What Is Resource Management?
Resource managementResource ManagementResource management includes the planning, allocation, and monitoring of resources in projects. encompasses the planning, control, and monitoring of resources, time, and budgets. The goal is to make optimal use of resources, avoid bottlenecks, and plan projectsProjectA project is a temporary initiative with clearly defined objectives, resources, and a specific outcome. realistically.
In practice, a variety of requirements must be balanced: project managers need resources for their projects, resource managers coordinate availabilityAvailabilityAvailability describes the capacity of a resource that is available for projects or tasks., while leaders and PMOsPMOsSynonym for → Project Management OfficeAbbreviation for Project Management Office. need visibility into workloads and capacities across their teams and the entire organization.
Why Is Resource Planning
So Complex and Important?
Organizations often face the same challenges:
- Lack of transparency into available capacityCapacitySynonym for → AvailabilityGeneral term for available work capacity.
- Overloaded key personnel and bottleneck roles
- Competition between projectsProjectA project is a temporary initiative with clearly defined objectives, resources, and a specific outcome. for the same resources
- Short-term changes in ongoing projects
- Different requirements from project managers, PMOsPMOsSynonym for → Project Management OfficeAbbreviation for Project Management Office., and leadership teams
- Planning across multiple teams, departments, or locations
Without a centralized foundation for resource planningResource PlanningResource planning describes the planning and allocation of human and material resources across projects., coordination efforts, inaccurate planning, and unnecessary risks for projects and investments can quickly arise. A powerful resource planning software solution helps bring together different perspectives and enables informed decisions based on current data.
Resource Management With Clarity
Clarity helps organizations manage resources transparently and optimize capacity utilization. Availability, demand, and workload information are consolidated in a single solution, ensuring that all stakeholders work from the same data foundation.
Manage Roles, Teams, and Resources Centrally
With Clarity, you can centrally manage resources, roles, and teams across all investments. Master data such as availabilityAvailabilityAvailability describes the capacity of a resource that is available for projects or tasks., skills, and organizational assignmentsAssignmentAssignment describes the organizational or structural allocation of resources, tasks or projects. is always up to date and readily available.
- Maintain resource master data, including availability, contact information, skills, organizational assignments, and more
- Define and manage roles, resources, and teams across investments
- Integrate your preferred HR systems for automated synchronization of resource data
- Gain transparency into baseline resource workloads through the mapping of work schedules and baseline allocationsAllocationAllocation in project management refers to the deliberate assignment of resources to projects or individual tasks. (for example, operational activities, side projectsProjectA project is a temporary initiative with clearly defined objectives, resources, and a specific outcome., absences, etc.)
- Flexible unit support, including days, hours, FTEsFTEsSynonym for → Full-Time EquivalentAbbreviation for Full-Time Equivalent., or percentages
Strategic Resource Planning Across Your Entire Portfolio
For long-term business and portfolio planningPortfolio PlanningPortfolio planning is the process of selecting and prioritizing projects within a project portfolio., decision-makers need a reliable overview of available capacityCapacitySynonym for → AvailabilityGeneral term for available work capacity.. Clarity provides a strategic view of resources across all levels and creates a solid foundation for investment decisions.
- Transparent workload visibility across resources, departments, and projectsProjectA project is a temporary initiative with clearly defined objectives, resources, and a specific outcome. at a glance
- Early identification of bottlenecks and constrained roles
- Ensure long-term capacity for planned investments
- Flexible views and features tailored to different user roles
- Mid- to long-term resource planningResource PlanningResource planning describes the planning and allocation of human and material resources across projects. at the organizational level to support workforce and resource development
Operational Resource Management for Day-to-Day Business
In addition to strategic planningStrategic PlanningStrategic planning defines a company’s long-term goals and the initiatives required to achieve them., Clarity supports the operational management of your resources. This enables more efficient alignment between projectProjectA project is a temporary initiative with clearly defined objectives, resources, and a specific outcome. requirements and available capacityCapacitySynonym for → AvailabilityGeneral term for available work capacity..
- Support for flexible resource managementResource ManagementResource management includes the planning, allocation, and monitoring of resources in projects. and approval processes
- High-level planning with roles and rapid staffing through drag-and-drop assignmentAssignmentAssignment describes the organizational or structural allocation of resources, tasks or projects. of suitable resources
- Transparency into workload status with color-coded indicators for overutilization
- Multiple planning levels, from project assignments to taskTaskSynonym for → Action ItemAssigned piece of work allocationsAllocationAllocation in project management refers to the deliberate assignment of resources to projects or individual tasks.
- Real-time visualization of the capacity impact of different planning scenariosScenarioA scenario is a simulated planning situation within a project portfolio.
- Visual analysis of resource availability through live histogramHistogramIn resource management, a histogram is used to visualize resource capacity and workload over a defined period of time. views
- Built-in time tracking for planned-versus-actual comparisons
Clarity Is Especially Helpful for These Roles
Project Managers
Plan projectsProjectA project is a temporary initiative with clearly defined objectives, resources, and a specific outcome. efficiently, identify resource requirements early, and request resources directly within the system.
Resource Managers
Manage availabilityAvailabilityAvailability describes the capacity of a resource that is available for projects or tasks., prioritize requests, and ensure balanced utilizationUtilizationUtilization describes the extent to which available resources are used by tasks or projects. across teams and employees.
Team and Department Managers
Monitor team workloads and capacities and identify persistent overutilization or underutilization at an early stage.
Clarity is the proverbial jack of all trades among PPM tools. The software is outstanding across all areas, and in some of them it even leads the field. The functionality and flexibility of Clarity were decisive criteria in our selection process.
We decided on Clarity as a suitable tool for improving our project and resource management processes as it came out at the top of our internal evaluation process and met all our technical and business requirements. We found it particularly important to be able to map the various use cases of the business units as well as to ensure that the software could be deployed globally.
One of the biggest advantages that Clarity has is that it’s extremely flexible and modular, which makes it relatively easy to integrate it with other systems via interfaces.
Clarity is now a core system that we use to manage and monitor projects and project portfolios at our company, and it complements our application landscape accordingly. We also use Clarity as a reporting tool at the management level, since it offers a simple and transparent overview of the project landscape and the status of the individual projects.
The development of Clarity at Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller has been very successful: In the past, with some topics, the question was whether we needed to do this in Clarity. Today, we tend to ask ourselves: "Can we map this in Clarity?".
We showed how difficult it was to make costs and revenues transparent and to compare them without Clarity. And, of course, top management wants to know whether we are staying within our budgets, whether we are profitable, and if what we are doing is contributing to this or not. At this point, we quickly recognized the added value of Clarity, and we were also able to convince the management to introduce the new software.
Thanks to Clarity‘s flexibility in customizing and aligning processes and views, we are able to satisfy the needs of different areas.
Create Greater Transparency in Your Resource Planning
Schedule a personal demo to see how Clarity supports your resource management processes. We’ll show you the features and use cases that best fit your organization.
