The Pursuit Power Half Hour
Strategies to Optimize Resource Forecasting, Skills Management, and Agility
How to Improve Resource Forecasting, Skills Management, and Agility
Resource forecasting in professional services requires accurate information about upcoming demand, available capacity, and workforce skills. With trusted data and consistent planning processes, firms can anticipate resource gaps, respond to changing project needs, and move from reactive staffing to proactive resource management.
In this Pursuit Power Half Hour session, Brent Trimble, VP of Value Engineering at Kantata, speaks with Greg Hensley of the Resource Management Institute (RMI) and RTM Consulting about how professional services organizations can improve forecasting, maintain skills visibility, and build resource agility.
What Makes a Resource Forecast Reliable?
Reliable resource forecasts start with consistent roles, skills, and assignment data across both demand and supply. They also require an ongoing process for incorporating changes in pipeline opportunities, active projects, renewals, change orders, and resource availability.
The conversation explores how a resource management interlock process keeps forecasts aligned with changing business needs. Longer forecast visibility gives leaders more time to address capacity gaps or surpluses through staffing changes, hiring, training, contractors, or project reprioritization.
How Does Skills Management Improve Project Staffing?
A current skills inventory helps resource managers identify people with the capabilities a project needs, rather than relying on knowledge held by individual managers.
Brent and Greg discuss why organizations need relevant, consistently maintained skills data to match people to projects, identify development needs, and respond as demand changes.
Where Can AI Support Resource Management?
AI can support skills management, recurring project staffing, portfolio-level resource optimization, and resource shifting. It can also help teams monitor utilization, bench capacity, and margin through proactive alerts.
The session explains why these capabilities depend on trusted resource data and consistent processes. Technology is most useful when organizations have a reliable foundation for planning and decision-making.
How Can Firms Build Greater Resource Agility?
Resource agility depends on clear ownership, executive support, and consistent processes across the organization.
Learn about RMI’s Just-in-Time Resourcing approach and the role of a resource management charter in establishing responsibilities and aligning resource decisions with business priorities.
Watch the Kantata Resource Management Demo
The session concludes with a demonstration of how Kantata connects resource and skills information with capacity planning to help teams anticipate demand and identify potential bottlenecks.
See how teams can:
- Use current resource data to plan capacity against future demand.
- Identify potential staffing gaps before they affect delivery.
- Evaluate resource options based on skills, roles, availability, geography, and cost.
- Use AI-assisted recommendations and scenario planning to compare staffing options.
- Assess the cost implications of resource decisions to help protect project margins.
Speakers
- Brent Trimble — VP of Value Engineering, Kantata
- Greg Hensley — Director, Resource Management Institute (RMI) and RTM Consulting
Explore Kantata’s resource management software to learn how connected resource planning and forecasting can support better staffing decisions.