Management is no easy task with all kinds of things to look after from people to resources and, on top of all that, you have your clients and customers to keep happy. Managing the staff is possibly the hardest task, however, especially when you’re in a position where employees are working in different locations and your company is working on a variety of different projects.
When you receive a request for a project, like a building assignment for example, you need to establish whether or not you have the manpower and the resources available to do the job and according to the timescale provided by the customer. This means that you need to be assigning people and equipment to certain jobs around the country. Fortunately, business technology has evolved at a similar rate to technology in general, and there is a range of enterprise resource management software available to project managers to make life simpler, and the company, as a whole, much more productive.
Sure, you can use the age-old tried and trusted method of a big sheet of paper or a calendar on the wall with all of the ongoing projects and the equipment required, but it’s vital that this is kept up-to-date in real-time. With the new resource software available, people working inside and outside the office can update the project in the system so the project manager can reallocate resources accordingly. For instance, bad weather might slow down one task and rather than having an overlapping period where people are scheduled to be in two locations at once, available staff can be put onto the next task leaving those working on the delayed job to finish at the earliest opportunity.
It will also allow the project managers to establish whether or not certain resources are finished with at one location ahead of schedule. If so, they can request that it is returned to the warehouse or office ready for another team to take it to their job and therefore increasing productivity. After all, if teams are sitting on site waiting for a certain resource to be delivered to them after the task is completed, their idle time is increasing. This puts extra emphasis on communication between site managers so that this time can be used, rather than wasted. As any business owner knows – time is money!
With order after order coming through, sometimes you just have to say “no” to certain tasks if you’re unable to complete them according to the deadline specified by the customer. This could be down to having so many projects ongoing at one time or it may be down to a lack of resources. Whatever the reason, utilizing resource management software will help managers to make the important call over whether or not a new order can be completed.