Workday Podcast: Reimagining Resource Management with AI

Jeremiah Barba: 

Resourcing projects has always been a bit of a dance for professional services, pairing up the needed skills with a client's project without missing a beat. New ways of working, however, have highlighted for many firms how murky their visibility is on the real skills of their workforce. Now they need to rethink their approach to resource management and explore how technology, including AI and machine learning, can help. I'm your host, Jeremiah Barba, and today, we're talking about how professional services firms can elevate their resource management and the role that technology can play. I'm joined by Richard Cassidy, chief commercial officer at Dayshape. Richard, welcome to the Workday podcast.

Richard Cassidy:

Thanks. Yeah, great to be here.

Barba:

Wonderful. So as we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Dayshape?

Cassidy:

Yeah, so like you said, I'm the chief commercial officer at Dayshape. I joined the company about six and a half years ago when we were quite early on, looking to grow. Dayshape is resource management software, but I always find that that doesn't really give it enough of what it really is. So I often talk about resource management software and then some. So we're an AI-powered resource management tool used by very large professional services firms to help them optimize how they deploy their people and deliver work for their clients.

Barba:

Perfect. That's great. I'm interested to learn more about that, particularly, especially about AI. So you might have heard a little bit of talk about AI as of late, and you're ahead of the game, which is great. So let's set the stage. Could you share some trends that you're seeing in the industry, particularly in relation to resource management?

Cassidy:

Yeah, well, there are two key trends, changes, transformations happening, right? So we've got centralized resourcing, which is really important, and some firms are recognizing that and implementing changes to allow it or enable it. And then there's also resource management maturity. So centralized resourcing is where firms are realizing that disparate and siloed ways of working aren't really helping them anymore. So they need to be as uniform as possible without restricting the creativity and autonomy that different service lines and different regions need to implement and deploy. So by having a centralized strategy, it takes away from billing practitioners spending their time doing resource management and actually allows them to create a resource management organization within the firm. That's a big amount of change for a lot of them. It's seen as taking the control away from certain people where, in actual fact, it's looking at resourcing from a much broader view to decide how's the best way to deploy all of our people across all of our projects. And it's clearly not going to be just based on what one person's limited view is of their office, city, region, state, whatever it might be.

So centralized resourcing is a big thing. So what I've been saying lately is they really need to centralize to survive. And the firms that recognize that are moving on that journey. Those who don't are interested in hearing about it. And then they're realizing what they need to do to implement that level of change to get to a more centralized way of deploying resources. And the other piece there, resource management maturity. So resource management maturity is where-- it's actually put out there by the Resource Management Institute, the RMI. And they talk about the stages of resource management maturity, one through five. And that incorporates things like, what are the business processes around it? Do you have dedicated resource management people? Do you have a resource management organization within the firm? How do you plot your path towards that? And what technology are you using now and in the future to unlock your progression through those stages? So these are the big transformations that we're seeing in resource management. And these are the two key things that firms are recognizing is critical to their growth. And these firms are always growing. Year on year, the growth numbers are insanely impressive a lot of the time. And so these are key things they're realizing they need to do because their people are the biggest cost base and also the biggest asset and revenue generator.

Barba:

Right. It's interesting what you mentioned about being able to create an organization, create a process, instead of just being bogged down. And it sounds like AI is a big part of that. I'm sure you'll talk more about that along the way. It sounds like it frees up people to take on a higher level of work rather than getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty.

Cassidy:

Yeah, it's really about changing resource management from a reactive administrative function into a much more proactive, forward-thinking strategic function, much more insights and advisory role to the firm, rather than this back-office admin bit that we throw stuff out to, "Okay, give us some people because that's all we really need to do," thinking about it a lot more strategically. And so it's a great change that we're seeing. So great opportunities for people in that line of work, and also great for the firm.

Barba:

Right. The opportunity to be more strategic is what we all want, right? That's exciting. So as you are-- so what are some of the challenges that you experience with resource management? And how is this next level of sophistication within it-- how is that a competitive advantage?

Cassidy:

The biggest challenges in the industry--the biggest challenges with resource management, or the challenges that seem to have always been there, which is the competing priorities of profitability, client service, and employee or staff engagement and satisfaction. So typically, the client service and the profitability comes top, and people will have to do what they need to do. Our founder, or one of our co-founders, Andrew, who's our CEO, he was an auditor at PwC and recognized this problem and was a technologist by-- or is a technologist by degree. And he recognized the ability to solve this problem by not having those competing priorities working against each other but enabling decision-making by taking them all into consideration. So thinking about your objectives around those three different competing priorities, weighting those against one another, and using AI-powered technology. And what we have is a branch of AI called combinatorial optimization. By using combinatorial optimization, by using AI, to consider all these factors when making scheduling decisions. And that's really what Dayshape's all about.

So whether it's about certain margins or delivering for a certain client on time or minimizing travel or making sure that work is assigned to people more based on their preferences and what they want to do as well as the skills and the experience that they already have got, our software can consider all the different objectives, which are many, in relation to those three areas, and produce an optimal plan that works for the business, works for the firm, and works for the people. So that challenge is something that seems to be always there, and that's what we are slowly but surely solving by putting our kind of AI-powered resource-scheduling software into these large firms.

Barba:

Yeah, that's great and a perfect segue. You've touched on it a little bit as you've talked a little bit about what Dayshape does, but in particular, all across the industry, what role is AI and ML playing in resource management? 

Cassidy:

So where AI is playing a key part is really around skills and scheduling, from what we see and what I see. There's a lot more happening, obviously. But in our space, skills, being able to look at vast pools of people, huge professional services firms, a real mix of skills across there, all the talent that you've got, using AI to be able to map that, profile that, and to understand what you've got to work with is really crucial. 

Where our AI scheduling really helps is a professional services firm, which is operating at scale with complexity and frequent disruption. So vast numbers of people, vast numbers of projects, and a lot of complexity around how that work needs to be matched up to people based on skills, experiences, qualifications, and all these things. And also due to the scale of these organizations, frequent disruption where people aren't available or deadlines change or anything else might come at it. So where there's scale, complexity, and disruption, change, that's really where Dayshape's AI-powered scheduling comes into play.

Barba:

So with the talent market as tight as it currently is, how does intelligent resource management fit into that whole equation as companies are looking to develop and retain great people?

Cassidy:

Yeah, that's a great question because this has become an incredibly important thing to consider, really, post-pandemic. So going into that, I think people realized how important resource management-- doing resource management well, like staffing, and staffing right, how important that is. So people nowadays are expecting to do much more work than they enjoy, right? The days of joining a big PS firm and just slogging it out, it feels like that's on the way out. It can't go completely because of the nature of these firms. That's a really important piece that they can't lose. But people expect to do much more work-- people expect to do work much more related to where they want their career to go within the hours that feel right to work. And so intelligent resource management, as I mentioned earlier on, when you're thinking about those competing priorities, it allows firms to retain their people by developing them and getting wider visibility into their talent pools as well so that they are finding people who maybe would sit on a bench and wouldn't get to develop. They're finding those people. They're increasing their utilization, in turn, giving them more exposure to more markets or more clients. And it really is a way of just attracting people to the industry by promising that they can get more diverse work and actually being able to deliver on that too. So attracting people in, retaining people, obviously, is crucial. And that's really where the intelligent resource management benefits the employee.

Barba:

And interesting you really captured the way that that workforce has evolved. I think, post-pandemic, it has definitely brought about a lot of different conversations about where we work, how we work, and how we get work done

Cassidy:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then it's great for the firm as well because when people are working more remotely, it's easier to keep track without tracking what people are doing and what they should be doing or could be doing. And by should, I mean what they should be doing for them and for the firm. So it's a really great way of allowing much more hybrid and flexible work, but still being able to keep on top of it too. Because we are seeing trends of utilization dropping, and it could be that people are busy on non-chargeable work as well as chargeable work. But you know what it's like when you're busy and you're really amongst it? You can't see the wood for the trees sometimes. And if you can't take a step back yourself and look objectively at where you're using your time, the software can help with that. And it just helps the firm and the employee look at those things.

Barba:

So let's talk about where to start for professional services firms that are really looking to take their resource management to the next level. Where would you tell someone to start?

Cassidy:

There are a few areas where a firm should start when they're looking to take their resource management to the next level. One of them is looking at their existing processes. So how many different processes have they got for their different service lines, even within their service lines? So basically, how much variation in how they're doing resourcing right now? Because they're going to find a lot of crossover there. So maybe 60 to 80 percent of what they're doing that is not joined up could be joined up, could be made a bit more uniform. So looking at their processes, looking at what software they're using, oftentimes, numerous tools are being used within the organization. One or two of them might be really good. Several of them might not be. But what can they do there? So really just looking at, how fragmented is it right now? So understanding the lay of the land, taking that assessment, and identifying what stage of resource management maturity are they at, and where do they want to be over what timeline?

So some basic assessments, really, around these things. There's some great content out there that can guide them through. But really taking a look at, okay, well, what are we using? How are we doing it? Where are we really labeling and categorizing that stage? And then figuring out where they want to be, how quickly can they get there, and what do they need to do to get there? They definitely need to take that transformation very seriously and dedicate people and allow people the time to do it, to make that assessment, and to plot that journey. Some of the firms that we work with right now, we're seeing really impressive reports and documentation put out there that plot their journey, and it takes a lot of time and effort to go into that. So they've got to be really committed to building out a resource management organization within the firm.

Barba:

So you've talked a little bit about Dayshape, but what's Dayshape's role in helping professional services firms with resource management maturity? 

Cassidy:

Okay, well, if you're a professional services firm and you're operating at scale, if you've got complexity with how you do your scheduling, matching people up, and there's frequent change, then think about those. If you can affirm those three things, then usually, there's a need for Dayshape within that professional services firm." Because we major in accounting right now because that's where we had most of our knowledge, but we are rapidly growing into management tech and IT consulting firms. So speaking to a much more-- speaking to many more of those allows us to access that broader professional services market.

Barba:

So let's pull out the crystal ball a little bit. Always fun to predict. You never know where it's going to end up or whether it'll be right or totally off, but that's part of the fun of it. Let's talk about the future. What do you see the future of resource management looking like in the next few years? And kind of as a follow-up, what do you think the future of professional services looks like overall?

Cassidy:

Yeah, it's always a good question, thinking about what the future looks like. And yeah, yeah, fun to predict and fun to reflect back on. I think, for resource management in the future, I see a lot more-- I see a lot more automation and self-serve with it, which is funny because it sounds like it's slightly at odds with what the sea of change is looking at right now with implementing resource management organizations. So I'm curious to see how that develops because I definitely see more automation. I see a lot more self-serve. But I see this taking a long time to change. We have a mode in our software where you could fully automate staffing. Of course, no one's really using it to fully automate because that's not really the purpose. It's really about how can you automate a lot of the heavy lifting to allow people to be more strategic so the people, the resource management people, are actually making strategic decisions on how to deploy, but a lot of that heavy lifting and firefighting is taken away. But I see a lot more in the way of automation because the software will learn what people are good at, what they're doing, and it will learn their preferences or preferences will be put in. And a lot more automated work assignments can be done, and there'll be the right things for the right people.

Cassidy:

It's almost like, I guess, think about how certain social media knows what you want before you even know it yourself. I think an element of that is what I can see eventually happening in resource management. So, oh, great, I've been assigned that work. I didn't even know I wanted to do that, but that was great. When I think about it, that's exactly what I wanted to be doing. So that'll be interesting to see what happens there. And then I don't know if I have anything else on top of that, actually. That might be it.

Barba:

That was great. Yeah. That's interesting how that whole thing-- that all plays together. I think it's just, as we're talking so much about AI and ML, really just having a human in the loop, the advantage of these tools is incredible with what it can do to free us up. Help us do more of kind of-- we call it soul work, things that we're passionate about. So that can be nothing but positive. 

This is great. Again, thank you so much, Richard. I've learned so much about resource management, which I knew very little about before I came and sat down here. So thanks again for being here.

Cassidy:

Yeah, sure. No, thanks for having me. It's been great.

Barba:

We've been talking about resource management with Richard Cassidy from Dayshape. If you enjoyed what you heard today, be sure to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And remember, you can find our entire catalog at workday.com/podcasts. I'm your host, Jeremiah Barba, and I hope you have a great workday.