Understanding PeopleSoft Resource Management Business Processes

This chapter discusses:

• PeopleSoft Resource Management business processes.

• Data components that support the staffing process.

• Resource matching.

• Resource optimization.

• Capacity planning.

PeopleSoft Resource Management Business Processes

Project-based service enterprises must maintain a staff of skilled resources and match them to the customers' requests for services. The customer typically identifies the schedule, experience, and skills required to complete the project. To effectively manage this process, you must have the tools to capture customer requests. You must also evaluate and match customer requirements with the current inventory of resource competencies, preferences, and schedules to find the best-fitting assignments for resources. In addition, you need to sustain the highest levels of resource utilization possible.

To address the tasks of managing assignable resources and fulfilling customer requests, the service organization must perform the following business processes and tasks:

• Establishing and managing resource information, including:

  • Establishing resources.

  • Maintaining resource profiles.

  • Maintaining resource schedules.

  • Maintaining resource pools.

• Assigning resources to projects, including:

  • Defining resource requirements.

  • Performing express searches for the best candidates.

  • Creating assignments from search results.

  • Directly assigning specific resources.

• Managing service orders, generic resource requests, and assignments, including:

  • Recording service order resource requests.

  • Fulfilling resource requests based on resource availability, qualifications, and preferences.

  • Managing enterprise-wide resource supply and demand.

  • Outsourcing assignments to contractors.

  • Identifying service orders and assignments that need attention.

  • Controlling resource assignment status and schedule changes.

  • Notifying users of resource assignment status and schedule changes.

• Requesting assignments for resources, including:

  • Searching the service order pool for desirable assignments for resources.

  • Submitting resource recommendations for assignments.

  • Submitting resource bids for assignments.

• Determining the scheduling, training, and hiring needs, including:

  • Analyzing current and future resource availability.

  • Analyzing and forecasting workforce utilization.

  • Analyzing current and future skill requirement trends.

  • Conducting capacity planning to balance resource supply with project demand.

Resource Management addresses the various processes required to manage resource-scheduling activities. Those processes include maintaining a current interactive database of resources and requests for services, as well as generating reports and real-time analytical charts to review utilization and anticipate future needs.

Data Components That Support the Staffing Process

Resource Management uses a collection of data about resource qualifications and preferences, resource availability, and requests for services from customers. This information is assembled in data files that support the variety of tasks required to manage resources and staff assignments.

This section discusses:

• Resource profiles.

• Resource pools.

• Resource schedules.

• Assignments.

• Service orders.

Resource Profiles

Resource Management presents employee information as an editable resource profile that organizes the information from the employee source database and adds information relevant to Resource Management. The resource profile functions as a resource's online resume. It includes skills, education, work history, preferences, specialties, objectives, and general information to match with the requirements specified on a service order resource request or express search for resources.

The resource profile contains the following information about each resource:

Note. If an employee is established as both a Resource Management resource and an Asset Lifecycle Management resource, resource profiles may be affected.

Resource Pools

Resource pools support the staffing process and provide a mechanism to organize supply in a meaningful way to support Capacity Planning functionality. You can choose to structure your resources based on resource pools, and you can group your resources in any configuration in order to support their operations.

You can group resources into resource pools and define them in a hierarchy to establish relationships between different pools, thus enabling roll-up for analytics and reporting. You can model your resource pools on your company’s organizational structure, but the way you categorize and manage your resources from a capacity standpoint can vary greatly from your organizational structure; pools may encompass a lower level of granularity or may group resources in a different ways.

You can also search for resources in the workbench and narrow your results by resource pool.

Resource Schedules

Resource Management uses the resource schedule to interactively manage a resource's availability for assignments. The following individuals can view and update the schedule:

• Resource

• Resource manager

• Project manager

• Practice manager

• Pool manager

• Staffing coordinator

You can create schedule entries manually to reflect meetings, training, or personal time. The system updates the schedule during the assignment process to reflect the resource’s scheduled work.

If a resource is established as a Resource Management resource and an Asset Lifecycle Management resource, a Staffing Front Office resource, or both, the schedule will show all assignments that were made through any of these products for this resource.

Assignments

Once you define resource requirements for a job and identify an appropriate resource, you create an assignment to assign the resource to the job. Assignments are the goal of the staffing process. Each assignment pairs a resource with a unit of work. You can create assignments that specify the exact number of hours and minutes a resource is to be assigned to a job. You create assignments as the final step in a business process that usually begins with one of the following actions:

• The creation and fulfillment of a service order.

  You create an assignment when you select a resource to fulfill a resource request. You can request one or more resources—each with identical qualification and date requirements—for the same resource request. Each resource that is selected for the job has a unique assignment. In this way, you can change the assignment schedule or status for one resource without affecting the assignments for other resources who are associated with the resource request.

• The creation and execution of an express search.

  You can create an assignment by using the Express Search feature—also known as orderless searching—to find a resource that matches a specified list of competencies and accomplishments.

• A direct assignment without a service order or express search.

  You can use this process if you have already identified the appropriate resource to fulfill a requirement and you don't need to track the requirement on a service order.

• The creation and fulfillment of generic resource requests.

  You can use this process if you manage your resources with resource pools. Project managers can create generic resource requests from their project team. The requests are routed to the pool manager for approval and staffing.

If you use Program Management, you can select a resource and create an assignment using any of the preceding processes. The resource must be managed in Resource Management. In Resource Management, you associate a project with each assignment. This enables new assignments to update the project resource list. Changes to the resource's project schedule in Program Management are reflected on the assignment, resource schedule, and resource profile in Resource Management. Conversely, changes to the assignment in Resource Management are reflected in Program Management.

If you use Project Costing, a resource is added to the project team in Project Costing when you create an assignment for the resource in Resource Management. Any changes made in the Resource Management project schedule are reflected on the project team in Project Costing. Changes made to the project team in Project Costing are not updated in Resource Management.

You can access assignment details by clicking a link in the Staffing Workbench component, My Assignments component, from Resource Management reports, or on a service order (if the assignment is associated with a resource request on the order). Assigning a resource may require the approval of the resource's manager, depending on options that are selected for the business unit during Resource Management implementation.

Service Orders

Resource Management enables you to define services that are requested by a customer in the form of a service order.

If you use Program Management, you can create a service order to fulfill generic resource placeholders on a project.

The service order form captures information about the customer engagement and includes one or more resource requests. The resource request section of a service order includes all data relevant to the identification of the requested resources. A new resource request is needed for each type of resource that is requested. Multiple resources can be requested on a single resource request, provided that the same requested skills, time frame, and location apply for each.

Once service orders are entered, they are maintained by a set of status values that reflect service order fulfillment progress.

The system uses the requirements detailed in the service order and resource request to match the available, qualified resources during the order fulfillment process in the Staffing Workbench component.

Resource Matching

Resource Management is designed to replicate many of the manual processes inherent in professional service and internal service organizations. Its features process as much information as possible in the background. This design enables you to manage resources more effectively and to be more responsive to customers and resources by providing timely, accurate data. This approach keeps you from having to constantly research and reassemble information from resource schedules, resource profiles, and project requirements. You can confidently pair resources and assignments by relying on specified objectives and sound information.

Resource Matching evaluates the skills, experience, availability, education, and other information about resources and weighs these against the requirements that are specified in a request for services. You can use resource matching to:

• Find work for resources by using the Staffing Workbench - Manage Utilization page.

• Find work for yourself by using the Job Spy page.

• Search for resources to fulfill demand by using the Staffing Workbench - Fulfill Orders page.

• Search for resources to fulfill generic resource requests by using the Pool Manager Workbench - Fulfill Request page.

The Resource Optimization feature also uses Resource Matching calculations when it evaluates candidates for a resource request.

The Express Search feature provides an alternative, ad hoc method of finding resources in Resource Management. You can specify requirements and perform an express search for resources without a service order.

Resource Optimization

The Resource Optimization feature evaluates all open resource requests and compares them with available employee resources. It then uses that information to propose a staffing plan.

You can specify objectives and select one or more business units to include in a single optimization process. The result is a solution set that represents the optimal pairing of available employee resources to open resource requests based on weighted objectives that you define. You can create an optimal solution set for each business unit or unique group of business units.

On the Staffing Workbench - Fulfill Orders page, you can view and assign the resources that the Resource Optimization feature proposes for the requests that appear in the work space. Use the Reports folder to view each solution set in a report format.

Capacity Planning

Resource Management provides Information Technology (IT) and development organizations with capacity planning functionality to empower managers who make important demand commitment decisions based upon limited resources or capacity information. This functionality evaluates all demand for labor resources captured in projects , as well as demand captured from external sources and imported through an Excel-to-CI process, and compares them with available Resource Management resources.

Strategic Capacity Planning (SCP) is primarily concerned with long-term projections and decisions, whereas Operational Capacity Planning (OCP) consists of tactical or immediate resource load projections for a period of one day up to six months.

In order to fully use the SCP functionality (from demand), Program Management and Project Costing are required to obtain demand in projects. Demand is obtained from projects and external demand, and not from service orders.

SCP provides management with:

• The ability to create and join a supply and demand forecast that highlight future resource gaps and gluts.

• The flexibility of performing what-if scenario analyses to find the optimal mix of demand and supply.

• Resource plans in order to resolve future resource imbalances.

OCP provides pool managers, resource managers, and program managers with the following tools to overcome day-to-day operational challenges:

• Operational analytics that provide information on total, assigned, remaining available capacity for resources.

• Supply categories to classify resources more interchangeably.

• Generic resource allocation to reserve pool capacity.

• The ability to transfer a resource's assignments to another available resource.