When Winning New Business Causes Resource Management Panic

New business is always exciting, but if you wait until after the contract is won to figure out who is going to work on it, you could be in real trouble.  According to a 2011 study by the Project Management Institute, “Resource misallocation is a major (THE major?) cause of project failures in multiple project environments.” Simply put, you may be pitching and winning business without knowing if you can service it.

The open question is “Do you have enough people to complete this project?”For consulting companies that are still tracking work using spreadsheets, the answer can be impossible to answer confidently. And the cost of an inaccurate answer is consultant burnout, over-hiring, declining profits, or even project failure.

Automated Time Tracking Is The First Step

To know your true future capacity, you first must track and properly categorize all of your consultant’s work. This is where spreadsheets fail: the overhead of tracking in a static file always causes hours to be underreported, and missing data about the nature of the work prevents a true "apples-to-apples" comparison of past work to future work.

Accurate resource management starts with capturing ALL the hours that went into a project – not just the billable hours. This is essential in the pitch stage, where accidentally (or unwittingly) omitting the non-billable hours from a project estimate can destroy your margins before the project even starts.

Leverage Your Timesheet Data With Resource Management

PSA software with Automated Time Tracking really shines when it comes to resource management. With accurate and properly categorized time data, you can take advantage of the integrated nature of PSA software like Projectworks to visualize all of data with dashboards that show:

• Overloaded Resources: Who is overbooked and at risk of burnout?
• Available Resources: Who has availability next week? And for what kind of projects?
• Resources Pipeline: If our pending proposals all close at once, what does our capacity look like?

If some consultants are overloaded, you can rebalance workloads instantly, heading off burnout before it becomes an issue. And with a centralized view into future availability, you’ll know far in advance if you need additional resources or if you have capacity that needs to be met with new business development.

Automated time tracking is not just for administrative efficiency; it is the core requirement for a healthy, growing, and profitable consulting business. Projectworks can help guide you in your transition from backward- looking spreadsheets and into your next phase of forward-looking growth. You can start a free trial of Projectworks today, or let us demo Projectworks for you.

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