NetSuite : Resource Management is a Fluid Process – Make Sure Your PSA is as Well

Posted by Dean Herback, Sales Consultant for NetSuite Services Resource Planning

I've run at least a hundred or more discoveries over the past few years at NetSuite and learned that the need to gain better visibility into their resources is one of the most common themes for services firms.

From utilization tracking, to capacity planning, to finding the right skills for a project, relying on spreadsheets or, even worse, tribal knowledge at weekly meetings can make the process very inefficient. It can also be a serious source of revenue leakage due to idle resources or staffing overqualified resources on projects. If you could have staffed them to a more profitable or strategic project that means potential for lost revenue. Similarly, underqualified resources can lead to customer service issues, lost reference opportunities and potentially rework.

Another common theme I hear is organizations undertaking a wide variety of projects that can span different types of services and different project lengths, from days or weeks to months or even years. You can imagine that the resource staffing model for the various types and sizes of projects will also vary quite a bit. Finding the right person to staff a short-term contract job can be a completely different experience from trying to staff a year-long intensive implementation requiring up to a dozen or more resources. There can also be everything in between these two extremes as well.

So resource management, including the identification of the right resources and being able to quickly fulfill customer requests can be a very fluid process even inside just one organization, let alone across the multitude of types of service companies. The sad truth though is a lot of companies don't have a solution that can support the various models, whether that's using a spreadsheet or some of the PSA software solutions on the market. I'm often surprised to hear a prospect tell me they own a PSA but can't use it for resource staffing, and even resort to buying another tool just for managing resources!

NetSuite OpenAir has been designed from the ground up to support organizations large and small, for any length of a project and requiring any type of resources. The real benefit is that you don't have to choose a formal or informal process during implementation and force everyone into that process. OpenAir offers a variety of methods so you can choose the right staffing approach for every opportunity.

• For clients that need nimble identification of available resources and quick bookings, that can be accomplished using our recently revamped Advanced Booking Worksheet.
• When a custom search is required to find the right skills, with sufficient availability, and the option to add in other parameters our custom search can quickly identify the resources. Then the new compare view capability lets you see the resources side by side for in-depth comparisons before selecting the right individual.
• If you have a more formal process where you want to build a list of required resources and skills required for a project our planner fits the bill. Built in conjunction with one of NetSuite's largest resource management customers that has 15,000 resources to track and manage, the Advanced Booking Worksheet provides the ultimate in collaboration between the project manager and staffers to build the winning team for a successful client engagement.

These are just a few of the major types of resource management capabilities in OpenAir, but the built-in flexibility of the product means there are many more variations that can accommodate unique requirements of many customers. Whether you want your resources to keep up their own schedule of availability and skillsets, or keep it controlled centrally, or something in between, NetSuite OpenAir should be the first and last PSA system that you turn to for taking your resource management into the future. Get an OpenAir demo and value assessment of your services organization.