Workload planning software, yes, but for whom? Part 2: Management teams

Anticipation, information, decision. The triptych of management teams

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If the operational success of a project is played out in the field, its strategic and financial success is decided above all behind the scenes, within the various departments of the consulting firm or ofIT services companies.

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And this success is based on 3 terms: anticipation, information, decision... in other words, the mission of workload planning software.

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The first article in this mini-series of content dedicated to the users of the workload planning tool (Workload Planning Software, Yes, but for whom? (Part 1: operational users) demonstrated the interest of the latter for what we call operational actors.

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From the transmission and reception of information to consultants in the field to simplified resource management by managers at assignment and optimized project monitoring by managers, workload planning software has become essential to the smooth operational progress of projects.

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However, since the success of a project is judged as much by the quality of its operational execution as by its profitability, it is only logical that the master project management tool should not be reserved for operational users only.

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On the contrary, it must be accessible to every link in your company, and in particular to the management teams, who are the guarantors of this profitability.

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Discover, through this second article, the place of the assignment tool within the human resources and financial management teams, as well as within top management.

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Human resources management, workload planning software as a lever for anticipation

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85% of the jobs of 2030 would not yet exist (Source: La tribune).‍

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If this means an imperative need for employees, especially consultants, to continuously train in order to stay in the market, it also means a real need for human resources departments toanticipate the skills needs of clients.

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Of course, there is a need to anticipate future needs, in a forward-looking HR approach, but also, and even more importantly, to anticipate short and medium-term skills needs, making it essential for human resources departments to useworkload planning software.

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Thanks to a real-time visualization of the skills and experience available within the teams of consultants, as well as those that are lacking, the tool of assignment allows human resources toorient their recruitment strategies, as well as the training plans of their employees.

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Objective: to fill these gaps of competences allowing on the one hand to reach the level of quality of operational execution sought and, on the other hand, towiden the field of the projects to which the consulting firm or theIT services companies can answer.

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By centralizing all employee data (experience and skills, certifications, availability, but also interest in this or that type of project) but also the project's reality on the ground as well as the outlines of customer requests, the workload planning software considerably increases the chances of informed decision-making by human resources departments.

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The financial department, the workload planning software to control the profitability of the company

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Getting projects is good. Making them profitable is better. It is even essential to the survival of any consulting firm or IT services companies and it is the financial department that is in charge of it.

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How can you ensure that each project is profitable when the number of projects is increasing and their complexity is growing? This is the problem that the workload planning tool solves by providing the teams responsible for financial management with everything they need to manage the company's profitability.

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This starts with access to centralized data available in real time, starting with the evolution of revenues and costs at the global level and by project.

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And how can we talk about cost management without talking about the ability of the finance department to properly allocate resources and thus ultimately reduce the rate of intercontracting as much as possible. These are all issues that a software program from assignment enables finance teams to master.

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Top management, staying in touch with the operational side of the business while keeping a sense of perspective thanks to the workload planning software

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The managers of the consulting firm or ofIT services companies are entrusted with the difficult mission of having a concrete knowledge of the progress of the main ongoing customer projects while keeping this capacity of abstraction necessary to determine the strategic axes to adopt to make the company grow.

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This double challenge makes certain functionalities of the assignment tool more valuable, such as

• consolidation of the company's main indicators,
• Real-time data update
• or the possibility to go into the details of a given project or to keep a macro view of the activity... 

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... in other words, functionalities that allow you to grasp at a glance where the company is at the operational and financial level and the decisions to be made at a given moment.

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Things to remember

The assignment being the heart of the reactor of the consulting firms and IT services companies, each stratum of management, from human resources to the top management through the financial management, testifies of the same needs.

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It is a matter of being able to access information quickly in order to make the most informed decisions possible, or even to anticipate future difficulties.

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This makes the use of a workload planning software crucial to the proper management of the company with the focus on maximizing the occupancy rates and therefore the profitability of each project.

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