Top 7 Resource Management Best Practices

Successful project management is almost impossible if you are not able to accumulate and administer sufficient resources. This is why resource management plays such a major role in modern businesses & inspiring entrepreneurs to create new ways of handling professional duties.

Business Dictionary says, resource management is simply the process of using a company’s resources in the most efficient way possible.

It’s a broad concept, but this is exactly what makes resource management essential for business performance. The benefits of resource management are numerous, but here are the key ones:

• Cost reduction: Precision and accuracy guarantee timely delivery and reduce operational costs.
• Accountability: If planned and executed properly, resource management maximizes the accountability within teams.
• Customer satisfaction: The sheer fact that you can deliver projects on time will make your clients or customer satisfied and loyal.
• Revenue increase: Bearing in mind the benefits mentioned above, it’s not surprising to realize that quality resource management also leads to a significant revenue increase.

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Advantages of having a great resource management strategy are evident, but how can you come up with a good plan for your business? If you want to find it out, keep reading our post because we will show you the top seven resource management practices.

1. Create a Strategic Breakdown Structure

The first thing you should do is develop a strategic breakdown structure. It’s a core principle which allows you to prepare for projects and keep track of planned activities. The best way to do it is by determining a couple of basic parameters:

• Business goals: What do you want to achieve with this project? Make sure to understand your goals and make them highly specific, realistic, and measurable.
• Set KPIs: It’s easy to set key performance indicators (KPIs) if you know business objectives. Make sure to quantify KPIs and you’ll be able to measure results along the way.

2. Gather Operational Inputs

Business-related data represent another valuable resource that you need to handle properly. Therefore, you should gather operational inputs before the official project launch and consider the following aspects of the process:

• Budget: The quality and the number of business activities often depend on the budget.
• Deadlines: Let your team members know the deadlines and follow the timeframe as expected.
• Milestones: You can also divide projects into smaller milestones to ensure simpler execution.
• Competitors: Learn all you can about the biggest competitors and find a way to outperform them.

3. Have a distinct RACI Matrix

As a project manager, ensure you have well-defined RACI matrix for your projects. RACI helps increase accountability and ownership among the project team. Secondly, the team knows whom to consult and inform when needed as the project progresses.

Issue handling and resolution becomes easier when the team knows they have backup to call upon. There is added transparency and task inter-dependencies are better handled. All of which augurs well for faster execution.

4. Prioritize Tasks

Resource management is all about learning how to prioritize professional tasks and responsibilities. In this case, most managers choose to follow a well-known prioritization scheme:

• Urgent and important: Every member of your team should first concentrate on handling tasks that are both urgent and highly relevant business-wise.
• Urgent but not important: Once you are done with the first set of tasks, you can start solving minor issues that require an instant reaction.
• Important but not urgent: The third group of tasks includes important duties that you can do carefully and patiently.
• Not important and not urgent: You can focus on these tasks only if you previously solve all of the above mentioned issues.

5. Use Resource Management Tools

What we love about resource management is the fact that it offers a wide range of automation tools. You can use dozens of interesting platforms and each one should help you to automate tasks and eliminate boring repetitive activities. The number of options is almost countless, but we can certainly recommend a few programs like Float, Orangescrum, Teamdeck, or Forecast.

6. Respect the Transparency Principle

Resource management is an all-encompassing process that consists of multiple segments, so you have to be fully transparent and keep both your team and your clients informed about each phase of project realization.

This means you should eliminate doubt or confusion among coworkers by explaining operational procedures, possible risks, leadership models, means of communication, and rewards. Doing so, you will help the people involved to remain productive and eliminate the risk of resource turnover or burnout.

7. Don’t Forget That Staff Is a Resource

The last resource management advice we want to share with you is that you shouldn’t neglect your employees because they also represent a valuable resource. As a matter of fact, even the best project idea can turn out to be disastrous if you fail to motivate your team members. Therefore, you must pay attention to internal communication and use emotional intelligence and leadership skills to keep workers engaged and productive.

Conclusion

Resource management is one of the most important factors of business success because it helps companies to plan their assets and deliver projects in a timely manner. But it takes a lot of experience and expertise to handle this process, so you better play it safe by following state of the art principles.

In this post, we showed you the top seven resource management practices. Have you ever used any of these tactics? Let us know in comments and we can discuss it together!