Spreadsheet scheduling, replaced by a plan you can trust

The problem

Resource allocation ran on spreadsheets and informal conversations between project managers. It worked when the business was smaller. At forty to sixty concurrent projects it had become an operational constraint. Bench time was invisible, skills were mismatched to project needs, and last minute scrambles to fill roles cost both margin and morale.

• No single source of truth on capacity. Availability lived in disconnected spreadsheets, so delivery leads were guessing. Overbooking usually surfaced once a project was already at risk.
• Skills never captured systematically. Capabilities sat in managers' heads, so the same senior people were tapped repeatedly while others stayed underused.
• Reactive, not planned. Resourcing happened as a project started, not weeks ahead, so staff got no real notice of what was coming.
• No view of future demand. Business development and delivery ran in silos, so won work arrived with no workforce plan behind it.

What we did

We built a resource engine on the firm's own workforce data, connected directly to Pronto, the ERP they already run.

• Built the capacity profile. Roles, department allocations, leave and working hours ingested into a live knowledge base, with multiskilled people counted across every department they cover.
• Built the demand profile. Every project read in by its department-wise hours and converted through business rules into the number of people required and their weekly hours.
• Matched and flagged the gaps. Demand and capacity compared department by department, with alerts the moment a shortfall appears.
• Modelled the fixes. What-if scenarios built side by side, so adding people, moving projects or running a night shift can be tested before it is committed to.

Where it landed

• Two hours from project brief to staffing plan
• Three times faster resource allocation decisions
• Integrated with Pronto, the existing ERP
• Over and under resourcing visible before it bites