Managers across different organizations always look at ways to efficiently plan, schedule and utilize the available resources. By making use of a productive resource planning software, managers can ensure optimum utilization of the available resources in terms of men, machine, material and the available cash flows for operational purposes. But when certain managers want to perform the resource planning activity using the tried and tested way of manually scheduling and managing resources, they need to be mentally prepared for facing a lot of difficulties.
Problems faced by the Manager in using Manual System:-
1. Slower Processing Cycle and Increased Idle Time – When managers use the traditional pen and paper to perform resource planning, it takes a lot of time for the outputs from one department to move to another department. As there is no automation involved, each and every department has to depend on their supervisors to give the go ahead. The next department in the process cycle will be waiting for the work to come. Managers do not have any software to manage the functions of the different departments. This automatically increases the processing cycle time. The idle time of the resources of a particular department also gets increased drastically.
2. Inventory related Loss – When there is no software for the manager to monitor the inventory levels in the company, it becomes extremely difficult to plan the resources that need to be allocated. As there is no information available on the availability of a particular product ordered by the customer, managers cannot immediately supply the ordered product. They need to manually check the inventory for the availability of the product. This would take enormous time and when they are not able to find the product, they need to start the operations for producing the required product. This leads to material wastage and human resources are unnecessarily utilized.
3. Difficult to maintain Records – When managers make use of the manual method of maintaining the records for different departments in the organization, it becomes extremely difficult to securely store the records. The records have to be maintained for at least a year for financial reporting purposes. In such a scenario, there are greater chances of the manual records getting lost. Sometimes the manual records might also get destroyed due to flooding and fire accidents. There are also chances of the records getting stolen from the work place.
4. No Process in place – As managers do not use software, they would not be able to set up any standard processes to be followed. Managers would find it extremely difficult in handling the day to-day operations.
Benefits of going with the Technology:-
1. The selected Software helps the managers to improve the efficiency and productivity in the work place by providing the options to plan well in advance. Resource allocation and resource scheduling can be done dynamically and can be tracked effectively using the software.
2. The Software would provide up to-date information to the managers. Based on the data, they would be able to take correct decisions. They can also take corrective steps to bring the situation under control
3. Automated workflows provides by the software helps in connecting the different departments in a proper manner. This ensures that the resources are effectively utilized across the departments and there is no under utilization or over utilization of resources. This helps to improve the communication and collaboration between the different departments. Managers can use the software to track the progress of the work and take corrective action based on the reports available from the software.
4. Managers would find it easier to perform order tracking, revenue tracking and inventory tracking using the selected Software
5. Managers can safely and securely store the data in the database available as part of the resource planning software. The data can be retrieved quickly and managers can refer to the data as and when required.
