The process of managing, allocating, scheduling, and utilizing the resources to achieve the strategic goals is called Resource Management. Resource management is done to make the most of the available resources to increase the efficiency of the processes. It is the responsibility of project managers, and they need to do planning to assign the right project to the right task at the right time. It includes managing the schedule and budget for different resources. By doing project management, the organization aims to fulfill the project’s requirements with the available resources, and effective resource management leads to reduced project costs.
Using the resources efficiently and making the most of the available resources is the aim of every organization. Resource management helps organizations in fulfilling that aim. Resource management is an integral part of every business nowadays, and if a company does not focus on it, it might fail soon. At a given time, an organization might be working on various projects, so it becomes really difficult to organize the resource so that the need of every project could be fulfilled by making the required resources available for each project.
What Is a Resource?
A resource is anything needed to accomplish a project’s goals and objectives. All the resources fall into two categories:
- Tangible Resources
- Intangible Resources
Tangible Resources
Any resource that could be seen and touched falls into this category. It includes labor, machinery, equipment, property, software, or money.
Intangible Resources
All the resources you can only see but not touch fall into this category. It includes the skill set needed to perform a task, intellectual property, an idea, or anything that could not be touched.
The Need for Resource Management
Organizations need to do resource management to achieve their organizational and strategic goals without spending extra money buying useless resources. It is all about doing more with less. Sometimes, the available resources go scarce, especially when so many projects are in the pipeline. So, resource management is all about managing the resources so that every resource is available whenever or wherever needed without spending any extra penny on buying the extra resources.
Techniques of Resource Management
Resource Scheduling
The process of identifying and allocating the resources to the project tasks for a specified period is called resource scheduling. It defines which resource will be allocated to which task for how much time.
Resource Utilization
Resource Utilization measures the amount of time spent by each employee for accomplishing a particular task. It is the performance indicator that most organizations use to monitor the progress and performance of their human resources.
Resource Forecasting
This helps the project managers identify the resources that may end up and go scarce at the time of need. It also helps them predict resource utilization levels.
Resource and Capacity Planning
The process of planning, allocating, utilizing, and forecasting the workforce most efficiently and intelligently possible is called resource and capacity planning. It helps in filling the demand and capacity gaps.
Business Intelligence and Reporting
Business intelligence helps them achieve actionable insights through data analysis. The individualized reports are created using those insights that help the project managers make decisions regarding future resource allocation.
Benefits of Resource Management
- Avoid unforeseen problems and issues
- Avoid burnouts, i.e., the under-allocation or overallocation of a resource that frustrates the human resources and is overstressed.
- It provides a safety net if your project fails due to the lack of resources. It helps you ensure that you did what you could with your resources.
- It prevents your team from a communication gap and helps you keep everything transparent.
- It helps you identify resource allocation mistakes to avoid mishaps in future projects.