As digital services continue to evolve, digital agencies face increasing pressure to deliver high-quality work while meeting tight deadlines and maintaining profitability. Resource management and capacity planning are crucial aspects of achieving these goals, and they play a significant role in determining the success or failure of digital agencies.

Resource management involves managing people, equipment, and other resources to achieve specific goals, whereas capacity planning is the process of estimating the resources needed to meet future demand. 
We dive in deeper on these critical best practices, along with the tools needed to help streamline everything. Just keep scrolling. 🤙

Table of Contents

• What Is Capacity Planning Software?
• 3 Reasons Why Capacity Planning Tools Are Important for Digital Agencies
• 3 Features to Look for in Capacity Planning Software
• 8 Best Capacity Planning Tools for Digital Agencies
• Which Resource Capacity Planning Software Is Right for You?

What Is Capacity Planning Software?

In digital services, capacity planning is crucial to ensure that companies have enough resources to handle future projects and avoid overloading their employees, equipment, and systems. It also helps to inform what and who the agency should invest in. Think of it as supply and demand. 

Capacity planning software helps with this process. It’s an essential digital tool that allows digital agencies to forecast their resource requirements and optimize their resource allocation. This type of software provides insights into future resource needs and helps to allocate resources to the most critical projects. It can also help to identify potential capacity bottlenecks and reallocate resources to resolve them.

Keep in mind, if you’re attempting to forecast where your business is heading (and which resources you’ll need to support it) by using homegrown or legacy technology, you’ll inevitably run into issues. These solutions are slow moving and often don’t provide the integrated,  forward-looking view needed to strategically plan for what’s to come. There are other solutions today designed to enable future-looking forecasting and proactive resource and capacity planning. These solutions – like the Parallax platform – provide a clearer picture of the here and now to help efficiently allocate resources AND serve up insights about what lies ahead so you can plan accordingly.

3 Reasons Why Capacity Planning Tools Are Important for Digital Agencies

Capacity planning tools are essential for digital agencies for several reasons. With the right tool in your toolbox, you’ll be able to:

Improve Resource Allocation

Capacity planning tools enable digital agencies to allocate resources effectively and efficiently, ensuring that each resource is assigned to the most critical projects. This way, resources are not wasted, and projects are completed on time.

Increase Efficiency

With capacity planning software, digital agencies can optimize their resource utilization, ensuring that each resource is utilized to its fullest potential. This leads to increased efficiency, reduced downtime, and increased profitability.

Better Manage Projects

Capacity planning software helps digital agencies manage their projects better by providing insights into future resource needs. This way, they can plan and execute projects more effectively, resulting in better project outcomes and higher client satisfaction.

3 Features to Look for in Capacity Planning Software

When selecting capacity planning software, digital agencies should look for the following features:

Real-time Data Visualization

Capacity planning software should provide real-time data visualization to enable digital agencies to make data-driven decisions quickly.

Automatic Resource Allocation

Capacity planning software should have automatic resource allocation features to ensure that resources are allocated optimally and efficiently.

“What-if” Scenario Planning

Capacity planning software should provide the ability to create “what-if” scenarios to enable digital agencies to simulate different scenarios and make informed decisions based on the results.

8 Best Capacity Planning Tools for Digital Agencies

Finding the capacity planning software that’s best for your business is ultimately up to you—but if we can make your search any easier, we’re happy to help. 🤗 Here’s a list of powerful tools that support smoother, streamlined capacity planning:

Parallax

Parallax is a strategic resourcing planning and forecasting solution that works with best-in-class tools to serve up an accurate view into operational health. It provides predictive and proactive tools that enable strategic, forward-looking decision-making, allowing leaders to focus on the growth, health, and happiness of the business and its people. Rather than your sales pipeline data being locked in the CRM, Parallax makes it easy to share key data points across Sales, Operations, and Delivery teams so that everyone has the necessary context for effective resource management and capacity planning.

ClickUp

ClickUp is a project management tool that offers robust capacity planning and resource utilization capabilities. It helps answer various questions around your capacity management process, helping to determine available capacity with its Workload View feature that helps you plan and visualize your team’s capacity by tracking metrics such as hours, tasks, and points.

Kantata

Formerly Mavenlink and Kimble, Kantata centralizes operations and tools into one core solution to help services organizations optimize their resource planning and decision making.

Runn

Runn software has a variety of tools that allow you to manage resources efficiently, including its resource utilization report that shows which resources are in demand as well as its people planner that tracks resource allocations, including vacation time, in a calendar view. Runn also offers a capacity planning dashboard that shows the capacity of the entire organization against current workloads to help with real-time understanding and future planning.

Saviom

Saviom is a capacity planning solution that has a suite of applications, including project portfolio management, workforce planning software, and professional service automation. It helps solve complexities around capacity planning by making it easier to forecast profitability and productivity, integrating with other applications, and providing real-time business intelligence analytics.

Wrike

Wrike streamlines the internal project management and collaboration processes across teams. The platform focuses on the accomplishment of tasks rather than entire projects, offering workflow customization for companies to make processes more company- or industry-specific. It provides visibility into individual workloads to allow for better capacity planning—in Wrike’s workload view tool, for example, resource managers can check short- and long-term availability of individual team members.

monday.com

monday.com is a comprehensive platform that’s designed to help teams manage their entire workflow within a single digital workspace. It’s a project management software that helps to increase transparency and visibility within day-to-day operations, automates repetitive tasks, enhances team collaboration, and creates visibility in workflows. The solution helps you understand capacity requirements with its pre-made templates that account for all the different factors you need to track and manage to understand capacity.

Resource Guru

Resource Guru is a scalable solution that helps you manage resource complexities with automated functionalities. The solution allows you to more effectively manage your team’s time with features such as calendar integrations with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, giving you greater visibility into schedules. It also lets you filter by skill sets, so you can create your dream team for each project.

Which Resource Capacity Planning Software Is Right for You?

Choosing the right capacity planning software depends on several factors, including your business needs, the size of your organization, and the type of projects you handle. While the eight capacity planning tools mentioned in this article are among the best in the market, it’s essential to evaluate each software’s features and functionality to determine which one is best suited for your digital agency.

While capacity planning can feel complex, remember that capacity planning software is an essential tool for digital agencies to use to optimize their resource allocation and forecasting. By providing insights into future resource needs, these tools enable digital agencies to allocate resources effectively, increase efficiency, and improve project management. If you’re selecting capacity planning software, it’s crucial to consider features such as real-time data visualization, automatic resource allocation, and “what-if” scenarios to make informed decisions based on the results. 

And, as always, we’re here to help! The team at Parallax loves solving capacity and resourcing problems so that your business can stay competitive – and so you can focus on what truly matters: your people and the health of your business. We’re ready to chat when you are.