Key Benefits of Implementing a Resource Scheduling Software

There is a beautiful meeting room in your office with excellent view. You love to take your guests there to show off and earn their respect!

Today, you have few important guests. You take them to the usual meeting room. But, someone else is sitting there. Apparently, you forgot to book the room. So, you are forced to take the guests to another room which has a very dull view. Not a great start for your meeting!

This is just a small example. Every day, you are sharing various kinds of resources such as meeting rooms, printers, projectors with others in your organization. It also happens at home, school and college. If they are not effectively planned, it is impossible to extract best value from them.

It becomes a bigger problem when you talk about human resources. For example, you have a designer who can make superb drawings. At the same time, you managers complain that they don't have anyone to make their digital designs. When you tell them about the designer you hired few months back, they are surprised. 'Wow, we didn't know that!'

On the flip side, when you speak to the designer, he says 'I am sitting idle 36 hours a week. Nobody gives me any work!'

Think of it: On one side, you have a resource which is underutilized, on the other side you have people searching for the same resource. If these two can be connected, it will be a WIN:WIN scenario!

Introducing resource scheduling software! These are simple software programs which help you track your resources and schedule them effectively, so that they can be utilized in the best possible manner. They make sure every resource works to its potential by ensuring a way for everyone to search, find, assign and release the resource.

There are many software solutions available in the market which can handle this problem. Some of them are free; some of them are paid solutions. They all run from internet or from intranet, accessible from computers as well as mobile devices.

Features:

Generally, a resource scheduling software would have the following basic features:

1. Register a resource (person, room, asset etc.)

2. Uniquely track a resource (by assigning an ID)

3. Allow adding a profile about the resource (Skill sets, facilities etc.)

4. Allow search of resources

5. View schedule of resources (existing assignments)

6. Block a resource for certain duration

7. Release the resource (after use)

8. Provide feedback about the resource

9. Reports on resource utilization

10. Reports on system usage (For example: Top 10 resources, Underutilized resources).

Process:

Resource management systems are used by various people such as resource managers, project managers. These people follow a standardized process to extract these benefits from the system:

* Every new resource is entered in the system with all the required details

* Resources can be made visible to everyone in the organization or to a limited set of users

* Those who want to use these resources can search and find the required resources.     They can reserve the resource by providing the date and time

* System can send reminders about the resource utilization

* During utilization or after the task is completed, it is possible to provide feedback comments. This will be very useful for others who use the same resource

* Resources can be retired from the system (machines getting replaced, people leaving the organization).

Benefits:

A resource management solution helps in many ways for any organization and individual. These are the top benefits from such a system:

 * Effective utilization of available resources

* Ability to match the requirements with resources available in the system

* Quick snapshot on the availability of resources to plan next activities

* Effective reports to identify underutilized resources and over utilized resources to take corrective actions

 * Self-service mode to save time for everyone.

Conclusion:

It is important that resources in an organization or any other environment be managed effectively by scheduling them in a centralized system. These software applications help you achieve this goal by providing an efficient system for managing the scheduling process.

Increasing workflow capabilities with resource scheduling software

If your company is on the fast track to success in today’s global marketplace, you may be trying to achieve goals within a leaner work environment. Setting deadlines and meeting scheduling goals may be crucial in your customer development database. Increasing productivity extends beyond the production floor in today’s manufacturing arena. Support areas such as sales, marketing, planning and scheduling are learning about efficiency and working to develop a more reliable system of team oriented supported networking.

For help with your marketing needs, collaborative resource scheduling software may be worth considering. Customers require definitive time frames with the implementation of daily or weekly verification for confirmation of impending deadlines for shipments. You have to take into account that your customers also have customers. It is this intricate networking that a scheduling software package will help you to master with professional ease. As your customer load increases, demands for on time delivery can become a recipe for disaster if you don’t have a software package integrated into your system with updated tracking abilities.

Configurable Resource Scheduler - Booking Chart

Tracking orders begins at order placement. Components needed have to be obtained from outside which requires scheduling vendors to complete tasks in advance of your customer deadlines. Scheduling software has taken planning to a whole new level of efficiency allowing a smoother work flow and greater visibility to both you and your customer.

With greater visibility, bottlenecks or issues can be identified early on and addressed before scheduling ship dates are affected. For example, you may have a product which always gets held up in a final testing stage but your sales people and schedulers don’t recognize this when setting ship dates. The software can automatically show extra time needed for a specific task thereby allowing a longer lead time up front. The customer can understand longer lead times. They are not experts on what you supply them with and usually will understand when you give them longer lead times. What they can’t understand is when you promise shipment at a particular time and it just doesn't happen. This increases the lead time on their side for the end customer; and like a snowball rolling down hill, it will simply get worse as it moves down the chain.

Another issue commonly seen in scheduling is when more than one order needs to be running at the same time but no one was aware at the order entry end. In the past, when a customer called with an order, all that happened was that a sales person entered the order with no knowledge of what was currently going on. With this enhanced software, issues such as these are eliminated entirely.

Most software packages today have graphical interfacing which allows for ease of interface between users and software. Gantt and bar graph capabilities are great tools built in to most software. In addition, they offer fill-able templates for increased order entry speeds. If your company is trying to work in tomorrow’s world with today’s technology, you may want to move into the realm of resource scheduling software.

Dynamics of Employee Scheduling

In any dynamic, resource intensive organization “expertise” in employee management and scheduling is essential to thrive. The task of employee scheduling is complex, time consuming, tedious and at times the best human efforts are not enough to meet it’s complex and diverse requirements. The objective of employee manager is to schedule the employee’s duties perfectly and optimize the workforce to improve the outcome. 

In present day, these multiple array of complexities can be handled by resource scheduling software. These software understand the nuances of scheduling, provide integrated workforce management solutions, can predict just about all of the different scenarios you can find in any organization and also know how to handle them. They can also provide advice for solving “specific” challenges. These software with robust functionality can empower the staff to make a bigger positive impact on implementation and financial outcomes. 

Data-driven human resource scheduling can provide the ability to deliver high quality work out put while managing costs. These employee scheduling software tools use human talent to accomplish industrial goals by Coordinating staff credentials with job requirement, reallocating workforce more efficiently, managing floating resources and creating predictable, flexible schedules.

Employee management and scheduling encompasses the Initial creation of staffing vacancies, both day-to-day staffing decisions and long-term scheduling strategies, strategic and timely decisions regarding human capital optimization etc. For all this, Managers need to have timely, accurate and detailed information about the employees, such as their qualifications, training, abilities and past records. Besides this many financial aspects e.g. complex pay policies, contractual staffing, overtime rate and calculations, multiple shift codes etc. have to be considered for effective management of employees, in big as well as small organizations.

Resource scheduling software are also perfect solutions for pay calculations depending on the output of the resource. Managers can spend less time on administrative tasks and executives can have the information they need to track trends and make strategic proactive decisions for other beneficial, futuristic, developmental efforts dedicated to improving processes and outputs. These resource planners lead to development of systems that can make job easier and organization more effective. Employee management and scheduling software are designed to generate real-time results. These software should be from highly professional vendors who besides providing professional expertise can also have a really strong relationship with their customers. Effective resource scheduling truly empowers your organization to complete projects in time and budget.

Barriers in Efficient Employee Scheduling

Many levels of intense activities continues in most organisations and many managers and team leaders find themselves working hard on a myriad of activities trying to get  best performance  from the resources as this is the underlying basis of the company’s success.

Optimum Human resource utilization by the means of efficient resource scheduling has always been central to success of the organization. Human capital is intangible and elusive and cannot be managed the way organizations manage jobs, products and technologies. There are many attributes of each individual and variables of each interactive resource which influence the total quality work out put. These can be categorized as  the  knowledge, skills, life experiences, morale and it’s motivation, abilities and interpersonal relations, to name a few. The value of employees is increased when his knowledge, skills and abilities are known to the manager.

The barriers in optimum resource utilization are mainly related to resource scheduling deficiencies, lack of educational and training records of the employee, inadequate staffing,  time and attendance, clear job description, job analysis, diversity (racial / ethnic diversity,  more women in the workforce, single-parent households, dual-career couples, domestic partners, working mothers and family/childcare), loss of employee loyalty,  health safety and security issues, the companies going global leading to multicultural environment, technological shift and use of Internet, older employees not trained in modern techniques or exposed to today’s work culture, need to accommodate working mothers and fathers through parental leaves, ensure equality for women in  respect to employment advancement opportunities and compensations, job sharing, part time and contractual employment with  their job analysis, more sensitivity to the growing need for policies, procedure to eliminate sexual harassment, conflicts and their resolution, work place  negativity etc.

On top of this, global nature of big organisations does not help in efficiently scheduling employees. Resources are more mobile than ever, this is good from operational point of view but a night mare for a resource coordinator, as they have to keep real time record or resource engagements and future commitments.   

For moving forward all these issues need to be addressed, as these are a barrier in high performance work practices. Environmental scanning, anticipation and flexible, foresighted and strategic deployment of resources is the key to ensure effective and efficient use of human talent to accomplish organizational goals and to gain that edge of advantage over competitors which makes the company not good but great. Using modern day resource scheduling software that can manage different types of resources and show informative reports can also help to a great extent.