From reactive to formalized: How Dayshape can transform resourcing for audit

The challenge:
An outdated and fragmented approach to resource management

Our customer was previously using a homegrown resource management solution along with spreadsheets to manage their audit service line. This approach burdened resource managers with countless emails and numerous one-to-one meetings. These time-intensive processes, due to inadequate technology, restricted the efficiency of resource managers, resulting in missed deadlines, reduced margins, and burnout.

This dated approach:

• Viewed resource management as an administrative function

• Had no synchronisation between budgets and scheduling

• Wasted valuable time by having decentralized resource information

• Lacked intuitive UI and automation to relieve administrative burden

• Resulted in multiple sources of the truth, none of which were reliable
  
  
  

The vision:
An integrated resource management solution with advanced features to make resourcing more strategic

To transform their resource management, our customer realized a need to replace their homegrown solution and reduce their reliance on static spreadsheets. They sought to introduce a modern and dedicated resource management solution which would integrate into their existing systems, provide complete visibility of resources within their audit service line, and most importantly become a strategic advantage to the firm.

Our customer's success criteria:

• Improve scheduling efficiency

• Improve cost savings and profitability

• Achieve annual return on investment

The solution:
Dayshape replaces manual processes for modern resourcing

Engagement planning and budgeting

Challenge: Confirming resourcing budgets to comply with engagement budgets

At the start of the financial year, our customers’ resource management team have a two month period to confirm resourcing for all audits. During this time, each resource manager is responsible for completing between 500-600 resourcing budgets. Using spreadsheets, countless emails, as well as face-to-face meetings, it could take days to complete just one budget - not the pace required to meet the deadline. 

“Before Dayshape, this was such an arduous task. Resource managers would have to have the spreadsheet open and go through each resourcing budget, each column at a time, which took forever to make sure everyone was happy. Resource managers would then need to manually input the resourcing budgets into [their homegrown resource management solution] to contribute to the respective engagement budgets.”

Solution: Eliminate duplicated effort with engagement planning and financial information in one place

With Dayshape, it’s now easy for our customer to confirm resourcing budgets as our unique real-time economics show our customer the impact of resource schedule changes on revenue, before they confirm any plans.

This integrated link between resources and financials reduces the number of data sources, resulting in reliable dashboards and reporting as well as the ability to produce robust revenue and scheduling forecasts more quickly.

“Dayshape allows us to have so much information at our fingertips, all in one place."

Further, our customer benefits from profitability controls to prevent engagement overruns and budget write-offs. These controls provide visual warnings if engagement financials are going off track and provide the ability to send automated alerts to team members to take adequate preventative action.

Scheduling

Challenge: Finding and scheduling the right resources, to the right bookings, at the right time, for the right reasons

Our customer previously scheduled resources with their homegrown scheduling tool along with static spreadsheets. Resources would be selected from spreadsheets and input into their homegrown system. This basic approach made it difficult to collaborate and share resources across business units and geographies. Resource skills were also difficult to understand as although there was information on resource skills within spreadsheets, this information was fragmented, meaning resourcing decisions were often made based on recency bias amongst other factors. This resulted in scheduling decisions which were not optimized for the organization or the resources. This issue was particularly acute when waves of graduates and new recruits joined the firm.

“Resource managers would refer to hundreds of Excel documents with information about graduates.”

Solution: Centralized resource information and optimized scheduling decisions with suitability scoring

With Dayshape, our customer could integrate their timesheets and skills database into the system to store centralized information on resources which encouraged regional and inter-office collaboration. This information was then used to provide resource suitability scores for specific bookings. This score (out of 100) takes into account our customer’s configurable preferences/suitability weightings. This includes factors such as availability, traits, grades, and location which enables engagements to be resourced faster, with increased confidence in the decisions, and more strategically with the firm’s utilization and financial goals in mind.

Engagement performance

Challenge: Maintaining engagement performance by monitoring utilization and avoiding resource conflicts

Using their previous tools, our customer viewed resource availability as static. This inaccuracy led to frequent resource clashes which were resolved time intensively through one-to-one meetings with various engagement managers. The result of which was often to source expensive contractors, especially during busy season.

Solution: Complete visibility of resource utilization and clashes with engagement view

Using Dayshape, our customer now has a clear view of resource utilization by billable hours, non-billable hours, and availability. Specifically looking at the Gantt engagement view, resource managers have cut down on one-to-one meetings significantly as the tool allows them to use their time more efficiently. For example, resource managers are able to pull up all of an engagement manager's portfolio on the Gantt in Dayshape and see exactly what’s clashing for each engagement and work through it together all on one page.

“Engagement view was a game changer - it definitely made resource managers' lives a lot easier."

Further, our customer has the ability within Dayshape to create alerts when resource clashes occur. These alerts notify team members as and when clashes appear so they can be resolved promptly.

People-first planning

Challenge: Scheduling essential learning courses

Aside from confirming budgets and scheduling resources to bookings, resource managers at the firm also have a responsibility to ensure all mandatory training is completed by the end of the calendar year. This in itself brings challenges as resource managers have to battle with engagement managers to take resources off bookings to do essential training instead. With their previous homegrown solution, this was made even more difficult for our customer’s resourcing team.

“In [their homegrown resource management solution], bookings were spread across the full week so there would be a 40 hour booking spread across five days and if someone needed to attend a learning course on Wednesday of that week then you would have to create a new booking, change the sizings and the hours, and it was just more time consuming than it needed to be."

Solution: Modern and intuitive UI with the ability to split bookings

With Dayshape, resource managers are able to split large week-long bookings and add in a new non-chargeable booking in the middle, saving them a lot of time in the process.

“It's so much easier [in Dayshape] to make changes to bookings and unassign time when needed."

 
Challenge: Creating learning pathways for the following year

When considering learning pathways for the following year, our customer was again let down by their inefficient technology. With over 5,000 professionals and five to 10 training courses to schedule per grade, the resource management team faced at least 25,000 individual scheduling bookings in their homegrown tool. 


Solution: Saving valuable time by grouping bookings with mass non-chargeable bookings

With Dayshape, resource managers have significantly reduced individual scheduling bookings by using mass non-chargeable bookings.

“We can book one grade group to all of their courses on one page, press submit, and they're all in there."

From at least 25,000 individual scheduling bookings to grouping scheduling bookings by grade, this simplified process has saved each resource manager tens of hours. With almost 40 resource managers at the firm, that's around 400 hours saved on a single task, just by having such an intelligent and nuanced resourcing solution.