Leading provider of professional services automation software announces ground-breaking resource management features that streamline the process of finding the right resource for the right project at the right time
Kimble Applications, a global leader in professional services automation, announced an update to its Intelligent PSA. Kimble’s Summer 20 release features enhancements that support the resource management needs of Kimble’s growing base of global, enterprise customers.
Summer 20, which was deployed to a large number of customer sandboxes over the weekend, features enhancements that run the gamut from a simplified supplier self-billing process to the new Kimble Service Agent, which provides new workflows that embed the Kimble solution within Salesforce Service Cloud.
The Summer 20 release’s main focus is on resource management and is headlined by two new features that address the critical challenge of finding the best available person for an assignment quickly and efficiently while taking people’s interests and goals into account.
Feature 1 – automated resource matching – significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to assign the best available resources to open assignments.
Building on the existing ability to rank resources based on their skill and availability match for a project, Kimble can now provide the ability to determine the best available resource for an assignment based on role, skills required, and availability and assign the resource automatically, or recommend a certain number of qualified resources as candidates for the work. This streamlines the process of assigning resources where large teams are involved – for example, where a group of QA testers is required for a step in a project, Kimble can automatically assign testers that meet any set requirements and are available for the duration of the assignment.
Feature 2 – raising hand for assignments – personalizes the resourcing process in ways that haven’t been possible before. On a new dashboard that aggregates a user’s skills and experience as well as skills and experience they want to gain, Kimble users can search open assignment demand and express interest in assignments.
One key to retaining top talent in services organizations is ensuring service delivery professionals feel engaged in their work and have a stake in their professional development; by giving users the ability to raise their hand for assignments that interest them or map to their career goals, Kimble ensures skilled professionals’ preferences are accounted for and that they have a stake in their growth and development.
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These new features mean that Kimble can accommodate the many ways of working when resource planning, from no touch to high touch. Kimble’s Summer 20 enhancements, combined with its existing market-leading resource management functionality, give businesses unprecedented versatility when tackling the major staffing challenges that they face – getting projects properly and quickly staffed, retaining key people, keeping utilization of employees high, and highlighting skill shortages with enough time to proactively address them.
“We’ve noticed a significant uptick over the last few years in businesses that want to procure Kimble primarily for the solution’s resource planning functionality'” says Sarah Edwards, Kimble CEO for International. “In these enterprise businesses, other systems might be taking care of project management, time and expense, invoicing and other processes, but finding the right resource for a project in a timely manner is a challenge they are still struggling to overcome, and so they turn to Kimble to solve that need.”
“Our mission is to provide these organizations, and all organizations that use Kimble, with a comprehensive resource management solution that incorporates Kimble’s core ethos – that aligning teams around accurate forecasts is the key to increasing customer satisfaction and protecting project profitability.”
Resource managers aren’t the only ones benefiting from new resource planning capabilities in Kimble. Without leaving the project they’re working on, project managers can see detailed information about proposed resources, including resources who have expressed interest in taking on the assignment, and compare resources based on a number of factors, including the impact assigning them would have on the margin of the project. Intelligent Insights inform project managers when there are new resources to consider, helping them be more proactive when choosing project teams as well more conscious of budget and timeline implications.
Kimble has also added a new way for salespeople to collaborate with downstream teams to determine the most profitable resource mix for a proposed project. Using alternative proposals, those scoping a project can model multiple versions of the same project, with one version set as the preferred proposal and other versions modelled out for comparison. This allows the business to compare multiple proposals for the same work, seeing which variables affect profitability. With alternative proposals, Kimble users can easily compare proposals for the same deal that use different resource structures – onshore vs. offshore resources for example – and move forward with the one that makes the most sense for the business.
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One other area where Kimble is helping to impact profitability through resource planning is through bench optimization. Kimble has added new functionality in Summer 20 which allows resource managers to quickly identify resources that have upcoming capacity and search for open assignments that they would be well suited to fulfill. This ability to not only see which resources will be spending costly hours on the bench, but to close those gaps by proactively finding suitable work will help businesses take firm control of billable utilization.
“We believe Kimble is more essential than ever to services organizations; amidst economic turmoil, businesses need to successfully develop and enact strategies that maximize internal resources’ utilization,” says Kimble CEO Sean Hoban.
“We’re hearing from our customers that Kimble’s intelligent resource matching functionality is enabling them to break out of conventional team and business unit mindsets and flex resources into roles and assignments they might not typically be sought out for even though they’re well-suited for the work. Kimble is uniquely positioned to support the need to zero in on the right resource for a project, no matter where they are, and we’re proud to build on that further in Summer 20.”
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