To keep pace with demand and expectations in increasingly competitive markets, modern organizations are facing ever-greater pressure to deliver projects on time, stay under budget, and maximize the use of their available resources. This challenge is compounded by the need to balance multiple projects, navigate limited staffing, and adapt to shifting priorities. Without a clear strategy for managing resources effectively, businesses risk inefficiencies and missed opportunities—ultimately affecting their bottom line.
A focused approach to resource management may be the answer.
Essentially, resource management is an approach designed to ensure that businesses assets are applied when and where they will have the most positive impact. These resources may be tangible (such as equipment and capital) or intangible (such as employee time and skills). Effective resource management consists of several key processes that work together to optimize how resources are handled.
The three key elements of resource management include:
This involves tracking and evaluating how resources are currently being used. By keeping a close watch on resource utilization, decision makers can identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and areas where resources are either under or over-utilized. Monitoring is essential to maintaining up-to-date insights on resource performance, which supports better long-term planning.
Allocation focuses on distributing available resources in a way that aligns with established goals. It ensures that resources are assigned to the right tasks and teams, balancing workloads and priorities to improve productivity. Proper allocation ensures that critical projects receive the resources they need, while avoiding overallocation.
Provisioning is the process of acquiring and making resources available to meet project requirements. It means securing the right tools, personnel, and other necessary resources to ensure project success. Resource provisioning makes certain that all essential components are in place before work begins.
What are the benefits of resource management?
Effective resource management brings with it several key benefits. These include the following:
The most obvious advantage of resource management is the ability to get the most out of the resources that are available. Resource utilization takes into account human and non-human resources, comparing availability against use to determine where resources are being underutilized, where they are being over utilized, and where they could be better balanced for improved effectiveness.
In terms of employee resources, resource utilizations help ensure that teams and individuals are being consistently challenged and that they have enough tasks to keep them busy, without overloading them and risking burnout.
Resource management involves creating a transparent, documented plan describing resources and assignments. With a clear view of tasks and responsibilities updated in real time, every team member can easily see who is working on what, and which resources are allocated, and which are available. This improves communication, eliminates misunderstandings associated with overbooking and repeated task status changes, and increases the accuracy of status updates.
Improved communication through increased transparency keeps everyone up to date and informed. This improves employee engagement and stakeholder confidence.
More often than not, organizations must manage multiple projects across a range of teams and departments, trying to account for potentially hundreds of different tasks and their associated resources. Increasing focus on one project reduces focus on others, potentially leading to mismanagement. Resource management allows organizations to broaden their gaze, with a complete overview of everything and everyone.
An accurate overview allows decision makers to see exactly where each project is, what deadlines are approaching, and what needs to be done to ensure project success. It makes up-to-the-minute tracking a reality and gives management more control over both day-to-day and long-term actions. It also provides a clearer picture of total resource usage, informing resource predictions for later initiatives.
Accurate prediction and on-the-nose estimates can mean the difference between success and failure. Resource management improves an organization’s ability to reliably predict future needs, and to resolve issues before they can turn into real problems. With a clear picture of where resources are and what they are doing, project managers enjoy insights into timelines as they are. This enables them to apply that knowledge to future projects, for more accurate forecasting related to scheduling and resource usage.
Along the same lines, clearer timelines mean that organizations can better prepare for project bottlenecks, taking steps early on to make up for scheduled downtime, holidays, and other disruptive events.
Resource management helps minimize idle time and overutilization, ensuring that resources are consistently engaged without being overwhelmed. By having real-time visibility into resource capacity and availability, resource managers can better allocate tasks, reducing downtime between projects. This alignment of resources with project needs boosts productivity and keeps employees and assets fully engaged.
Improved estimates and forecasting naturally lead to improved project success. Resource management helps accurately attribute actual costs to projects, simplifying resource allocation and tracking. Taken together, these and the other previously addressed advantages naturally result in increased profit margins.
In other words, improved resource management leads to improved business success.
Essential factors in creating a resource management plan include the following:
Resources are the primary concern when creating a resource management plan. As such, most of the time in the early phases of resource planning should be spent creating a detailed list of all the necessary people, skills, tools, and other resources vital to the success of the project. Aim to be thorough; the more accurate this list, the better it will serve the resource management plan.
Timeframes for each resource help inform schedules. Estimate, as accurately as possible, how much time will be needed for each resource, and use that information when setting deadlines and timelines.
Effective resource management planning includes more than just constraints related to scope, schedules, and cost; it should also incorporate intelligent, informed assumptions. These assumptions can be about what resources will be available and when but should be clearly identified as assumptions within the plan. This will help distinguish them from the more reliable constraints which should serve as part of the plan’s foundation.
Finally, an effective resource management plan will clearly assign roles and responsibilities for all human resources included in the strategy. Unambiguous assignments help ensure that everyone involved knows who is responsible for what, and when they can expect tasks to be completed.
The first phase of resource management involves identifying and allocating resources, considering fees and other costs, and getting approval from any relevant clients or decision makers. Using similar past projects as guides, project managers can improve the accuracy of their resource estimates.
In the second phase of resource planning, the project manager begins to review the necessary project tasks and pair them with the resources identified in the previous phase. In terms of human resources, make sure that tasks are being assigned based not only on availability, but also upon skill sets and capacity.
With resources assigned, the next step is to determine how much time each task will require and create schedules accordingly. While budgeting time, be careful not to go over or under schedule; too little work creates disengaged employees, while too much can lead to burnout.
Considering other commitments and demands on resources along with the goals of the current project, the project manager next works to officially schedule resources for specific tasks. Scheduling resources helps create accurate estimates of completion dates.
They say that no plan survives contact with reality. With this in mind, monitoring projects is an essential aspect of resource management planning. Regularly check in with the resource management tool and compare the actual performance with established resource-allocation estimates. If there are bottlenecks, misalignment of resources, areas where the project has stalled, or other issues, then constant monitoring will allow the project manager to identify and resolve these issues before they can derail the project.
Once the project has been completed, the final step in creating a resource management plan is the retrospective. Review the estimates established during the early planning stages and compare them to the actual resources used. Identify where estimates could be improved, and where resources may have performed differently than expected. It is here that project managers can refine their approach for future projects, so reviewing and considering all factors is important.
Traditional static scheduling methods are no longer enough to manage complex projects with constantly changing needs. Dynamic scheduling algorithms are becoming essential as they enable real-time adjustments based on current resource availability, skill sets, and capacity. These advanced tools allow resource managers to allocate people and assets more efficiently, improving overall project outcomes by responding immediately to disruptions and other changes.
Business intelligence (BI) tools are playing a bigger role in resource management, providing data-backed insights that help decision makers plan more effectively. With real-time dashboards and reports, resource managers enjoy a clear view of resource availability, project demands, competency gaps, etc. This deeper level of visibility promotes smarter resourcing decisions.
Artificial intelligence is being incorporated into more and more business functions, and predictive AI is revolutionizing how organizations forecast resource needs. Rather than relying on static data or manual guesswork, AI tools analyze vast amounts of information to identify patterns and trends, delivering highly accurate predictions for future project demands. This capability enables organizations to make data-driven staffing and resource allocation decisions.
Where resource management was once a chiefly-manual set of tasks, modern organizations are increasingly adopting hyperautomation tools to identify and allocate resources faster and more accurately. This helps reduce the administrative burden. Automated systems also support project timelines by ensuring that resources are identified and assigned early, improving efficiency and reducing expenses.
Effective project management depends on an organization’s ability to properly allocate, assign, and guide resources. However, the more complex the projects, the more difficult and demanding resource management can become, and that means businesses must rely on the right resource management software solutions. The ServiceNow Resource Management application—part of ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) organizes and simplifies this aspect of project management. The end result? Accurate resource predictions, real-time transparency, and improved allocation across all resources and projects.
ServiceNow Resource Management includes the following features:
- Resource allocation workbench
The workbench provides visual insights detailing resource requests and allocations. - Resource plan
Using the resource plan feature, project managers can use relevant data to create detailed resource management plans for any project. - Operational resource plans
Resource managers have a single UI to manage all resource plans whether task-based or operational. - Resource reports
Reliable, data-focused reports share real-time updates related to resource utilization. - Time sheet portal
With the time sheet portal feature, human resources can record the time on tasks daily even on mobile devices, submitting these time sheets with the click of a button.
These and other features allow project managers to enjoy a range of benefits, including:
- Viewing resource availability
ServiceNow resource management provides real-time information across every available resource. - Improving resource management
By working within a single, centralized application delivering consistent resource management to all relevant people, projects, and systems, organizations enjoy more accurate results and clearer insights. - Matching resources with requirements
ServiceNow Resource Management matches resources with business needs, using calendars, schedules, flexible allocation, and other tools and integrations.
Demo ServiceNow Resource Management and see how the right resources at the right time can revolutionize your business.