Professional Services
| Function: | Products: |
| Demand Planning | IBM Planning Analytics, Revelwood Lightspeed, Revelwood Performance Toolkit |
Challenge
This market-leading business support solutions and services company serves the majority of the top 100 global communication service providers. The company makes money based on the number of hours its consultants service the clients. In order to maximize both revenue and profits, the company needs to have as many consultants with desirable skills as billable as possible, while also having enough resource available to start new projects as soon as the contracts are signed. Therefore, this company wanted to make the best use of the people they do have, understand the needs they may have in the future and appropriately plan for changes in a very dynamic market with a historically “lumpy” business.
Several years ago the company engaged Revelwood to build an IBM Planning Analytics-based financial planning and reporting application. They again opted to have the Revelwood team design, build and implement the demand planning application, which would become a key component of the existing financial planning and reporting application. It would also need to work with the project revenue planning and reporting model.
Solution
Revelwood built the new demand planning model. It is aligned with the financial model and uses the same data, providing the company with consistent and accurate information. The data is available in real time, allowing for ad hoc analysis and accurate forecasting and planning.
Results
The IBM Planning Analytics-based demand planning application enables the team to analyze demand by role, project, geography and status. This allows the company to ask many questions of its data, including:
- How many consultants are available/currently “sitting on the bench” not earning revenue?
- What skill sets do our current consultants have and what skills are missing?
- Which new projects are best served by onshore staffing and which new projects are best served by offshore staffing?
- Do we have enough staff to take on this new project/client?
- If this client project ends unexpectedly, what existing projects can use these resources?
- Do we have the right skills available in the right geographies?
- Are we optimizing our people in the most profitable way?
Now with the demand planning application, the company’s line of business managers and senior executives can optimize staffing resources and better serve their clients.