Episode 103 Transcript

Brent Trimble: Welcome to the Professional Services Pursuit, a podcast featuring expert advice and insights on the professional services industry. I'm Brent, and today's episode is a recording from a recent webinar we completed with Greg Hensley from the Resource Management Institute and RTM Consulting.

We had a great discussion about the future of resource management, strategies, tactics, and the role of emerging technology that's rapidly advancing to help professional services leaders forecast, adapt, and anticipate their needs. Our conversation covered a ton of ground. I hope you find it interesting. I really did myself.

Greg, welcome.

Greg Hensley: Thanks, Brent. It's great to be here to chat about a topic I think we find top of mind with many PS leaders.

Brent Trimble: That's great. Before we dive in, could you give the listeners and viewers a bio and background on yourself, the Resource Management Institute, RMI, and RTM Consulting for context?

Greg Hensley: Certainly. My entire professional life has been in professional services. Leading up to joining the RMI about three years ago, prior to that, I worked in several high tech organizations, developing and leading not only professional service organizations but also building resource management offices at the same time. I had a unique responsibility in seeing how resource management can form and optimize a PS organization that I was already running. That was quite intriguing to see.

A little bit about the RMI and RTM Consulting. RMI stands for Resource Management Institute. We are the leading authority on resource management around the globe. We conduct research on various topics related to resource management every quarter. We also host webinars and two major events: one is an in-person event bringing resource management professionals from around the globe together to network and learn about trending practices and what we should be thinking about and implementing within our respective organizations.

More importantly, we provide the resource management certified professional training. It is a certification for resource managers to gain some of the concepts we are probably going to discuss today, and learn how to implement those to improve aspects we want to help people optimize in the PS field.

Brent Trimble: I've had some colleagues who've gone through the training, obtained the certification, and speak very highly of that. That's excellent.

Greg, you work with a lot of professional services organizations. From your perspective at RMI and RTM, what's the most significant shift you're seeing in the landscape that's making effective resource management and, consequently, professional services operations so much more complex than it was a few years ago? Beyond just more demand or oscillating demand or ebbs and flows in demand, what's the nature of the complexity?

Greg Hensley: That’s a great question. Many struggle with resource management PS. I relate it to any athlete that wants to get better at their sport—they really have to ground themselves in the fundamentals of their craft and be very process driven.

When it comes to resource management at the RMI, we focus our fundamentals on the Just-In-Time resourcing model. That helps them start to mitigate and break things down, break this complexity down. But it takes time to work that definition into the process and across your organization.

Going back to your second question regarding the source of complexity, I am not sure RM has gotten more complex. Rather, we have found over the last few years it's gaining broader adoption and becoming more visible. It's looked at as a critical component of the PS organization. In effect, the light is getting much larger and shining brighter because PS organizations are looking at this as a way to gain efficiency and financial optimization through sound practices. Our members tell us that, in many cases, internal versus external factors create some of that complexity or perceived complexity in adopting resource management in their PS organization. Maybe they've done the same thing over and over again. Skills inventory and that information are embedded in leaders’ heads instead of being out in a place where it's fungible for others to use across not only one group but multiple groups. We feel this internal factor has become a greater problem than external factors in getting resource management in place.

Case in point, I'll reference what we call our RMI playbook, which targets the top ten fundamentals of a future-ready RM. I know we don't have time here today to cover all ten, but I did want to hit on a few of them because most focus on strategies that you can control to mitigate the complexity we're talking about.

The first one might seem obvious: secure and cultivate executive support for RM to ensure proper positioning of that RM function within the organization. It might seem easy, but obviously that's the first step. It's challenging because we want to gain executive and stakeholder ownership and support for the RM organization. We want to understand whether it's the service executive, partner, practice leader, or whomever in the markets they serve—do we have that in place?

Next, we put together what we call a resource management charter. This articulates the organizational design of the RMO, its mission, objectives, responsibilities, and some of those things that we would consider as part of scope. At the same time, we're getting leadership on board with what this is doing, the purpose it serves, the value it provides, and the benefits the business will feel from it—in this example, the professional services organization.

Third, we start to adopt the enterprise process. We'll get a little bit more into this when we start talking about our Just-In-Time resourcing model, which is a way for others looking to solve some of this complexity. We've already done it for you by breaking it down into six components of what we call the Just-In-Time resourcing wheel, and it's something all should reference. You can see it and read about it. You already mentioned you had some colleagues that have attended resource manager certification training. You can learn a lot more about it there. These are the things we feel are building blocks. It's why we call it the top ten of the RMI playbook. It's a way to break down complexity, and there's no expectation that you'll go and run through all ten at once. It will take some time, but if you can march through it and build upon that layer by layer, you'll start to see these complex things that you walk into each week or the new year begin to mitigate and dissolve over time.

Brent Trimble: Oh, that's outstanding. We're going to touch on Just-In-Time because that's a really interesting concept. There's this need for professional services leaders, whether in management consulting or the internal pro serve team of a platform or technology, to anticipate the people to have the right resources to deploy at the right time on an engagement. That always contrasts with the daily Tetris that leaders have to do to pull and move people. It's very dynamic. This notion of anticipatory, 30, 60, 90, 120 days and beyond out is often abstract. How do you break that down, and what kind of frameworks do you put in place and strategies so that these challenges that often result in planning failure can be mitigated?

Greg Hensley: Yeah, it all begins with getting the right data and having underlying processes in place to ensure that the data upon collection becomes the source of truth for operations. All too often, we'll walk into situations where we're consulting with organizations, and they're looking at it and they’re saying, "Hey, we've identified skills and roles on the supply side," but then we find out that they've not done it on the demand side.We need to talk apples to apples here in order to really cross these two together to produce the visibility that we need in order to produce a forecast.

A forecast is the outcome of normalized roles, skills, and assignment data, both from demand and supply. We have to have both. We also need a mechanism in place, which we call an interlock process, that allows you to stay on top of that information.

We hear the story about the fast-moving deal that's coming through. It's going to sign next week, and then all of a sudden it falls flat on its face, yet we've been planning for it. Or the other project that we say is going to end at the end of this month goes on for another two or three months, yet no one provided that input or that data into the process to inform us how this is going to potentially impact how we do staffing and, more importantly, the forecast side of this.

We want forecasts to be able to direct our decisions. If a forecast isn't seeing far enough out, we're always in that reactive mode that you're talking about, not able to really get ahead of things and plan ahead, and not only source them with different options. The longer the forecast visibility is, the more options you have at your disposal to solve that particular problem, whether it be in-house resources, external resources, and so forth.

Brent Trimble: You bring up a really important point around the data and synchronizing data as well as can be between the demand on resources and supply. How do operations leaders then put that into practice, move beyond simply reacting to resource potential shortages, and move into the state of proactive planning? Do you have some concrete examples of leveraging AI, real-time data that gives real foresight to give these leaders an edge in inputs on potential resource crunches that are coming?

Greg Hensley: We want to start at the foundation of resource management, or what I call the core of resource management, which is our roles and skills. That role definition has to be focused on describing the roles that we perform on a project. It is not the job description title that somebody holds in our engineering team, support team, development team, or professional services team; rather, it is what describes the roles we have on a project, whether it be a project manager, an engineer, a consultant, and so forth.

We have to feel good about that, that we've got that characterized right. That is also how we are going to reference it on the demand side or as new opportunities come through. We are going to break down those opportunities in a way that breaks down to those role levels.

The next thing is the skill structure. This becomes important because all too often, we see where skills have been entered into a system but are no longer relevant. I always say we need to have a relevant skills inventory. That does not necessarily mean that when we build it, we source every single skill that Brent has possessed in his entire life, even though it is not applicable to his current project or job scope. Make certain we have things that are relevant in our skills inventory. This becomes the foundation for building this.

How do we maintain it? That is where we get into this interlock structure. It has different levels to it and starts at the bottom, which is the resource management level, and staying in touch with different levels of the organization. Number one, we are talking about resource request information potentially coming in or changes to assignments that are coming in. How are we staying on top of that? How is the funnel created to collect all that? That is coming from our demand.

The next level moves up to weekly checkpoints with management. For example, projects are moving around; in-flight projects, maybe renewal projects, or net new projects are moving around. Who is staying on top of those so we know we have good data to reference? With regards to demand, overlay that into a forecast.

The next one, which sometimes can be the bigger lead for an organization, is sales account leadership. Wherever the demand is coming from, resource management needs to have that connection to understand all the sources of demand. Sometimes, we get lost in the idea that all demand is coming from the sales organization or is all net new demand. This is not true. We have in-flight projects that are extending, change orders, and renewal type work that renews every year. That is demand in our world. We have to make certain we have a finger on that and know where it is heading. This is an important piece to establishing demand side information and data.

The last mark is the monthly or quarterly executive check-in, which gives information around whether or not we are looking at a gap or a resource surplus in the months ahead and what action is needed. Is there investment you are asking for to bring resources into the organization? Is there maneuvering across teams, or is there a contractor we are working with or a new one we need to bring into the fold that possesses skills that we don't? This gives them some runway to make those decisions rather than having fire activity around staffing, decision making, or investment. If we can stay ahead of that and know where we're trending from a gap or surplus perspective at the monthly level, that gives us greater insight.

It all comes back to talking the same language on the demand and supply side at the role and skill level.

Brent Trimble: All this sounds fantastic, wedding demand with supply. You bring up a really important note that all demand is not just net new logo acquisition. It's the changing dynamics of the facts on the ground with an existing project; a renewal, a change in scope from an existing client, and so forth.

We've talked about wedding supply data to demand data, the complexity of this data. Some demand is not always net new. There are dynamic changes with clients; talent may switch out and become unavailable. How can the right technology not just provide data, but actually drive operations teams to adapt, pivot, and be more confident to address these dynamic changes or even macro market shifts? Importantly, how do they prepare? How do they get ready for the changes in both market supply and demand, and different types of modalities and technologies to empower their organizations to really drive these changes?

Greg Hensley: We've talked about data a lot on both sides because that's the root of a lot of these things we want to adopt from a technology perspective. We also discussed having proper resource management practices in place that outline how we do staffing and forecasting. We talked about the interlock model and how we help make certain that the data itself is our single source of truth.

Once we have all that in place, we can feel confident about the inner workings of our organization. As we bring and fold technology into that particular situation, there are many things we can start to do because we're confident in the data and our processes. Technology can really start to accelerate what we are doing.

A few things that we ask folks we consult with, as well as those we teach and our members, is to get that data right and get those processes right. Many of them are asking us about AI and what they need to do, or if it is going to remove certain tasks or work that they do. We advise staying centered in the data and the process. Then look at AI and think about it from each of your technology provider’s perspectives. Ask them about the roadmap and where this is going, and what are some things they are steering with this particular technology.

Reflect on your own business and consider what are some use cases for your technology provider to solve, if they haven't already. You may have a valuable use case they haven't thought about, or maybe they're looking to explore and need additional information and business requirements. Some of this is early stage. Some of it is right in the fire of everything we are seeing as this new innovation is coming out. It is going to help resource management organizations quite a bit.

Brent Trimble: Weaving all this together, how can the right technology provide this data precision, visibility, insights, and power organizations to pivot and be able to adapt to unexpected changes, market shifts in demand? Can you give examples that you've seen in this, maybe starting with organizations that lacked this kind of technology to those that are able to deploy it effectively?

Greg Hensley: We will often repeat to members that either we're consulting with or teaching that technology is not the silver bullet to solving all these challenges they have. If you've got the proper processes and data in place, they will amplify what you're trying to do. They will make things much more efficient for you. Not a lot of technology players want to come in and deal with garbage in, and they know that they're going to spit garbage out. They want to be able to have some sort of support from their customer in the organization that they're working with. To define, here's how we generate demand, here's how we generate supply, and how can your tool or your product help us?

I'll do this in two parts. I'll first start with a little bit of the data side of this. We've already talked about that, and understanding how do we capture it. That seems like a very basic question, but it's one that's all too often where organizations that might be living in spreadsheets, the data that they need for resource management might be in two or three different systems. You've got various sources of truth. We've got to be able to find a way to get that together. These technology solutions that are out there, the PSA solutions, will help bring that together. We've got to understand where it's at, so we've got to think about this from a capture perspective.

The next step is how do we perfect it? The data is found and pulled together, but now how do we perfect it? That's where we start to reference some of this interlock process I was talking about at the different levels. We just have to iterate through this. This technology solution is not going to know whether the data is good or bad. It's us that's going to know whether it's good or bad through using our process framework to work through it. Once you've got to that stage and everyone believes this is the source of truth, you can really start to automate a lot of that. Not only with what configuration and tools that are available in the market now can help with, but now you're starting to set yourself up for the AI revolution as well. There's a lot that's coming in that field. That's only going to amplify resource management.

There's still going to be a major people component of this. Some of this tactical maneuvering, even some of the analysis level work we're having to do on the side in a spreadsheet or trying to build a custom report, if we're working off a single source of truth and we've got a good process around our data, these tools, particularly these AI tools, are really going to help advance where we're going.

I'm seeing it in a few different areas. Skills management and automation of recurring project staffing, like we spoke about the renewals, may be some work that they can do there. Staff optimization at the portfolio level, which is something that we advocate for in resource management. How can we make resource more fungible across different practices? That's another way where AI may be able to help us. The very difficult process of conducting resource shifting where there may be prioritization change or an unexpected absence of a resource, and now we've got to shift things around, AI can help with that.

We've also got some things from a forecast perspective where it can help with alerting around certain parameters. Are we exceeding or below margin? Are we exceeding or below our bench metric or utilization? There are a lot of things it can start telling us versus those being rearview mirror views that we have today. Through the reports we have, we can be advised on some of these decisions in this work we're doing now. How is it impacting what the future is going to be? It's already telling us what that impact is going to be.

Brent Trimble: That's fantastic. Here are some real practical deployment examples of the types of technology and wedding these data sources together to give leaders the insights and foresight that they need. Greg, this has been great. We appreciate you sharing your expertise. It has been a great conversation webinar. To everyone watching, we really appreciate you joining us. Greg, thanks so much for joining.

Greg Hensley: Thanks, Brent.

Brent Trimble: If you enjoyed this podcast, let us know by giving the show a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a comment. If you haven't already subscribed to the show, you could do so anywhere you get podcasts on any podcast app. To learn more about the power of Kantata’s purpose-built technology, go to kantata.com. Thanks again for listening.