HP Enterprise Services Uses Optimization for Resource Planning

Abstract

The main responsibility of resource and delivery managers at Hewlett-Packard (HP) Enterprise Services (HPES) involves matching resources (skilled professionals) with jobs that project opportunities require. The previous Solution Opportunity Approval and Review (SOAR) process at HPES addressed uncertainty by producing decentralized project staffing decisions. This often led to many last-minute subjective, sometimes costly, resource allocation decisions. Based on our research, we developed a decision support tool for resource planning (RP) to enhance the SOAR process. It optimizes matching professionals who have diverse delivery roles and skills to jobs and projects across geographical locations while explicitly accounting for both demand and supply uncertainties. It also embeds capabilities for managers to incorporate tacit human knowledge and judgment information into the decision-making process. With its 2009 deployment in Best Shore, Bangalore operations of HPES, the RP tool’s significant benefits include reduced service delivery costs, increased workforce utilization, and profitability.

HR activities and practices for project success: A multi-method approach from Indian IT firms

“…Job-matching can be considered as a typical HRAP under the responsibility of resource and delivery managers to ensure enhanced performance (Santos et al, 2013). As respondent 17 puts it aptly:…”

Multiperiod Stochastic Resource Planning in Professional Services Organizations

“…A PSO tends to have a diverse workforce made of its own internal resources, contingent resources, and other partners (Doumic et al., ). Matching workforce resources with project tasks, often known as resource planning (RP), plays a crucial role for effective service delivery in a PSO (Santos et al., ). Resource planning involves (a) the breakdown of current and potential projects in the PSO's pipeline into tasks based on the work breakdown structure and (b) matching these tasks to skilled resources, often a mix of internal and contingent resources, subject to operating constraints (Hargaden & Ryan, ).…”

“…In addition to the high degree of skill specialization and resources heterogeneity that have been well studied in the existing literature (Santos et al. ; De Bruecker et al., ), effective RP decisions must be proactively made for multiple time periods in a planning horizon subject to uncertainty. The multiperiod framework provides a vehicle for dynamic and adaptive solutions and makes it possible to capture dependencies of decisions across time periods, e.g., the impact of task reassignment due to the learning effect.…”

“…The RP problem studied in this article is a direct extension of Santos et al. () by explicitly accounting for two sources of uncertainty faced by a PSO: internal workforce (IWF) availability due to attrition and presence of a task due to uncertain project bid outcomes. A mismatch between task requirements and resource availability may cause many disruptions and consequently increase direct and indirect costs of service delivery.…”

Adaptive Employee Profile Classification for Resource Planning Tool

“…We have built a Resource Planning (RP) system that optimizes the matching of resources and potential project positions while considering resource capabilities, availability and training opportunities [1]. Currently, RP uses structured data from different sources which can adversely impact the accuracy and completeness of the professional's background for resource-job matching, especially for training and experience tracking.…”