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The 10 Best Resource Management Software & Tools Of 2023

Best Resource Management Software Shortlist

These are the tools I’ve selected after assessing their resource allocation capabilities.

  1. 1. Parallax — Best for PS companies looking to aggregate functionality through integrations
  2. 2. Kantata — Best all-in-one resource planning for services teams and agencies
  3. 3. monday.com — Best for simple workload and capacity planning
  4. 4. Smartsheet — Best for advanced and custom workflow automations
  5. 5. Float — Best for digital agencies and production teams
  6. 6. Saviom — Best for enterprise resource and workforce management
  7. 7. Resource Guru — Best for fast and flexible scheduling
  8. 8. Microsoft Project — Best RM software for Microsoft users
  9. 9. GanttPRO — Best for advanced resource workload calculation
  10. 10. Forecast — Best AI-assisted RM

Choosing the right people, for the right projects, at the right time is essential to successful project management. Planning ahead to design the most effective resource allocation can save time, improve team morale, and prevent the stress of a last minute scramble.

In this article, I've carefully curated a list of the best resource management software and tools available on the market today. Following my detailed software descriptions, I've also included the answers to some FAQs about resource management.

What Is Resource Management Software?

Resource management software is a cloud-based SaaS platform that assists project managers in allocating resources during the project planning process.

These tools allow you to view current capacity levels, determine who is available, understand what their work preferences are, and allocate resources in a manner that's practical, strategic, and effective. Resource management software and tools make it easy to optimize your scheduling and keep the team organized.

The 10 Best Resource Management Software Overviews

Below, you’ll find my choices for the best resource management software and tools. I’ve provided a detailed summary of each, including screenshots, standout features, integrations and some pros and cons.

1

Parallax

Best for PS companies looking to aggregate functionality through integrations

Parallax is a resource planning and forecasting solution that is designed to help increase utilization and is natively built for integrations. It's best suited for digital services firms and software development teams looking to take full advantage of modern predictive resourcing and active forecasting to discover measured growth, higher revenue rates, and stronger margins.

Why I picked Parallax: Parallax gained a spot on this list because it does such a great job facilitating resource optimization for digital services companies. The tool gives you the ability to balance workloads, analyze utilization, and match the best available resources to the most suitable projects. This approach helps optimize team performance and improve overall productivity. Extensive integration capabilities can further extend the platform's functionality.

Parallax Standout Features & Integrations

Features that differentiate Parallax from the other tools on this list include the predictive resource management functionality. The tool has been purpose-built for project and resource managers, providing you with the tools you need to efficiently evaluate and optimize supply and demand. With better resource optimization, you should be able to keep teams happy and satisfied, your projects and resources on track, and everyone in the team and the organization perfectly aligned on common goals. Other notable features include skills tags with an advanced database search of employees, customizable billing models, real-time project P+L reporting, and project accounting.

Integrations include Hubspot, Slack, Tempo, Salesforce, Jira, Harvest, Microsoft Teams, Asana, and Oracle NetSuite. The integrations approach of the platform ensures you can aggregate the best features of each tool in your current tech stack under one roof.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5 2

Free demo

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Excellent predictive reporting capabilities
  • No additional cost for integrations
  • Responsive customer service support team

Cons

  • No tracking for billable vs. non-billable hours
  • Non-Agile teams may struggle with it
2

Kantata

Best all-in-one resource planning for services teams and agencies

Kantata is a well-rounded tool that bridges the core planning, execution, project accounting, and analysis systems in a single operating environment. It has modules for project management, accounting, resource management, business intelligence, and team collaboration for services teams and agencies.

Why I picked Kantata: What appeals to me about Kantata is their system of dashboards, live time and expense tracking features, and their great documenting system. The resource management module offers real-time utilization and margins at the project and even the task level. Kantata truly offers a comprehensive RM suite that even includes accounting tools like project costing, budget management, and invoicing. Despite requiring time to truly master, Kantata has been widely recognized as being easy to use and learn.

Kantata Standout Features & Integrations

Features that are particularly impressive include Kantata's professional services. The platform makes its Kantata BI Consultants available to users, meaning you have access to a team who can build reports specifically for your business and provide training to your resources to help mitigate the risks and costs of implementation. Further worthwhile features include resource forecasting, capacity management, skills management, scenario planning, and role-based planning.

Integrations include pre-built integrations with tools like Expensify, G Suite, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Xero, Salesforce, Slack, Concur, Qualtrics, Dynamics 365, and Quickbooks. They also provide an integration platform called M-Bridge to help you build your own integrations.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.1 716

Free demo

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Easy capacity management
  • Distinguish between soft and firm allocation
  • Good reporting functionality for resource data
  • Resourcing fully integrated with master planning

Cons

  • Custom reports can be difficult to create without training
  • Proofing solution is an add-on
  • Advanced features are available only in the Premier and Enterprise editions of the application
3

monday.com

Best for simple workload and capacity planning

monday.com is a flexible work platform to help teams communicate in context and get a birds-eye view of outstanding projects, available resources, and projected timelines.

Why I picked monday.com: I chose monday.com primarily for its smart design and straightforward interface. Even team members who are lacking resource management experience can quickly get started planning timelines, assigning project ownership, and managing projects. The monday.com app also gives you the flexibility and power to run your team on the go. You can organize your daily work, projects, and teams as well as establish workflow automations, share documents, and create Gantt charts for further clarity.

monday.com Standout Features & Integrations

Features that really set monday.com apart from the crowd include their 5+ views so you can see your project information the way you want to. For example, with the workload view, you can easily see who’s able to take on more work and who’s not. It's easy to visually gain insight into your team’s work capacity and make adjustments to timelines or ownership accordingly, and in real-time.

Integrations include apps like Slack, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Excel, Google Drive, Gmail, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and thousands more accessible via Zapier.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 8599

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)

Pros

  • Color coded status great for resource overviews
  • Easily create boards dedicated to operational resource tracking
  • New features being rolled out regularly

Cons

  • Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
  • May be too robust for small teams
  • Comparatively complex pricing rubric
4

Smartsheet

Best for advanced and custom workflow automations

Resource Management by Smartsheet, a high-level project and resource management software, helps teams make confident decisions about project planning, team capacity, budget forecasting, team utilization, and hiring needs in real-time.

Why I picked Resource Management by Smartsheet: I chose Resource Management by Smartsheet because of its dynamic reporting capabilities. If your team needs advanced workflow automations, this is the tool for you. You can visualize complex data in an easy to understand and organized format, allowing you to identify project trends and plan accordingly for the future. Users can also create project reports by filtering project data, get insight into historical data, and see forecasts on team utilization, actual vs. planned time reports, budget tracking, expense reports, and projects in the pipeline.

RM by Smartsheet Standout Features & Integrations

Features that are particularly beneficial include their unique project and resource matching functionality, which allows users to match team members to project requirements according to different criteria like disciplines, skills, and availability. Resource Management by Smartsheet also offers built-in timesheets, mobile time tracking, and expense tracking. Other notable features include project and resource matching, dynamic reporting, time tracking, a resource management panel, and a resource timeline for projects.

Integrations include apps like Slack, Brandfolder, Workplace, Microsoft Teams, and Facebook Ads. It additionally has a flexible API you can use to build custom integrations with the tools you use and automation through Zapier where you can connect to 1000+ apps.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 7400

Freemium version available

From $7/user/month

Pros

  • Combines time tracking and resourcing
  • Able to forecast resource utilization
  • Skills database helps resource allocation
  • Intuitive for keeping timesheets and assigning hours

Cons

  • Initial resource set-up is time consuming
  • Bulk project edits don’t apply to resource field
  • No transparent pricing for RM add-on
5

Float

Best for digital agencies and production teams

Float is a resource management, planning, and scheduling software that helps teams manage shared work schedules.

Why I picked Float: Float deserves its spot on my list because its scheduling functionality is so easy and intuitive. You can create new projects quickly, and assign them to your team within seconds. The schedule view gives you an accurate, high-level overview of your team’s availability and capacity, and you can drill down deeper using Float’s search and filter functionality. Set custom work hours, import and assign public holidays, schedule time off, assign custom tags like location and skills to your people and projects, and set a scheduled status to let everyone know when you’re working from home or remotely, or what you’re up to on a particular day.

Float Standout Features and Integrations

Features that elevate Float's offering include time tracking functionality. When added, you can access pre-filled timesheets and compare your team’s scheduled hours with the actual time spent on tasks to maximize future resource allocation. Real-time reporting lets you track your resource utilization, monitor project budgets, and forecast your team’s capacity. Further notable features include right-click menus for splitting tasks, an activity timeline to track changes, capacity management, multi-project planning, forecasting, and reports.

Integrations include Jira, Asana, Teamwork, Trello, Google calendar, Outlook Calendar, Slack, and thousands more through Zapier.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 1068

30-day free trial

From $7.50/user/month

Pros

  • 24-hour support with 30 min response time
  • 99.5% uptime
  • Mobile app for iOS and Android

Cons

  • Updating staff/personnel list takes time
  • Time tracking requires you to get a higher plan
6

Saviom

Best for enterprise resource and workforce management

Saviom is a resource management software that's best suited to large enterprises. It's equipped to provide a visual overview of complex team needs and scheduling for projects with multiple moving pieces.

Why I picked Saviom: I chose Saviom for this list because it allows you to quickly identify which resources should be allocated where, based on factors like cost, availability, location, and competency, across the enterprise. You can easily gain high level visibility even in the presence of complicated matrices (for example, when you have verticals like domains, regions, teams, and departments, in addition to individual projects). Their project forecasting functionality helps to identify future vacancies, while keeping an eye on financials like profit margin, revenue, and costs.

Saviom Standout Features & Integrations

Features of Saviom that are particularly impressive include their real-time BI, which allows you to meet changing demands. You can build portals, analytics, reports, and dashboards that are tailor-made for your needs, since Saviom is highly expandable and configurable. You can also control the visibility of data with filters. Other notable features include a multidimensional resource scheduler and planner, advanced forecasting and capacity planning, and real-time business intelligence.

Integrations include Outlook, Google, Salesforce, Jira, and custom integrations you can build using its data exchange framework.

60-day free trial

Pricing upon request

Pros

  • Multidimensional resource forecasting & capacity planning
  • Highly configurable & customizable RM solution
  • Real-time resource optimization, modeling & simulation
  • Highly flexible real-time reports, analytics & dashboards
  • Seamless integration with other enterprise applications

Cons

  • There is a learning curve as the tool comes with extensive features
  • More suitable for medium to large enterprises
  • Pricing is available only on request
7

Resource Guru

Best for fast and flexible scheduling

Resource Guru is a dedicated resource management software that aims to make resource management user-friendly with quick scheduling tools.

Why I picked Resource Guru: I chose Resource Guru for this list because of its conflict resolution capabilities. Resource management and team collaboration are built in to make resource booking more straightforward, with clash management, leave management, and a waiting list to prevent over-booking. It helps project managers make bookings simultaneously with no chance of stepping on each other’s toes. Clashes are automatically prevented, which will save you a huge headache.

Resource Guru Standout Features & Integrations

Features that really stand out for Resource Guru include individual resource dashboards that allow each staff member to log in and know exactly what they should be working on. To monitor business performance, powerful reports help identify which projects and clients are being over-serviced and assist you with monitoring team utilization and future capacity planning. Other notable features include drag-and-drop scheduling, equipment management, meeting room booking, capacity planning, and forecasting reports.

Integrations include calendar apps like Outlook calendar, Calendly, and Google calendar. Thousands of additional apps are accessible through Zapier.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 173

30-day free trial available

From $3/user/month

Pros

  • Availability bar for capacity planning
  • Very affordable per-user rate
  • Attractive and flexible UI
  • Daily resource summary emails

Cons

  • Unable to sort resources by experience level
  • No copy-paste of resource tasks
8

Microsoft Project

Best RM software for Microsoft users

Microsoft Project includes familiar management tools for assigning project tasks to team members and using different views like Grid, Board, and Timeline (Gantt chart) to oversee the resource planning. Users can view and compare how resources are used across projects to optimize assignments.

If you are familiar with other Microsoft programs, in particular Excel, then the interface and navigation will be familiar to you. This can help teams on a Usability level, as familiar software makes for easier training; thus, they evaluated well in Usability in this regard.

If you’re looking for something similar to MS Projects, take a look at my writeup of Microsoft Project alternatives.

Integrations include other Microsoft software, like Outlook, Excel, Skype, and more.

A few critiques that would make this solution better for resource management is that you can’t open different projects across different windows (for, say, easily comparing resources between the two) and PDF exports look messy, so if you use them for reports or printable projects you will need some manual design intervention.

MS Projects costs from $7/user/month and has a free 30-day trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.8 104

30-day free trial

From $10/user/month

Pros

  • Can generate a Gantt chart from a spreadsheet
  • Helpful project template descriptions for guidance
  • Driver prioritization module for ranking strategies/objectives
  • Easy integration with other Microsoft software

Cons

  • Limitations on collaboration tools
  • Higher learning curve
  • Few customization options
9

GanttPRO

Best for advanced resource workload calculation

GanttPRO is a multiple award-winning project management tool with an advanced focus on resource management. Teams from Sony, Salesforce, Intel, NASA, and many other organizations globally trusted it with their planning and management.

GanttPRO comes with lots of resource management features and allows working with different types of resources. Depending on them, you can arrange your cost and budget management and set different cost values: per hour for a labor one, per item for a material one, and fixed cost for anything with a fixed price. Besides, you can work with estimation, duration, and actual cost for each task.

The software allows seeing who is working on what tasks and projects, when and for how long. The color-coded resource workload shows who is underallocated, overallocated, or works optimally. With the drag & drop simplicity, you can instantly change your resource allocation in a way it brings more value. By the way, you can even export your team’s workload to XLSX format.

From the project management perspective, GanttPRO offers various ways to display and work with project-related data. The Gantt chart timeline is the tool’s basic and most prominent feature. Besides, it has a Board view tab that is very close to a Kanban-based project management approach.

Basic plans for 1 user start at $7.99/month if billed annually.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.8 472

14-day free trial

From $7.99/user/month (billed annually)

Pros

  • Advanced workload calculation modes
  • Color-coded resource’s status
  • Personal resource calendars with days off, vacations, sick leave periods, etc.
  • Quick access to resource’s availability on different levels

Cons

  • Mobile app does not offer resource management
  • Lack of integrations
10

Forecast

Best AI-assisted RM

Forecast is a full project and resource management solution powered with artificial intelligence that learns from the work being performed and helps optimize all parts of people, planning, and projects.

Why I picked Forecast: For resource management and scheduling, you can allocate people to projects or specific tasks. On task allocation projects, Auto-Schedule weeds out the need to manually assign resources to tasks. The whole resource allocation process, together with task estimations, can be fully automated. You can manage allocations directly in the heatmap feature, which is a quick visual way to see everyone’s capacity and utilization. You can also use the searchable database to find the person with the right role and/or skills that are most likely to be available for any task that’s not assigned yet.

The reporting features in Forecast are great. Timesheets and tracking are built right into the product (and there are iOS and Android apps for tracking on the go). Forecast uses actual and planned data to present customizable reports with key metrics such as real-time utilization, compare actual vs. scheduled utilization, track project progress, profitability, budgets, and get other insights on a portfolio or project level.

Forecast Standout Features & Integrations

Features include AI-based risk warnings and personalized recommendations, a fully customizable dashboard, financial reporting, time tracking, resource workloads, utilization data, portfolio management, and invoicing.

Integrations are above average—there are turnkey integrations with several mainstream tools in their extensive app catalog, as well as two-way sync with Jira.

Forecast Plans & Pricing

It has three paid plans and pricing starts at $29/user/month (25 British pounds).

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 248

14-day free trial

From $29/user/month

Pros

  • Quick top level view of available resources by user
  • Easily compare budget and expenses
  • Connects to your existing toolstack
  • Colorful, intuitive resource charts

Cons

  • Higher learning curve
  • Time-consuming logging structure

Need expert help selecting the right tool?

We’ve joined up with Crozdesk.com to give all our readers (yes, you!) access to Crozdesk’s software advisors. Just use the form below to share your needs, and they will contact you at no cost or commitment. You will then be matched and connected to a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company, and you can access exclusive software discounts!

The Best Resource Management Software Comparison Chart

Here is a table you can use to compare all the tools we just covered in the overviews.

Tool Free Option Price
1
Parallax

Best for PS companies looking to aggregate functionality through integrations

Free demo

Pricing upon request Visit Website
2
Kantata

Best all-in-one resource planning for services teams and agencies

Free demo

Pricing upon request Visit Website
3
monday.com

Best for simple workload and capacity planning

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) Visit Website
4
Smartsheet

Best for advanced and custom workflow automations

Freemium version available

From $7/user/month Visit Website
5
Float

Best for digital agencies and production teams

30-day free trial

From $7.50/user/month Visit Website
6
Saviom

Best for enterprise resource and workforce management

60-day free trial

Pricing upon request Visit Website
7
Resource Guru

Best for fast and flexible scheduling

30-day free trial available

From $3/user/month Visit Website
8
Microsoft Project

Best RM software for Microsoft users

30-day free trial

From $10/user/month Visit Website
9
GanttPRO

Best for advanced resource workload calculation

14-day free trial

From $7.99/user/month (billed annually) Visit Website
10
Forecast

Best AI-assisted RM

14-day free trial

From $29/user/month Visit Website

Other Resource Management Solutions

These are some extra options you can pick from. Even though they did not make it to the top 10, they are still worth considering as your next resource management tool.

  1. Paymo

    Best RM tool for remote teams

  2. ProjectManager.com

    Best for resource monitoring through project dashboards

  3. ActiveCollab

    Best for built-in invoicing

  4. Planview Clarizen

    Best enterprise-grade resource management tool

  5. KeyedIn

    Best for resource management at the PMO level

  6. PSOhub

    Best RM that integrates with CRMs

  7. Mosaic

    Best for its recommendations based on resource skills and availability

  8. Schedule It

    Best for scheduling work shifts & client bookings

  9. TeamGantt

    Best for ease-of-use and UX

  10. NK Tech, LLC

    best resource management software for unlimited users

Check out our video on resource management software!

Selection Criteria For The Best Resource Management Software

Are you curious how I selected the best resource management software and tools? Using my years of project management experience, I assessed the tools based on the evaluation criteria below:

Core Functionality

I began by evaluating a wide range of resource management software and tools with positive user ratings. I made sure each had the following list of basic functionalities:

  • Allow you to schedule individuals and teams
  • Provide visibility on future utilization
  • Enable you to create customizable workflows

Key Features

In order to deliver the core functionality listed above, it's my opinion that your resource management software should offer the following features:

  • Workload resource planning: A view where you can see who is doing what, how much time it will take, potential bottlenecks, and who can handle more tasks.
  • Timesheet integration: Metrics relating to time spent, time used, and time costs are key to resource scheduling, so a timesheet integration or built-in solution is critical.
  • Resource allocation automation: Resource allocation is time-consuming, so you want to be able to automate some of the grunt work. Look for automation features that require no coding. Most resource planning tools nowadays have drag-and-drop automation builders.
  • Resource utilization alerts: Gone too far over time or cost budgets without noticing? You want a tool that monitors the relevant utilization metrics and catches this for you. Especially if you handle multiple projects.
  • Resource manager permissions: The tool should allow you to set different permissions for users depending on their required level of access.

Read more about common features of resource management.

Usability

The amount of information related to resources can be overwhelming, especially as our projects grow. Therefore, the user interface of the software we use must make good use of white spaces and have easy-to-navigate toolbars and menus so we can find our way through the tool and schedule resources. You should have adequate access to tags (pertaining to skills and preferences) to help filter your search. Drag-and-drop features help speed up the allocation process as well.

Integrations

Some cloud-based project management software on this list might not have the level of depth required to be excellent resource management software, but they use integrations to compensate for that. Integrations extend the functionality of a platform by connecting it to external tools, like a CRM, or accounting and finance programs. It makes sense that resource management, time tracking, and invoicing can be connected in order to streamline processes.

Value for Money

A tool's price is an important factor to prioritize your options. Therefore, I searched through pricing information to find if there are free versions of the software, free trials, and the starting price of paid plans. The tools on this list represent a nice variety of different price points, with some even offering a freemium plan. In my opinion, there should always be a balance between price and value.

People Also Ask

Find answers to common questions about resource management and resource management software.

Other Resource Management Reviews

If you're looking for a different type of resource management software, check out the reviews below:

What's Next?

Resource management tools can help you create a culture of retention by mitigating the risk of burnout. So what are you waiting for? To learn more about resource allocation, check out our complete guide to workload capacity. Or if you'd like to explore what you can do with Excel a little longer, here's an example and free template on resource allocation.

Related tool lists:

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By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. Ben's a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut.

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52 Comments

  • Really useful content. We started to use the Forecast App and are happy so far with it.

    Reply

  • Hello, I’m looking for resource management software (I think). I work for a department that has construction project managers with different project management levels (PM1, 2, 3, 4) that manage multiple projects at one time ranging from small, medium and large. I’m looking for a software that we can input how many projects each PM is working on, the size/type of the project and estimated time the project will take overall. Then the software would need to be able to tell us based on those 3 categories and PM level when a PM is at 50%, 60%, 100% etc. of their capacity, based on a PM level. I don’t need something that tracks the actual projects and day to day activities, we have other software that does the day to day project tracking / project management piece. Is there anything out there that does something close to this?

    Reply

  • Great post! Thanks for sharing the knowledge and keep up the good work.

    Reply

  • Hello, thank you for the reviews, but I found myself lost, I am looking for a tool for Resource capacity management (Team of 10 QA testers), I am the manager and I will be the sole user of the tool, but I wanted to capture the allocation full or partial once assigned to a particular agile project, Stat holidays and personal holidays for each tester. what is your recommendation ?

    Reply

  • Great post! In fact, I hired an enterprise mobility management service recently and will share this knowledge with my team as well. Keep up the good work.

    Reply

  • Excellent explanation, it’s simple & focus. Keep up the great work!

    Reply

  • I shared this with my quality assurance software testing service and they found this article to be informative and a must share on other platforms. Keep up the good work.

    Reply

  • Nice article and help to compare resource management product as per our business need. Guess what download and see which fit our need and use-cases.

    Reply

  • Thanks for sharing this Great article I appreciate the valuable time you have used to share this.

    Reply

  • Good list, but it would be better if you could also put some open source (GNU) softwere on it.

    Reply

    • Do you know of any?

      Reply

  • I like how you said it will come down to your studio resourcing workflow to choose a processing software for engineering. I would say that it's crucial to have the right software when working as an engineer to ensure your job is being done correctly and efficiently. My friend is in school to become an engineer, so I'll be sure to mention to him the importance of finding the right software to work with. https://www.epcon.com

    Reply

  • Hi Ben - great article, thanks for sharing! I've just released a product called Stitch - www.stitchapp.co - to help people manage their creative networks, so when that moment comes that you've done your resourcing and realise you need a freelancer, you can find them at a seconds notice. It's also being used in production departments as a centralised store of agencies' creative networks. Hopefully that will be helpful to some people! Thanks, Fran

    Reply

  • Hi Ben We service 200 clients with a resource of 10 professional business analysts (5 Technical & 5 Financial) where we can view their availability via their outlook calendar. The analysts availability is variable across each month of the year and each client requires two or our analysts (1 Technical & 1 Financial) for one day, once a year. Our forecast suggests growth will be 30% year on year so the number of clients and analysts will grow proportionally. Can you recommend a product that would fit our profile. Thanks and regards - Roger

    Reply

    • Can you help me understand what's not working with Outlook?

      Reply

  • Ben, Thank you for the list. I feel like all are great options, but I feel like they don't quite meet our needs. We already use Monday.com to track our projects, so we really need a tool that only focuses on resource allocation (our projects vary in length, from same day to a couple weeks). Resource Guru seems to be the one that more closely matches our needs but you can't preview availability (exact times since we have variable hour, part time and full time employees) nor skills prior to assigning a job. Any recommendations? Thanks! Alex

    Reply

  • Hi Ben, We use Wrike, but it doesn't allow allocation of cost per resource. It only allocates cost per task, or cost per project. This doesn't work for projects where we want to forecast and allocate folks at different cost rates. They've acknowledged they don't have this functionality. Is there an add-on or alternative solution you can recommend? We need to see labor cost. Was also wondering why Wrike wasn't on your list. Thanks, Bobbie

    Reply

    • I'd take a look at Hubplanner, Saviom, or 10,000 ft from the list above.

      Reply

  • Hi Ben, Would like to highlight below name in the list. Most of the resource management software deals mostly around human and time management. I would like to highlight following page where we manage time, material and capital resource in a project. Currently helping some of the biggest organisation where some of the project are more than $100 ml. Will be thankful if you kindly add up in the list. https://tiemchart.com/resource-management-software/

    Reply

  • Hi Ben, This has been super helpful. Looking for a resource management tool that is not cloud based (one that we can host). So far it looks like Saviom might be the best bet! Looking into them currently. Is there any other tool you're aware of that is a native client with an on prem storage solution as well (not just cloud based)? Thanks! Brooke

    Reply

    • Hey Brooke, most of the solutions out there are definitely cloud-based but there are a few on-prem worth looking at: - Saviom - Hansoft - Celoxis - Synergist

      Reply

  • Hi Ben, it is a useful summary of the tools, a good starting point to find the right solution. Our demand may be too specific; so far I have not been able to find the right tool yet. We use huge Excels sheets that are getting unmanageable by now. Most of our tasks are not suitable for automated scheduling, as they are timed on time slots agreed with our clients. Therefore, we have to schedule our tasks on hourly basis in the day, and we cannot let them automatically scheduled by a PM tool. The fixed hourly schedule is essential, but most of the PM or RM tools are not able to manage it. On the other hand we have to have a quick overlook who is available at a requested time to be assigned to a certain task. On the other hand, our staff (assignees) have to be able to see at any time what tasks are due for them and what time. The wanted solution would be able to synchronize the project calendar with the task holders' calendar at Google or Exhange/Outlook. The Beyond the plans, task holders (assignees) periodically (e.g. end of the day) report the actually spent hours. The wanted tool has to provide them a simple, fast UI to do this job. I would appreciate if you can suggest some directions I can continue the search. Thanks. Gabor Toldi

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  • Hi Ben, I just found this article on my FB feed and quite surprised that you haven't mentioned about Account Sight. I'm sure you're not aware of this amazing resource management tool. I generally outsource lot of my work to freelancers and use account sight https://www.accountsight.com for resource management and project allocation. Initially I started with their free plan and I really impressed with this easy to use tool, later I subscribed their paid plan. I would highly recommend to have a look on their website and read testimonials. You would certainly regret for not including it in your list. Cheers! Rahul

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  • hello sir, i am looking for the resource management software for our institution..our institution offers some training, so students can select the training based on the availability of the staffs..so resource management is our biggest problem. sir, could you suggest the better solution for my concern

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  • Hello! I'm looking for a solution that's more specific to equipment allocation than human resources, where I can track and manage the availability of this equipment and then reserve it on an hourly basis upon request for different locations. The other features like talent management budgeting and reporting are secondary... I'm familiar with a product called Scheduall but don't need something quite that sophisticated. Are any of these solutions something that you would suggest I investigate first?

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  • This is a helpful article. Has there been a way to demonstrate the return on investment or reduced costs from implementing a resource management software tool?

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  • Great article! Could you please tell me which tool is better for a project based company? We have long term projects running at the same time and for periods longer than 2 or 3 years Thank you

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  • Ben, Thanks for this article. One issue I ran into was that Hub Planner’s pricing turns out to be per resource, not per user. So it’s not going to be $8/month for anyone unless you’re only scheduling for one person (in which case you probably don’t need a resource management software). So if you want to figure out workflows for 20 people (even if they are not users themselves), it’s going to be $160/month. They also have a ‘Lite Resource’ feature which discounts each resource by $70%, but for 20 resources, you’re still going to be around $50/month. It’s an excellent, robust, easy-to-use software, and may be worth the money depending on your circumstances, but it’s not $8/month unless you’re only scheduling for one person/resource.

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    • Hi Brit, Thanks for your feedback. Please get in touch with us via our contact form https://hubplanner.com/contact/ and we are more than happy to discuss with you a pricing plan that fits your needs. Best, Mia

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  • Thank you so Much for this Amazing Compilation of consisting helpful softwares.

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  • Hi, I am looking for a tool which manages resources in terms of asset. It should give the availibility of instruments/labs used over different sites globally.

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  • Hello! Thank you for this list - I'm looking for resource management software particularly around ticketing and resource request. I oversee the resource management department but we receive requests from both the sales and post-sales department. Our team of resources are primarily contract staff dispersed across the globe. We are also looking at software that integrates with PSA and FinancialForce. Any recommendations?

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  • nice post and my only comment would be that resource management software is a quite generic and i'm sure collectively we can all come up with a long list of software tools. just to give you an idea what we use at booking live - project management - https://www.zoho.eu/projects/ hr / staff management - https://people.zoho.com/hr development management - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira this tool via confluence does time tracking too and using zoho reports collates all the data for KPI info Mail / Calendar Availability etc - https://www.google.com/gmail/about/for-work/ and of course for meetings, rooms, or indeed our clients, would use our own scheduling software https://www.bookinglive.com we spent months and months trialling various software so i hope that list helps similar companies to ours! good luck, good post.

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  • Hiya, I am looking for a resource planning tool for my design studio and I have found a few I like from a scheduling pov however I need to have this provide me with the financial information too. Estimate vs actual and so on, I know a few do them but it seems to be a separate system and I would like an all in one? help!

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    • Take a look at https://hubplanner.com/ or https://www.10000ft.com/.

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      • Hi Ben, There is a lot of useful info in the earlier posts and one common thread seems to be that no one software package seems to be flexible enough to meet the needs of any one situation... I manage an engineering department of approx 200 people in an Oil & Gas services company where we have multiple clients being serviced from 4 locations and need to ensure that there are the correct resources in the right places based on current & forecast work. I've been trying to find some software where the inputs are: - Proposal hours (what has been bid) - Project hours (actual work on the books) - Weekly timesheets (what has actually been done by each person) and the required outputs are: - Overall resource loading based on actual & forecast work in hand (projects) - The same with any bid work added into the equation (projects + bids) - Resource loading broken down to a number of levels based on office location, project, office location, engineering discipline and individual staff member. I know it seems like a tall order but to a non-IT person like myself it seems like there should be some database driven system that can accommodate these requirements. Any assistance on the best way forward would be appreciated....

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        • Hi Grant, a couple of tools which might help that I'd recommend would be liquidplanner.com or possibly workfront.com - they both have functionality which aligns well I think with what you're looking for. Cheers, Ben

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        • Hi Grant, we at PDP over a scheduling solution which includes the kind of functionality you are asking (scheduling, time sheets, planning and the related reporting). www.people-do-projects.com

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  • Hello Ben, do you know if any of these tools offer Portfolio Management functions? For example, as a portfolio manager, I would like to see a consolidated view of 5 departments, managed by 5 different managers, however each of the department managers would not need to see what the other ones' plans. Thanks!

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    • I suggest you look at our article on project management tools - thedigitalprojectmanager.com/best-project-management-software-tools/. Some of the more enterprise level tools include such as Liquid Planner and Workfront have that capability.

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    • Ganttic.com does offer project portfolio management functions! Each manager can easily see what each resource is working of with each project, and you can set up different views to manage the information load. You should definitely check it out!

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  • Hi Ben, I'm not sure if it exists but we're looking at a tool that will pull live project info from a portal or project schedule and update the schedule automatically. Most of the Project Management/Scheduling is done in Primavera and MS Project so what I wanted to know is if there is a tool that can sit across both portal and update as soon as the project schedules drags out or changes.

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    • That's an interesting use-case. I'm not aware of any middleware or tools that do that probably because the rules around the source of truth (what to copy and what to not copy) might get a hard to manage!

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  • Great article, thanks. I know there is no perfect solution out there, but I have a consistent problem - each tool is based on hourly scheduling but I need to schedule at a weekly level. Within that week I don't care when my resources do any task, so all I need is that they have a certain number of productivity units - e.g. 5 days or 10 half days. The overhead of fitting into an hourly paradigm feels very high, but I could still really use some of the benefits of these tools over Excel worksheets - are there any tools or workarounds you can recommend for my needs?

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    • Hi Ben - thanks for your comments. I'm not sure I understand your problem though of 'fitting into an hourly paradigm'. Can't you just convert your productivity units into hours i.e. instead of 5 days, just put the task duration as 40hrs?

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      • Hi Ben - thanks for the reply! The problem that I have is that all the solutions I've seen force you in the end to put a task into a particular time of the week eg. Monday 9-11am - and maintaining that detail when all I need to do is know what someone is doing in any week feels a burdensome overhead. I don't care what hours someone keeps, or whether they are free on Thursday afternoon, just that they have 16 of their 40 hours free in a week. Does that make sense?

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        • Hi Ben - I understand the frustration of pegging quantity of time to specific hours of the week. At Timesheets.com we have the option for tracking project time the way you need it - not associated to specific time blocks. You can have weekly tracking also. All the best, Raya

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        • Hi Ben Im having the same problem! Did you end up finding a solution?

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          • I still don't understand the problem! If you don't really care when your team does the work, only that the work is scheduled to be done sometime in the week, can't you just schedule the tasks across the week and tell people to do it when suits them?
          • Hi Peta, in our scheduling tool, you only need to allocate an amount of hours to weeks or days and schedule accordingly. This should solve you problem. www.people-do-projects.com
  • Hi Craig - are you asking about resourcing scheduling tools or more generally, project management toos? I don't think I've seen resource scheduling tied directly into Jira; but I'm sure there are some plugins that enable it. The other tools you mention too - while they're project management tools, they're not really resource scheduling tools.

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  • Very useful list thank you. Jira seems to be a rather de-facto standard although not often rated very highly. What's your views on https://www.scrumwise.com/ , https://www.axosoft.com/ , https://asana.com/ , https://leankit.com/ and https://trello.com/ ?

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