It is a very common story. A fairly large organization by Finnish standards which has been in operation for decades. Employs over 1.000 experts whose know-how is being sold to external partners. A well-informed company also interested in resource planning, who starts using Silverbucket. In the beginning, everything goes just fine. Trainings are held.
A couple of years pass, and we at Silverbucket notice that the amount of logins and the amount of resourcing is dropping. “We just don’t feel like resourcing. The tool is not suitable for our daily needs”, we hear from the management. So, what to do?
This is a real example from one of our customers. However, our customer was not discouraged. Instead we started thinking over how to get more out of Silverbucket. And we did it! More on that later.
A helping hand in developing resource planning
As a rule of thumb, the better data can be collected, the better resourcing can be done – and the better companies succeed. As information begins to accumulate, the right kind of resourcing decisions can be made. Which experts are available? In what time? When can a project be launched with the suitable experts? How much of a particular service will we be able to provide to the customers? How much of a certain expertise can we sell to our customers?
We at Silverbucket have developed various services to ensure that our customers manage their resources as well as possible. Generally, the management believes that their resourcing problems are unique. However, we have been professionals in resourcing for years and we are quite skilled in finding a target model for resourcing together with the customer.
From analysis to integrations – something for everybody
We have provided our new customers with an analysis service that maps the organization’s resourcing situation, for example. We map the current situation by interviewing the people who are responsible for resourcing in their daily jobs. The customer gets a clear plan of what should be done for their resourcing process so that resourcing will work better in the future. An analysis service is an easy way to get started, and it may not take more than a week or two to do it. Our experience makes things efficient.
Furthermore, we typically offer training as a service to get the most out of Silverbucket. We offer Silverbucket for trial use, also. Customers often wonder how they could find out if Silverbucket is the right tool for them. How will it be the best possible match for their business? With our solid experience, we can help expert organizations of all sizes to be better in resourcing.
In addition, it is possible to purchase a so-called Resource Manager as a service. This is a great solution especially to those organizations who are not used to resourcing efficiently. We provide an experienced Resource Manager who holds meetings for Project Managers once in every two weeks, for example. Because the Resource Manager is experienced and understands resourcing deeply, the organization will learn how to make resourcing better step by step. Eventually, they can continue resourcing independently.
In addition to these services, we also provide support for integrations between different systems. It is important that data flows between different systems in case the HR system changes, for example. This is a very common situation nowadays.
In addition, we have also developed our reporting service on how to combine all the information provided by Silverbucket into a meaningful big picture. In this way, the organization’s upper management understands where they are going and what to do next.
Making customers happy with the help of the Resource Manager
So, what happened to our customer introduced at the beginning of this blog? Undeniably, the situation was quite bad in resourcing. The Project Managers would walk around in the hallways asking their colleagues to join new projects. There was some resourcing done but the data was only in Excels on the Project Managers’ desktops.
So, we provided our customer with a Resource Manager from Silverbucket. The Manager started asking Project Managers about resourcing and monitoring the situation. Project Managers also started using Silverbucket by themselves. Gradually, data about resourcing began to accumulate again under the leadership of the Resource Manager. The data became reliable. At this point, the information also became useful for the sales team and for the Project Managers. The whole organization ended up in a positive cycle. Eventually, the Resource Manager from Silverbucket stepped aside and the customer continued resource planning enthusiastically and motivated. In the end, two heads are better than one.
