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.
