… that brings a lot of advantages to ensure the sustainability of your business and the well-being of your consultants!
What is capacity planning?
Capacity planning is about determining the capacity needed to meet the demand for your services in the mid-term. It helps you determine when to hire new talents, when to downsize and allows you to allocate your organizations resources effectively to meet demand. While there is no fixed definition of the time horizon, it could stretch from 3 to 24 months.
The process usually starts with your sales forecast figures based on your commercial pipeline of probable deals. As per the number of days planed for each project and their duration, you can thus estimate the monthly requirements both in quantitative (“how many man days”) and qualitative (“what profile, skills, talents, where…”) terms.
You then need to compare this DEMAND with your own OFFER, made of the number of consultants / resources you may use to staff your projects. A well built capacity planning tool, like Teambook, will facilitate these planning & matching tasks, showing you over- and under-capacity… so that you can either push your commercial efforts or hire the qualified skills your need!
The advantages of capacity planning for dynamic professional service organizations:
1. It improves project outcomes:
Having a carefully planned capacity strategy brings greater precision to project deliverables. When you have the right resources for the job, each step can be completed on time and by the right person with the right skills.
2. Internally, capacity planning also improves transparency between team members, as they are more aware of their roles. This helps to avoid setbacks and unplanned changes in project implementation. In the long run, this will be reflected in the reliability and reputation of your agency.
3. It boosts employee morale: Capacity planning gives you a long-term view of your resources, which can change the way you make day-to-day decisions – for the better! Rather than encouraging staff to work outside their skills to get a job done, you will know when you need to improve skills, hire and use different resources. In this way, capacity planning improves team utilisation, preventing burnout, boredom and unrealistic expectations in your team. The result? More competent, productive and engaged employees.
4. It’s cost-effective: If your current capacity doesn’t provide enough resources for the upcoming project, the success of the project – and your reputation – are at risk. Conversely, if your capacity is too high and you don’t have enough work, your profits will be reduced. Effective capacity planning allows you to increase your margins by being prepared for your future resource needs.
Teambook assists fast moving organization to handle their capacity planning needs.
Teambook offers you a module dedicated to Capacity planning, further to its award winning operational planning features. Give it a try make use of the 14-days free trial (no credit card required)!