Metrics are all interrelated, but utilization is the holy grail of the professional services industry. Both time capture and resource management are important because they ensure your most valuable resource—your talent— is assigned to the right projects and equipped with the right skills.
Capturing time allows you to see which employees are available to work, the time spent doing productive work, and the time spent not doing productive work—traveling, in meetings, doing administrative work, or on vacation. If you see a spike in administrative time, then you need to understand why that’s happening to improve productivity. The other key driver of utilization, resource management, requires understanding where your workers are located, the skills they have, and the skills needed to deliver projects.
Another important metric is to compare project budget to actuals. Clients expect to be notified if there’s going to be an overage, why it might occur, and what can be done to mitigate it. The whole idea of accurately estimating, scoping, and keeping a tight eye on project budget to actuals is central to not only delivering on time and on budget, but satisfying clients and making a profit. That’s core to the business.