The Challenge
Outside of project margins, utilization of human capital is the largest lever for impacting Professional Services (PS) organizations. The math is simple. For a 100 person services organization, 5 points of utilization equates to approximately $1 million to the bottom line for a typical PS team. PS organizations that do not consistently achieve target utilization levels are usually with the result of a lack of disciplined practices, inadequate tools and infrastructure, underinvestment or some combination of all three.
Even more challenging is the state of resource management methodologies and maturity in the industry at large. Unlike project management, quality, or other battle tested disciplines, Resource Management (RM) is still a nascent discipline by comparison. Finding skilled resource managers, documented commercial RM methodologies, enabling tools and other related needs is not always easy. The narrow functional footprint of teams managing RM is normally quite small relative to the overall delivery teams they support, drawing question to the need to build this capacity in-house or look to a business process outsourcing firm like RTM Consulting to bring people, processes and technology to address RM needs tactically and strategically.
The Solution
RTM Consulting believes utilization is critical in periods of growth as well as contraction. Poor utilization is not as simple as having too many resources for too little work. Through the effective management of your resources, you can achieve significant improvements in profitability, employee retention and career development.
Resource Management as a Service (RMaaS) is a new solution, offered exclusively by RTM Consulting, that can provide PS organizations with consistent and effective resource management. By utilizing this new form of business process outsourcing your services organization can achieve the benefits of predictable efficient utilization and improved project performance, while reducing the risk and cost associated with building this mission critical but niche functional capability for your company.
Our Approach
The key to a healthy and profitable delivery organization begins with effective Resource Management. RMaaS provides a fast, flexible and highly functional turnkey solution for PS organizations, bringing all the functional scope of a centrally managed Resource Management function, utilizing our unique solution for Resource Management – Just-in-Time Resourcing®. RMaaS solution components include:
People:
- Skilled leadership and staff to run a full Resource Management Office
- Always on support – up to and including 7 x 24 if needed
Process – Our Just-in-Time Resourcing® Solution includes these main process building blocks:
- Skills Inventory – It starts by knowing what and where the capability and capacity of your delivery team is and keeping this information current and accurate. The skills inventory is ideally enterprise wide, enabling better access to the right talent across the organization.
- Centralized Staffing Methodology – Staffing is the continuous process of matching available delivery resources for all active and potential projects. This process replaces the all too common decentralized approaches which are labor intensive and often result in “dialing for resources” to see who is available.
- Forecasting – What is the resource requirement outlook for the next 30 days? How about in the next three to six months? Lead times for recruiting, hiring and retaining human capital do not always coincide with project needs. Forecasting your resource needs is as imperative as forecasting your revenue.
- Candidate Sourcing, Development and Skills Mix Management – A logical extension of forecasting. Once the resource needs are defined, now the organization can target the right actions to recruit hire or contract the right resources. With a comprehensive, centralized view of resource needs over a given time horizon, strategic sourcing analysis and planning can occur to gain control over longer-term labor costs.
- Governance – Resource Management information drives strategic planning and management decisions, and tactical project performance and financial results. Like any other mission critical business process, the establishment of metrics, dashboards, corrective action and continuous improvement processes are necessary to achieve consistent and predictable results.
Technology:
- IT / PSA Infrastructure – For PS organizations larger than 50 – 75 resources and distributed across multiple geographies, automation is essential, and can be highly beneficial for organizations under 50 as well.
Contact RTM Consulting to gain access to our insights and experience with this critical aspect of running your business. For a downloadable brochure about Resource Management as a Service, click here.