“Silverbucket is user-friendly and it has a simple interface for resource planning, as well as numerous functions and reports you can study once you get more familiar with the system.“
Background
Earlier Tengbom did they resource allocations with Excel. It was time consuming and fragmented, and they did not get an overview to their work. Tengbom didn’t have clear understanding company’s total capacity, current and upcoming projects. People allocation and project prioritizing was mainly based on guessing, and they found it difficult to see gaps in their resource planning.
Why Silverbucket?
Because Tengbom have worked with Silverbuckets reseller Sundbom & Partners for a long time, it was only natural to use their competence as support in Tengboms resource planning. Resource and project information is imported from their ERP. Furthermore, all actual hours are taken into account, and this way it is easy to compare actuals with the plan, all the way to the individual employee level.
Silverbucket is user-friendly and it has a simple interface for resource planning, as well as numerous functions and reports you can study once you get more familiar with the system.
We also wanted a cloud-based service so that we could avoid installations and make the most out of the information that was already existing in our ERP.
The introduction
Tengbom entered all necessary information from their ERP to Silverbucket via the integration. Initially they chose only to activate certain piloting departments that started using the system. This way they had the opportunity to test the whole system and start off in a pace that suited to them best.
Then Charlotte started visiting all their offices to introduce Silverbucket so that they all could start planning for their projects and resources. The introduction slightly varied depending on the different needs. Sometimes the system was introduced to the whole staff, sometimes only to the office manager and some administrators, often with complementing done via Skype.
The current situation
Today Silverbucket is used throughout the Tengbom organization and together they have created a way of work that ensures the quality of resource allocations. Every week Tengbom have a meeting for the managers who have a need to either borrow or lend resources.
“It is easy for us to see the resource allocations in the whole company, and Silverbucket makes it easy for us to redistribute capacity. We have distributed resources before, but now we have both the routines and tools needed.”
Conclusion
When the resource planning had been moved from Excel to Silverbucket Tengbom realized that many of their offices had not been in control of the planning the way that were thought. Some units had too much work whereas others had too little, and this became visible in Silverbucket. Previously, Tengbom did have a good control of our ongoing work but understanding of their future was not as good as it is now.
Today we have a unique overview of our projects and people allocations. As Silverbucket includes both resource plan and actual hours, our past, present and future is all visualized. This way it is easy for us to see how we stand compared to our plans.”
