Discover who can actually benefit from enterprise resource planning, as it’s not only for big companies anymore. As well as how small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) can take their organizations to the next level with the right system in place.
Every company starts somewhere. Microsoft began in a garage. Facebook, a college dorm room. The next unicorn or even major cultural shift brought on by human innovation can be hiding in plain sight right now. Or maybe it’s your own organization.
For many, the difference between a set-up in their garage and reaching the big leagues is the systems and workflows that they implement early on. The best way to do this is enacting a plan for scaling. Including developing sustainable business models and using every resource available. The key to both of those: putting resource planning practices into place as soon as possible.
Resource planning is essentially delegating and distributing tasks to your resources in order to complete your projects. These resources can be anything you plan with – a contractor, a vehicle, meeting room #24, a rented tractor.
No matter if you prefer the term ‘resource scheduling’ or ‘resource management’, the idea is to keep track of who is doing what and when.
Yet because of the popularity of enterprise resource planning (ERP) there’s often a misconception that the practice is reserved for big organizations. And it isn’t something that small businesses should bother with. But the reality is that companies of all sizes can stand to benefit from the planning and management of resources. Let’s illustrate with an infographic.
Statistics demonstrate that small projects with a budget of less than a million dollars have a 76% success rate. Compare this to the 10% success rate of large projects with a budget of more than ten million dollars. Likewise, large projects have a 38% failed rate as opposed to the 4% failed rate in small projects.
But with most things, the most interesting bit lies in the in-between. Because between failure and success there’s also the projects that were challenged along the way. More than half of larger projects and almost a quarter of smaller projects met with challenges.
What are these challenges? According to the Pulse of the Professional challenges can manifest as anything from communication issues, to poor resource planning, or inaccurate forecasting. All of which can be fixed from implementing an organization-wide resource planning system.
At the end of the day, resource planning prevents project failure. When you’re working with hundreds or even thousands of employees, you need an easy way to monitor the on-going work. Managers must have a way to quickly be able to see and keep track of how many employees are working on a project, which employees are free, when to allocate new projects to employees and more.
More often than not, resource allocation plays a big part in multi-project planning. That’s why you see conglomerates like General Electric, Hitachi, Samsung and Procter & Gamble carry out resource management on a daily basis. As it’s a necessity due to the vast size of their companies and the complexity of their strategies.
The short answer is yes. As resource management comes in many different forms, from using simple scheduling software to mentally scheduling work for staff, every small company manager is already engaging in this practice whether they know it or not.
That’s because no matter the size of your company, various human resource issues need to be worked through on a daily basis. How much staff does the business need to run smoothly in day-to-day operations? Just how many resources can the business afford? And how does one effectively evaluate employee performance? And more.
Even with a handful of employees, it’s crucial to utilize resource planning for a sustainable future. The solution for small companies is finding the right tool that fits at the right cost. Because that’s the tricky part.
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Yet for every positive aspect of an ERP, there’s downsides as well.
Not to scare anyone away from implementing an ERP, but they don’t come cheap! Average annual project costs per user are about $8,265. And implementation costs anywhere from $150,000 and $750,000 for a mid-sized business. This is something that maybe a larger organization can swing, but for a SMB this figure is definitely hard to swallow. So what’s the solution?
ERP is a great solution for large and small organizations alike. Yet, with the high costs, it can be difficult to take the plunge into implementing a brand new system. But for managers looking to dip their feet into the resource planning pool, then going with a lite-ERP solution like Ganttic is a good starting point.
Ganttic has many of the same features of on-premises ERP, but without the costs, difficulty, or lengthy setups. A cloud-based resource management system with unlimited users, you can effectively create schedules, track projects and resources, and share it with the team. The open API means Ganttic can fit in alongside all your other favorite work tools with skipping a beat. Plus, extensive security protocols and project management features means the tool can grow alongside your company at a competitive price. Without holding you back.
Get started today with a free trial and see for yourself what other managers around the world have already discovered. Sign up for a free demo and we’ll walk you through the setup.
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