Charging plan software, yes but for whom? Part 1: operational users

Your consulting firm or your ESN does it have more than thirty employees?

So you probably already realized that manage your load plan without load plan software (or Staffing tool) is at best a hazardous task, even dangerous for your business.

‍

At Napta, we speak with knowledge. Indeed, a number of our customers worked like this before using our Staffing software, making do with an ersatz such asExcel to supervise and organize their client projects.

‍

And if the absence of centralization of data is often singled out as one of the main disadvantages of using Excel to manage your load plan, very limited collaborative features of such a tool are systematically identified by managers, management teams and, of course, by the consultants themselves.

‍

Entre la budget management, of allotted time or even skill needs, project planning via a workload plan is an intrinsically collaborative activity. So there is nothing more normal that the tool that makes this planning more fluid is also normal.

‍

And no effective collaboration without precise definition of stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities in the project and therefore in the use of the load plan software.

‍

Napta believes that for load planning software to be truly useful to your consulting firm or IT service provider, it must be made accessible to all hierarchical levels of the company.

‍

Discover, through the first part of this series of 2 articles dedicated to load plan software users, the different types of users to whom to make your load plan tool accessible for the most effective monitoring and management of the project possible.

‍

Consultants, field users of load plan software

At the forefront of any client project, your consultants are the users closest to the concrete execution of the mission.

‍

They must therefore be able to go back to both the time spent working on the client mission, everything malfunctioning or unscheduled occurring on the ground, just like their Feedback.

‍

Information should not only be bottom-up, from the consultant to the manager and the other project stakeholders, but also top-down in order to offer the collaborator visibility, for example on the next steps of the mission or on any strategic change decided between his hierarchy and the client.

‍

And that's what the load plan software for the consultant. The tool should allow him to note the time spent on each mission, to transmit and receive all important information via a notification system, but also to share his field experience so that the next mission takes place even better.

‍

At the time when The turnover within consulting firms is close to 2 times higher compared to that in other sectors (33% vs 15%), this last element is far from being anecdotal.

‍

Managers or how to manage a triple challenge on the same platform

So that consultants don't think about anything other than the proper execution of their missions, managers take over much of the rest, starting with monitoring the smooth progress of the project.

‍

And that's where your load plan tool comes in!

‍

Intended to allow managers to maintain control of the progress of the project in the field, the Staffing software should allow them to follow several elements at a glance:

• Real-time progress of projects,
• The key indicators attached,
• as well as to ensure the respect for the balance between expenses and margin, in particular by monitoring the differences between Expected time and the time actually charged.

‍

But this follow-up only makes sense if it allows managers to Easily communicate the right information to the right people involved in the project. It is also the role of load plan software to facilitate this feedback or this descent of information to the project teams.