Learn the top uses of automation in resource management and how they help businesses work smarter, not harder.
Automation is a buzzword in all sectors at the moment, including resource management.
The promises are big: automate routine manual tasks, save time, and free people up for more value-adding activities. Stuff where being a human is important – like building relationships, problem-solving, and strategy.
Whether you’re a dedicated resource manager – or someone who wears a resource management hat as part of a wider remit – you’re probably curious about what automation can do for you.
Automation in resource management is concerned with using technology to handle repetitive tasks, and thanks to advances in machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and data analytics, people no longer need to be tied to their desks doing mundane admin and analysis.
This means you can leave the repetitive stuff to the robots – who’ll do it faster, better, and without getting bored – so we humans can do more creative, strategic, and relationship-focused work.
So, let's explore the top five use-cases where automation can make a difference in resource management:
Scheduling resources can be a headache. You have to find people with the right skills and availability to build a project dream team, all while balancing your budget. And once you’ve picked them, any project changes can mean you have to start again.
It’s like doing a jigsaw when the pieces keep moving – and it can be a frustrating and time-consuming process.
But some resource management platforms now use automation and AI to automate resource scheduling:
Automation helps ensure maximum cost- and operational efficiency by optimizing utilization, and automatically matching the right people to the right projects at the right time. This helps reduce bottlenecks and keep projects running to schedule, while workforce optimization keeps employees productive with a manageable workload.
Strategic capacity planning is essential in resource management. It’s about making sure you have an adequate supply of the right number and type of resources to meet project demand – for both current and forthcoming projects.
But it can be extremely hard to calculate manually. You need to understand what your current capacity is, as well as what future demand might look like.
Some key automations to support this process include:
.png)
Automating capacity planning tasks goes beyond just saving time. It allows for proactive workforce management, ensuring that you can rightsize your team according to anticipated demand.
This means you're less likely to be caught off guard by staffing shortages or to overspend on unnecessary personnel. Ultimately, this enhances operational efficiency and boosts financial performance, setting your organization up for sustainable success.
In project-based businesses, time tracking is essential. It forms the basis of what you can invoice your clients and also informs resource allocation, project profitability, and performance evaluations.
However, it can be a very manual process. Team members may struggle to log hours accurately. And the process of compiling this information for client invoicing can result in delays.
Some useful automation opportunities include:
By automating time tracking and invoicing, businesses can streamline the billing cycle and cashflow. Automated time tracking also provides insights into utilization and project progress, with less manual effort from resources and managers.
Effective resource management runs on data – utilization rates, available capacity, skills gap analysis, project variance, forecasting accuracy... But this data is often hard to come by – siloed across different teams and systems – and even harder to analyze.
This is where automation is particularly helpful. Here are just a few examples of where automation can be of use:
By automating analytics and reporting processes, organizations can make confident, data-informed decisions much quicker. What might have taken a data analyst days to decipher can now happen at the click of a button.
This democratizes the decision-making process, empowering more people with actionable insights, and improving overall performance.
One of the often overlooked roles of resource management is employee engagement and retention. By working 1-2-1 with team members, resource managers can understand their goals and match them to development opportunities. And by creating a more balanced workload, they can reduce burnout and disengagement.
However, employee retention is still an uphill battle when talent is in short supply and competition is high.
But how can automation help here? We started this article by saying that automation can create space in our workday to concentrate on the more human-focused aspects of our resource management work – so how does automation help with the very human issue of staff turnover?
Well, many employee engagement and retention initiatives are extremely data-intensive, and carry a large administrative burden. But automation can ease the the workload by:
By automating these initiatives, organizations can foster a more engaged workforce. This leads to higher retention rates, improved morale, and a stronger company culture. Ultimately, an engaged workforce drives productivity and enhances organizational performance.
Resource management has tremendous potential to bring strategic benefits to the organizations that want them. But resource managers first need the time and space to focus in on this high-value work. And automation can help make this a possibility.
So, it’s time to delegate the routine resource management tasks like data entry, reporting, and manual allocations to our robotic helpers – and to embrace the work that actually needs our human ingenuity and interaction.
