Running a service firm is not a piece of cake. Demand can be lumpy. Clients can be demanding. Some projects, like Payroll implementations, all want to go live right at year-end. Add to these issues are the myriad challenges that service people bring to the table. These persons:
Seriously, people are not just a planning variable when crafting the initial services proposal. They require continuous monitoring to ensure the project gets completed on-time, on-budget and to the quality standards that the client expects.
Resource Managers are the go-to people in service firms. They know which people are fully (or overly) committed on projects. They know who is on the bench or soon will be. They know the skills each staff person possesses. They know who is double or triple booked. They might know where someone lives and even try to get them staffed on projects close to their home. Great resource managers even find roles/projects that will help the staffer grow their skillset and get great client or service firm management exposure.
But Resource Managers are often:
And, as bad as the status quo in resource management is, these old solutions are:
Service firms want a number of outcomes from new technology. In the area of resource management, these companies want to:
PSA (Professional Services Automation) solutions have been around for about 25 years now. In that time, they've gone from on-premise solutions, to internet hosted solutions and to multi-tenant cloud products. Now, there is an opportunity to utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) in thoughtful use cases within PSA suites.
AI comes in several flavors. There's generative AI which is brilliant in translating, summarizing and rewriting copious amounts of proposals, resumes, presentations and more. There are also Agentic AI capabilities wherein multiple automated work steps are chained together by AI agents to produce a specific end-result. For example, service firms could use an AI agent to book an entire travel itinerary (i.e., air, rental car and hotel) for a staffer with the bookings, approvals and payment all happening behind the scenes. Agentic workflows could also assemble an entire proposal with a simple mouse click. The agentic tool would find the most relevant project workplan, collect the best reference documents, the most current rate card, contract, master service agreement, non-disclosure agreement and other materials. Then the agentic tool would:
AI and Resource Management
What makes this announcement noteworthy is that resource management tools often do NOT continuously (if at all) monitor projects. Most resource management tools can identify staff availability at the point of need (e.g., when a project is about to be launched). These tools are often designed to work one project at a time.
Kantata's existing resource management tool has been one of the more advanced tools in the PSA space as it uses algorithmic formulas and technologies to optimize potential staffing plans across a couple of dozen different parameters. This tool is a high-end, multi-variate algorithmic/machine learning technology and their new Resourcing Agent complements and extends this capability. This predecessor product came into its own in 2021 (when the solution was known as Mavenlink Optimizer). At that time, the company stated:
Mavenlink Optimizer is a powerful resource optimization toolset that leverages operations management science, advanced algorithms, and analytics to overcome previously intractable resource management and planning challenges. Organizations can determine optimal staffing combinations for large portfolios of projects requiring diverse skill sets, across multiple geographics, for varying time periods. Using the same capabilities, services leaders can implement sophisticated scenario planning to evaluate how to best balance supply and demand, resourcing strategies, and the implications for project delivery, revenue realization, and profit margins.
This 2021 diginomica piece re: Mavenlink Optimizer is definitely worth a read now as it shows how the company was already utilizing machine learning tools that were the precursor to many of the AI tools being unleashed today.
AI could do wonders for Resource Management. Specifically, it could monitor the ever-changing staffing landscape across all of a service firm's clients. It could proactively identify impending staffing challenges (e.g., over-bookings, unexpected idle time and newly reported staff illnesses), suggest potential remedies, etc. That would be a huge help as many service firms fail to discover/detect and remedy these issues in real-time. Any opportunity to get ahead of these issues can help a service firm avoid a potentially huge client satisfaction problem and the reputation (and/or financial) damage those can trigger.
PSA vendor Kantata has been developing multiple AI agents for its PSA solution suite. Its latest agent is in the resource management realm. According to Kantata:
Kantata's Resourcing Agent analyzes project and staffing data to detect early warning signs, such as overallocations, misaligned timelines, or potential budget overruns, and then flags issues early, with the ability to recommend and even execute next steps. For example, if a project is extended by a week, the agent can automatically adjust allocations to accommodate. If a resource is overstretched, it can suggest a specific redistribution of hours or reassign work all without manual intervention.
According to Jeff Letsinger, Lead Product Manager for Kantata's Resourcing Agent:
The Resourcing Agent has visibility into all projects that a given user can access, so it's not limited to analyzing just one. The agent is designed to respond to user queries, flag potential risks, and update data across any number of projects. For project managers who want to stay deeply focused on a single initiative, we also provide the Project Agent, which is optimized for use at the individual project level.
Screenshot from Kantata Resourcing Agent - courtesy of Kantata
Kantata also noted:
The Resourcing Agent goes farther by searching and analyzing staffing plans and detecting conflicts and risks, recommending and taking actions that resolve those risks, something that would have previously required extensive analysis and manual intervention.
Letsinger adds:
Kantata's recommendations in our Team Builder are powered by our resource management algorithm and staffing tools, which take a holistic view of skills, availability, and project needs. Whether the question is about filling one role, staffing an entire project, or balancing across a full portfolio, the system is designed to surface the best options while recognizing the trade-offs of different staffing choices. We are also actively registering that recommendations algorithm with the Resourcing Agent so it can deliver more accurate and mathematically sound staffing recommendations directly in response to user questions.
Project Managers and service personnel are constantly adjusting the hours that will be worked on a given project while staffing needs could change on other projects at the same time. Some changes could be due to vacation time being requested, new training needs, illness and other people-driven situations. Other changes could be the result of a client moving a key deadline, the client not delivering on key personnel, project cancellations or other client triggered matters. Regardless of the cause, project and staffing changes could impact not just one project's schedule but others that also depend on the timely availability of key resources. Staffing and project changes may project schedules, alter the critical path, affect key deliverables, trigger missed due dates, etc. And, of course, even minor staffing changes can have an outsized impact on a project.
A tool like the Resourcing Agent keeps monitoring project staffing and can detect if a project will be over/under-staffed. That monitoring and correction aspect can help ensure projects are completed successfully and on time. That will be of huge value to clients and service firms alike. I rarely meet clients who like surprises and none of them like adverse staffing surprises.
According to Kantata:
The value add is in the ability to apply Agentic AI to pro-actively detect and mitigate staffing risks. Following Agentic AI best practice, the Resourcing Agent is actually orchestrating the efforts of a number of agents, each with very distinct skills, behind the scenes, querying and delegating to the right ones based on the ask to ensure the job gets done. Those skills include workflow facilitation, risk mitigation, search, assignment allocation, and more, and the agent takes direct action using those skills, rectifying conflicts and mitigating risks that get surfaced to the user.
Additional value could also be derived from this tool by helping service firms scale well, efficiently and relatively trouble free. That point is important as resource managers often struggle to remember all kinds of details about the professional services personnel under their care. Having a tool like the Resource Agent monitoring and recommending potential remedies can materially free up time spent on data collection, analysis and brainstorming new staffing plans.
This benefit moves resource managers from an administrative/clerical role into one where they can quickly prevent issues from causing problems for project managers, clients and staff persons. Moreover, the tool lets resource managers help staff by intelligently honoring vacation, training and other requests.
What this does is permit a resource manager to better handle and develop dozens, maybe hundreds of staff persons. Resource management activities have always been impediments to scaling a service firm, but that issue may be fading in the age of agentic AI.
Kantata has taken a great advanced application and dramatically extended its reach and value proposition by utilizing AI capabilities. The new tool expands on the prior software and adds lots of pre-delivered orchestration.
As agentic AI applications go, this one is pretty interesting as it can help Resource Planning for a given project, program or enterprise and can do these things continuously. Service firm executives, not just resource managers, should be very welcoming to these new capabilities.
I also applaud Kantata for tackling one of the more challenging aspects of running a service firm and providing a tool that brings continuous monitoring to the table. They didn't take the easy way out and find some small, low strategic value morsel of PSA software and amp it up a wee bit. No, they bit off a big problem area. Kudos.
