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Rolling out resource management software to your global operations

Innate is part way through a major roll out project within a large multinational construction, property and infrastructure company. Following the success of Innate’s resource management software within their UK division, it was decided in 2019 to roll it out globally to their operations across 4 continents.

The UK has been using the resource management software for a couple of years, focusing on:

  • Project demand management and resource allocation, ensuring that appropriately skilled staff are available as required across a large multi-project construction management workload. This requires detailed information on the dates that individuals are expected to complete on a project, so that they can quickly be re-allocated to their next one.
  • Resource Cost performance measurement. By measuring the cost performance of the budgeted resources, and forecasting its likely impact on the outstanding estimate, early warning of underperformance is visible so that corrective action can quickly be taken.

As a prelude to the roll out, details of how the UK was using the resource management software and the benefits they experienced were presented and discussed with the other regions. A consensus was reached that the UK’s approach should be replicated across all regions, meaning that a ‘Lift and Drop’ approach of the UK process and system was accepted. The following implications were identified, which needed to be addressed before roll out could commence:

Resource management process

Within the UK, Business and IT individuals were in place to ensure the potential of the software was being realised. Each region identified staff for similar roles, who have since been trained by their UK equivalents. This led to the resource management processes being reviewed and documented for circulation and agreement.

The Software

Prior to commencing roll out, a number of software configuration changes were identified:

  1. Managing data from multiple regions in a common database. This required extension of the Permissions system to provide data access control across multiple regions, so that regional administrators, for example, would only be able to see or update their own region’s data.
  2. Expand APIs to accommodate the import routines for data from multiple regions, e.g. regional rate cards.
  3. With the multi-regional resource management processes clarified, there was an opportunity to review usability aspects of how the system had been configured for the UK. Extending the use of Quick Action buttons and hyperlinks from lists of projects and resources now more closely supports the resource management process steps and has reduced the number of keystrokes required.

Post roll out operations management

With the software changes accepted, the global roll out has commenced. An Innate product forum is being established by the client to manage the ongoing effectiveness of the system and relationship with Innate. It will consist of the Regional Business Administrators and their IT support. A chairman, who will control future budgets. is being appointed and he will report to the global product owner.

Barry Muir is a Director of Innate Management Systems Ltd. We have been implementing resource management software in a wide variety of professional services organizations for more than 20 years.
Posted in resource management software

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