Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Increasing Workflow Capabilities with Resource Scheduling Software

By Claudia Eberheart


Almost all the software packages have graphical interface which allows the user to understand the financials and forecasting aspects better. Gantt charts and bar graphs are widely used in such software. They offer time sheet and scheduling chart as well for a transparent way of planning resources. One must move to good resource scheduling software packages if you want to efficiently in today's world.

Effective resource scheduling software can be considered for an organization's planning needs. The customers desire correct time frames for the completion of their projects with the implementation of daily or weekly verification for confirmation of impending deadlines for shipments. One should always keep in mind that your customers also have customers and hence a delay in the proceedings could cost a lot to both the sides. As your customer load increases, demands for on time delivery can become a recipe for disaster if you don't have a software package integrated into your system with updated tracking abilities.

Tracking orders begins at order placement. Components needed have to be obtained from outside which requires scheduling vendors to complete tasks in advance of your customer deadlines. Scheduling software has taken planning to a whole new level of efficiency allowing a smoother work flow and greater visibility to both you and your customer.

When you have greater visibility problems and issues are identified at an early stage and addressed before shipping dates. For example, the testing team always held up projects which otherwise would ship normally. The software will automatically suggest that some extra time is required for a specific task thereby allowing a longer lead time from the start. The customer can understand longer lead times. They are not experts on what you supply them with and usually will understand when you give them longer lead times. What they can't understand is when you promise shipment at a particular time and it just doesn't happen. This increases the lead time on their side for the end customer; and like a snowball rolling down hill, it will simply get worse as it moves down the chain.

Another issue commonly seen in scheduling is when more than one order needs to be running at the same time but no one was aware at the order entry end. In the past, when a customer called with an order, all that happened was that a sales person entered the order with no knowledge of what was currently going on. With this enhanced software, issues such as these are eliminated entirely.

Graphical interface is used by most of the software packages which offer ease of interface between users and software. Graphical methods such as gantt charts and bar graphs are included in these software tools. If your company is trying to work in tomorrow's world with today's technology, you may want to move into the realm of resource scheduling software.




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