Unimaginable growth of information technology in the last 25 years has led to the birth of so called Multi-National Corporations (MNCs). technological advancements has led to real time information sharing and had made the entire world into a small virtual work place. This exponential growth has been further fueled by introduction of laws that promote international business across borders and continents.
This growth pattern has led to companies opening up new business centers in multiple continents and countries. Projects have also become more ambitious and as a result ‘complex’ and demanding in terms of technology and skills required. This model has the benefit of opening new markets and maximizing profits but also comes along with increased challenges in the form of coordination across continents.
Large and medium sized organization have started treating this world as a single unified market. Projects have become demanding in terms of technology and skills required and keep on getting more complex day by day. Organizations have started opening office in multiple locations (countries, continents) for better coordination and coverage. This growth model has its own pros and cons, as it opens up new unexplored markets but also complicates communication and coordination.
Visibility of employees is a bigger issue than ever, mainly because of their highly mobile nature and the ability to work on multiple projects in different locations at the same time. Physical and geographical spread of resources also makes coordination and visibility a big issue which hampers efficient scheduling. Maintaining accurate employee profiles is also requires great effort, mainly because employees can have multiple attributes such as preferences, certifications, roles, experience, skills etc. These are difficult to maintain but help in identifying resources from a big pool. Ever growing size of organizations and number employees has also made efficient scheduling of employee and other resources a big problem. Due to these challenges, organizations need to justify cost at every level to maximize profits.
Hiring an external contractor is one of the options a resource coordinator has when they are unable to identify a suitable resource with the required skill sets and attributes in their own team and department. But this option is often not liked by the management due to its cost, temporary nature and security & operational aspect. Other option is to search for the right resource in different offices, departments and teams of the same organization. This can include coordination with your colleagues who are located in different countries and continents. Though its theoretically much more economical, faster and motivating for the employees, its often easier said than done, mainly due to lack of proper resource profiling and systems than can share employee availability in real time. In this scenario, use of a good collaborative resource scheduling software can prove to be a good investment for the organization. It can help identify the right resource on the basis of their attributes and share their availability across continents at click of a button. Organization which frequently need to schedule specialized resources against projects / clients should considering investing in a collaborative and configurable scheduling software for employees and other custom defined resources.
