How to Optimize Your Resource Forecasting, Skills Management, & Agility

Every day, professional services (PS) leaders are playing what can only be described as a daily game of Tetris as they work to strike the delicate balance of supply and demand: shuffling people between projects, reacting to unexpected client needs, and trying to align the right skills with the right work.

But this game isn’t sustainable. 

That’s why our experts recently sat down with Greg Hensley of the Resource Management Institute and RTM Consulting, who breaks down just where the challenges lie — and how your organization can create a strategic roadmap to overcome them. 

As Greg explains, “All too often, we’ll walk into situations,where we’re consulting with organizations and [they’ve] identified skills and roles on the supply side, but then we find out that they’ve not done it on the demand side. And we’re like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute here.”

Bringing demand and supply into sync is the heartbeat of effective professional services operations. But doing it well requires more than a reactive approach. It demands precise forecasting, disciplined skills management, and organizational agility. 

Let’s break down how PS leaders can optimize across all three areas, including steps you can start taking today.

Listen to the full conversation with Greg Hensley on the Pursuit Power Half Hour

Forecasting with Precision

Predicting headcount is only one piece of the larger forecasting puzzle. You need to focus on creating foresight that informs every resourcing decision you make. As Greg puts it: “A forecast is the outcome of normalized roles, skills and assignment data, both from demand and supply. So we’ve got to have both.”

Too often, forecasts are undermined by incomplete or siloed data. Deals slip. Projects run long. Renewals extend quietly without anyone updating the resource plan. And when that happens, resource managers are left reacting to today’s problems instead of preparing for tomorrow’s demand.

The fix lies in:

• Establishing a single source of truth: Resource, project, and sales data must flow together. If multiple systems or spreadsheets are competing, forecasts collapse under their own weight.
• Building an interlock process: “We call it an interlock process, a mechanism in place that allows you to stay on top of that information,” notes Greg. This involves weekly management checkpoints, connecting with sales leaders, and executive-level reviews that keep demand forecasts fresh and credible.
• Extending the runway: The further out your forecast horizon, the more options you have. Allocating internal and external resources, preparing for issues before they happen, and making smart decisions all become easier if you can see what your needs are 90 or even 180 days in advance.

When forecasts are trusted and visible, they shift from disheveled data to true decision-drivers. 

“We want forecasts to be able to direct our decisions,” Greg emphasizes. “And so if a forecast isn’t seeing far enough out, then we’re always in that reactive mode, [and you’re not able to] get ahead of things and plan ahead. The longer the forecast visibility is, the more options that you have at your disposal to solve that particular problem, whether it be in-house, resources, external resources, or so on.”

Take Action

• Normalize classifying roles and skills across both demand and supply, so you’re always comparing apples to apples.
• Establish a steady interlock cadence with sales, delivery, and finance to regularly capture changes and feed them straight into your single source of truth.
• Set minimum forecast horizons so your staffing choices can grow, not shrink, when demand shifts.

Managing Skills with Discipline

Forecasting is critical to both supply and demand, but it only works if everything on both fronts are clear. And that clarity depends on accurate skills management. 

“I’ll always say we need to have a relevant skills inventory,” stresses Greg. “And that doesn’t necessarily mean that when we build it, we go and source every single skill that someone has possessed in their entire life. Let’s make sure we got things that are relevant.”

This focus on relevance is key to your business’s success. Many organizations over-collect or under-maintain skills data, creating outdated inventories that leave leaders unable to efficiently match resources.

To strengthen skills management, services firms should:

• Define roles by projects, not job titles: Focus on the specific skills needed to deliver a project, like project management, engineering, or resource management, rather than the formal job titles people hold.
• Keep the inventory live: Skills data can’t live in a static spreadsheet. It must be updated as employees grow, projects evolve, and new technologies emerge.
• Connect to demand signals: Skills management requires anticipating what roles and skills will be needed based on incoming opportunities and renewal cycles.

Relevant, accessible skills data helps resource managers move beyond what feels right to what works and ensures client engagements are staffed with best-fit talent quickly and confidently.

Take Action

• Define project-level role templates and map every opportunity to those roles, so you have all clarity and zero guesswork.
• Streamline your skills catalog to reflect the capabilities that actually drive both today’s and tomorrow’s work.
• Bake skills updates directly into your workflows so inventory to ensure skills always match the job at hand.

Building Organizational Agility

Even with solid forecasting and skills management, things can still be unpredictable when projects change scope, talent becomes unavailable, or clients shift priorities. The firms that thrive are those that can pivot without chaos.

Agility stems from clear processes that leverage technology:

• Real-time visibility: Professional services automation (PSA) platforms unify data, eliminate silos, and provide real-time insights.
• Scenario planning: “What-if” capabilities let leaders model resource shifts before they happen, minimizing risk and ensuring issues that do arise are easy to overcome.
• AI-enhanced foresight: “AI tools are really going to start to help advance where we’re going,” Greg notes. AI can highlight utilization gaps, flag risks, and even recommend optimal staffing moves.
• Portfolio-level optimization: With accurate data, firms can redeploy talent across practices, making skills more fungible and reducing reliance on external contractors.

The goal isn’t agility for agility’s sake: It’s confidence. The ability to adapt without panic, to respond to clients without eroding profitability, and to empower teams to deliver value without burnout.

Take Action

• Create a clear monthly view of projected gaps and surpluses by role and practice to give leaders foresight, not hindsight.
• Pre-approve smart actions that you can take quickly, so pivots happen fast, not frantically. Think contractor pools, cross-practice capabilities, and re-prioritization plans.
• Track agility with intent by measuring time-to-staff shifts and variance between plans and actuals to keep your teams moving forward.

The Role of Technology

Technology alone won’t save a broken process. But when the fundamentals are solid, it’s a force to be reckoned with. As Greg puts it, “technology is not the silver bullet to solving all these challenges…but if you’ve got the proper processes and data in place, [technology] will amplify what you’re trying to do.”

And it all starts with consolidation. Too many firms are juggling resource data across spreadsheets and siloed systems, rather than captured in a single, automated source of truth. 

From there, discipline takes over. Data has to be perfected through process before it can be automated, because your tech solutions can’t tell if your data is good or bad. Once you have clean, accurate data to work with, you can, in Greg’s words, “ really start to automate… and set yourself up a little bit for the AI revolution.”

Where AI Adds Real Value

The AI revolution is coming, and you can’t deny its presence in our daily lives. 

Once your house is in order, AI stops being hype and starts driving real results. The key is staying anchored in solid data and disciplined processes, then evaluating AI through the lens of your technology providers’ roadmaps — and your own business priorities. 

This means asking not only where vendors are heading, but also understanding use cases unique to your organization. Look for opportunities they may not have considered but that could unlock significant value.

Consider the following:

• Smarter staffing: Automation project staffing reduces friction on renewals and repeatable work.
• Portfolio optimization: Look at how you can optimize resources by moving people between workflows.
• Faster pivots: AI helps evaluate every option instantly, spotting gaps, resolving conflicts, and optimizing resources to protect margins and utilization.

With AI, leaders are empowered with the insights they need to stay ahead of change, rather than be bogged down by it.

Bringing It All Together with Kantata

Forecasting, skills management, and agility aren’t separate areas of resource management: they depend on one another to succeed. Strong skills data fuels better forecasts, accurate forecasts enable agility, and agility makes it easier to refine forecasts and strengthen skills strategies.

At Kantata, we understand how to navigate each of these areas and set you up for success. Our platform is built to help you:

• Surface best-fit talent instantly through live skills inventories
• Build confidence in forecasts with integrated demand and supply data
• Pivot with agility using AI-powered insights and scenario planning tools

If you’re ready to build a resource management strategy that empowers both your people and your business, let’s talk.