entire company and its resources. As a result, it overcomes the issue of information silos, data redundancy, and inaccuracies. PSA software acts as a single source of truth, where every action or process of information is systematically recorded in real-time.

All data related to resource availability, project status, and employee productivity helps in making data-driven decisions that will benefit your business.

It’s A Wrap

Professional Services Automation (PSA) simplifies administrative tasks, aiding PSOs in efficient project management and timely payments.

Streamlining work processes and ensuring timely payments isn’t something anyone complains about. It elevates employee and customer satisfaction, laying the groundwork for business success.

Happy employees foster a positive work environment, while satisfied clients pave the way for stronger business connections—key ingredients for organizational growth!

For an all-encompassing PSA solution with compatible HR modules, opt for Juntrax!