Every business is under constant pressure to do more with a smaller budget. One of the fundamental lessons for any business owner is how to allocate business resources so they can reach their maximum potential. An ineffective or nonexistent project resource management plan could have regular negative effects on your business, such as low productivity, quality or morale. With a solid process in place, though, your business can do more with fewer resources.
Put simply, resource management is the process businesses take to allocate their resources effectively.
The process has several stages, such as planning, scheduling and managing resources to reach their maximum efficiency. While resources vary greatly between businesses, they can generally be categorized as tangible assets – such as inventory, equipment and money – or intangible assets, such as people and time.
Resource management is often used in the context of project management. In this instance, “resource management” usually refers to resource leveling or resource smoothing, which are techniques to avoid a shortage or excess in a business’s resources or time. In other words, project resource management is about doing more things with fewer resources.
Companies all over the world are so invested in optimizing what they have, they hire people whose entire job is resource management. Resource managers are responsible for allocating the appropriate resources to ensure a project is completed on time and within budget. They often work in conjunction with project managers, who are responsible for creating and assigning specific tasks. Ultimately, an effective business owner or resource manager knows the minimal amount of resources necessary to achieve the best results.
The principles of effective resource management can be applied to various business structures. A small business can apply these principles in many different ways. For example, a local restaurant could use resource management in the following ways:
Key takeaway: Resource management is the process of ensuring businesses are using their resources as effectively as possible. They can use this process for specific projects, or for resources like staffing, equipment and technology.
You can implement several different resource management techniques in your business to become more efficient, but they all begin with identifying the resources available to you. A deep understanding of your various business processes and projects is key.
Once you’ve identified all your resources and business processes, you can start allocating, leveling and/or forecasting your resources. The goal is to continually improve your process by adjusting your staff, equipment and finances as needed to meet your objectives.
Regardless of how you incorporate resource management principles into your business, don’t overcomplicate the process.
“Keep it simple and compartmentalize,” said Strato Doumanis, chief technical officer and creative director of MediaCutlet. “Get all the major parts on paper in their most raw format.”
Doumanis reminds business owners that it’s best to establish the bookends of a project first, outlining where you are starting and where you need to go.
“Look at the biggest chunks of the project from the top down and, one at a time, begin carving out the more granular pieces needed to execute,” he added. “Then, get it on a timeline. This will help identify missing pieces while providing the skeleton for a project calendar and an incremental management approach.”
Key takeaway: To manage your resources effectively, you must first identify all of your resources, your starting point and your end goal.
There are three primary resource management methods: resource allocation, resource leveling and resource forecasting.
Resource allocation is perhaps the most prevalent resource management method, as every successful business does it on some level, even if it is not a formalized process. This is the process of utilizing the resources you have available and distributing them across different aspects of the business to run efficiently. A common example of resource allocation is staffing your business to run at maximum efficiency without going over budget.
This is the process of identifying any project that requires more resources than you have available and adjusting deadlines accordingly to ensure the project is ultimately successful. An example of resource leveling is when a construction company extends the project deadline to account for a limited supply of lumber, a critical material to complete the project.
Resource forecasting is the process of identifying all your available resources – such as time, people, finances and equipment – and predicting any resource requirements, bottlenecks, or problems before a project begins. To forecast accurately, a resource manager must understand the entire scope of the project as well as any specific goals or objectives that must be met along the way.
There are many different approaches to resource management, some of which include the use of sophisticated software. However, many small businesses don’t have the budget for advanced project management software, instead adopting a workflow process to use their resources more efficiently.
“Agile is definitely the methodology that is being widely used now,” said Wade Millward, founder of Rikor. “It’s a great step forward from the traditional Waterfall method that was so prevalent for decades.”
However, he said Agile can have its own issues and is still evolving. “I think Agile can become better with quicker iterations and more autonomy. The question becomes how to effectively manage it, almost to a point where you can identify issues before they arise.“
Key takeaway: There are three main types of resource management: resource allocation, resource leveling and resource forecasting.
Your business can benefit from an effective resource management plan in numerous ways. These are some of the things it can help you do:
Key takeaway: A resource management plan can help you identify and avoid problems, prevent organizational conflict, avoid over-reliance on any one resource, and quickly adapt to change.
Millward said that a company culture of innovation and autonomy is key to a resource management plan. He recognizes that business owners, company leaders, project managers and resource managers are not always right.
“Rely on your team to come up with the best solutions to the problems you’re working on,” Millward said. “The collective is often smarter than an individual. If you empower your team(s) to make decisions, they can rapidly execute new initiatives without seeking upper-management approval, which is wasted time. By implementing smaller iterations faster, you can get it to market quicker to get the feedback you so critically need.”
Zoriy Birenboym, president of eAutoLease.com, also believes that the best resource management principles begin with the team.
“My approach to all my business projects, to keep my team organized and on point, is to keep it very motivational and rewarding,” he said. “Motivation is key to getting a great end result. If I manage to keep everybody on top of their game with motivation and an end result that will bring something to the table for them, it usually is a great outcome.”