Workforce planning software
Rillsoft Cloud is the hosted operation mode of the Rillsoft Integration Server and brings project-oriented workforce planning for mid-sized industrial companies with 20 to 200 employees onto a shared platform with a German server location. The planning interface remains the Rillsoft Project desktop client; the central employee database, multi-user operation and matching of staff demand against available qualifications run through the Rillsoft Integration Server operated by Rillsoft. In contrast to classic HR shift scheduling, the focus here is not on working time alone but on the question of which employees, with which qualifications, are scheduled on which project activities and when.
In today’s dynamic business world, effective planning and management of personnel and resources are crucial. Workforce management means forecasting the quantitative and qualitative staffing needs of a company for a future period and evaluating the extent to which these needs can be met by appropriately qualified employees.
Which questions should workforce management software answer?
A project-oriented workforce planning software answers three core questions:
How much personnel and with what qualifications will be needed both now and in the future, up to a certain planning horizon?
How can personnel be efficiently utilized based on their professional qualifications?
How can potential issues due to either excess capacity or a shortage of labor be detected and prevented in advance?
What HR Trends Exist?
A global Deloitte survey found that in 2020, workforce management was among the top three HR trends, whereas it hadn’t even been in the top ten before. Why did interest in this topic increase so dramatically? The pandemic brought about changes in work practices, office spaces, and skill requirements. Even industry leaders are now uncertain about predicting a company’s staffing needs and optimally distributing personnel resources.
A workforce management (WFM) software can contribute to solving this issue.
Bain & Company, in its article “HR’s New Digital Mandate,” demonstrates that digital technologies have become essential for workforce management (WFM).
Read the article “HR’s New Digital Mandate”
According to their survey, even though HR departments still use manual, Excel, or paper-based processes as the primary method for resource management in certain HR processes (ranging from 23% to 31%), they plan to transition from manual to digital processes within the next two to three years.
Effective resource and resource utilization planning is prevalent in the market. These planning tools are invaluable for companies that need to efficiently allocate their workforce without frustration.
What workforce management software helps you determine
Workforce management software can help you determine:
The professional qualifications your personnel need.
Who is currently working on what tasks.
How many hours each employee is committed to.
Who is available.
Whether your labor costs align with your budget.
In the following sections, we will introduce Rillsoft Cloud, our workforce management platform, and present further personnel planners for resource utilization to help you decide which WFM tool best suits your company.
Rillsoft Cloud – WFM Software for Balanced Staff Utilization and Reliable Delivery Deadlines
The following is a short summary of Rillsoft Cloud in the workforce management domain.
Resource Planning and Personnel Deployment Optimization
Resource planning is another critical aspect in the business world. Companies must ensure they have a sufficient number of qualified employees to meet customer demands without incurring excessive costs. Rillsoft Cloud enables optimal resource planning.
By using algorithms and data analysis, Rillsoft Cloud can identify the best deployment options for employees. This leads to better utilization of the workforce while minimizing downtime. Effective workforce management software can help reduce operating costs and increase profit margins.
For each employee, essential data is stored in the master data, including:
Basic personal information (e.g., name, employee number, contact information)
Work models, work schedules, and holidays
Professional competencies and qualifications, ensuring that each human resource is only deployed where they possess the necessary qualifications
Organizational units or team-building
Absences such as vacations, illnesses, etc.
Leave entitlements, along with a transparent overview of days off taken and outstanding days
Professional qualifications are critical to successful workforce management in companies. In this context, workforce management software refers to the ability to efficiently manage employees’ professional competencies and qualifications, including capturing, monitoring, and assigning specific skills and knowledge to team members to ensure that the right individuals are assigned to specific tasks. In Rillsoft Cloud, personnel demand is expressed and planned on the basis of these roles and qualifications even before specific people are assigned.
Team deployment planning is a central aspect of workforce management software. This feature enables effective organization of teams and ensures that the right employees work together to achieve common goals. This includes task assignments, consideration of team members’ availability and qualifications, and coordination of workflow.
This feature provides an overview of team members availability, allowing for the management of vacation times, training, or other periods of absence and ensuring that the deployment plan is adjusted accordingly to avoid bottlenecks.
Employee workload overview offers a holistic view of employees’ workloads. This allows companies to evenly distribute workloads and ensure that employees are neither overburdened nor underutilized.
This feature helps identify and address resource bottlenecks at an early stage. It makes it possible to identify potential staff scheduling bottlenecks and take timely action to ensure the smooth continuation of projects.
Aggregating personnel resources involves consolidating and displaying all available employee resources in a central overview. This simplifies strategic planning and resource allocation in larger organizations and enables efficient use of available labor.
Leave Management and Personnel Planning
Work schedule planning tools and personnel planning software are key elements of Rillsoft Cloud. The platform provides a user-friendly interface for creating and managing work schedules.
Rillsoft Cloud includes features for tracking work hours, vacation days, sick days, and other relevant information. It allows managers and HR professionals to keep track of employee availability and ensure that shift planning accommodates individual employee needs.
Each employee can view a calendar of their vacation days, sick days, and other absences and request new vacation days with a click in the Rillsoft Cloud system. The system checks for any time conflicts between the vacation request and assigned tasks. Supervisors can approve or decline vacation requests, and a list of absences is always readily available.
Access Rights
Access rights are divided into two groups, with user roles enabling detailed permission assignment. Here, you can specify which information is available to an employee and which activities (viewing, editing, adding, or deleting) the corresponding user role can access.
In addition to user roles, you can define directory roles, allowing you to control access rights for a user or planner regarding various orders or projects. Directory roles form the basis for multi-user work in a multi-project environment and allow flexible access restrictions for changes. This permission logic is managed centrally on the Rillsoft Integration Server – in the cloud operation mode without any server setup on your side.
Outlook Calendar
Scheduled employees can have their project tasks continuously updated as appointments in an Outlook calendar.
Email Notifications
Automatic workflows, such as email notifications, ensure that specific events – like a project change or a milestone delay – trigger a response from employees or project managers in Rillsoft Cloud.
Workforce Management – WFM
Capacity planning provides information on how many resources are available for any future period. Employees and their working time models are included as planning variables.
You can easily determine who is working on which projects at the moment and with which hours the respective employee is burdened. In addition, an evaluation can be made at department or team level.
By assigning or deducting employees from tasks in the current project, you can react flexibly to fluctuations in demand.
The warnings in the event of a resource overload help to optimally deploy personnel resources. A quick response to resource shortages is an important factor in remaining competitive.
Rillsoft Cloud guarantees with the help of running through different scenarios that the staffing requirements in all relevant work areas can be covered professionally, efficiently and qualitatively.
The Staff Planning View shows how ready an employee is to take on a task, taking into account their days off, as well as whether an employee is already scheduled in other parallel tasks.
Dynamic prioritisation of projects in the project portfolio
Too many projects, too few resources - who hasn’t experienced this?
Rillsoft Cloud presents you with an overview of the required and available staff resources at any time and allows you to prioritise the ongoing projects only within the scope of the resources in order to achieve the best possible results.
On-schedule or capacity-based resource planning
On-time resource planning in workforce planning software refers to the ability to ensure that projects and tasks are completed according to agreed deadlines. This feature enables organisations to efficiently plan resources such as staff and working hours and ensure that project goals are met on time.
Capacity planning is about ensuring that available resources are used optimally. Workforce planning software helps companies to consider the capacities of their employees and teams in order to avoid overload or understaffing.
Project-oriented workforce planning with Rillsoft Cloud is specifically designed for mid-sized industrial companies with 20 to 200 employees in the DACH region — environments in which employees regularly switch between several projects and where their qualifications are the decisive bottleneck.
Operation modes: Rillsoft Project, Rillsoft Integration Server and Rillsoft Cloud
Rillsoft’s workforce planning works through three components designed to work together:
- Rillsoft Project (desktop client) – the central planning interface for project leads and workforce planners. This is where activities, roles, qualifications and efforts are entered and employee workload is analysed.
- Rillsoft Integration Server – the central platform component for shared employee master data, multi-user operation and access control. Suitable for companies that want to run the server in their own infrastructure.
- Rillsoft Cloud – the hosted operation mode of the Integration Server with a German server location, operated by Rillsoft. Suitable for mid-sized industrial companies with 20 to 200 employees that do not want to run their own server infrastructure and are looking for a fast entry point into multi-tenant workforce planning.
FAQ
What is the difference between project-oriented workforce planning in Rillsoft Cloud and classic HR shift scheduling?
Classic HR shift scheduling answers the question “Who works which shift or position at which time?” and operates mainly at the level of working time and attendance. Project-oriented workforce planning in Rillsoft Cloud additionally answers the question “Which qualifications do I need for which project activity and which employees match?”. Shifts, vacation and absences are still respected; the planning logic, however, stays on projects, activities and qualifications rather than on shift calendars.
How does Rillsoft Cloud use qualifications for workforce planning?
In Rillsoft Cloud, roles and professional qualifications are stored for each employee. During staff planning, the personnel demand of a project activity is first expressed in terms of roles and qualifications – before any specific person is assigned. Rillsoft Cloud then shows which available employees carry the matching qualifications, reconciles this against vacation plans, availability and load in parallel projects, and proposes suitable candidates. This avoids both unqualified assignments and hidden overloads.
Which companies is workforce planning with Rillsoft Cloud suitable for?
Rillsoft Cloud is aimed at project-oriented mid-sized companies with 20 to 200 employees, primarily industrial companies in the DACH region whose employees regularly switch between several projects and bring different qualifications. The platform is not designed for classic HR shift scheduling in healthcare, retail or hospitality, but for companies that deploy their staff on a project basis and treat the qualification base as their key bottleneck.
Which platform components do I need for workforce planning with Rillsoft Cloud?
You need Rillsoft Project as the desktop client – it remains the central planning interface for project leads and workforce planners. The central employee database, multi-user operation, access control and the matching of staff demand against qualifications run through the Rillsoft Integration Server. Rillsoft Cloud is the hosted variant of the Integration Server, operated by Rillsoft with a German server location, so you don't have to build your own server.
How does workforce planning in Rillsoft Cloud interact with vacation management?
Vacation requests, sick reports and other absences are captured in the same platform and automatically considered together with workforce planning. When an employee requests vacation, Rillsoft Cloud checks for time conflicts with assigned project activities, suggests alternatives and shows the impact on team workload. Supervisors approve or reject requests digitally; the effect on running projects is visible immediately.
Where is my employee data stored in Rillsoft Cloud, and how is GDPR compliance handled?
All employee master data, qualifications, availability information, vacation requests and assignment data is stored and operated in Rillsoft Cloud exclusively in German data centres. Rillsoft operates the cloud platform itself and signs a data processing agreement (DPA / 'AVV') in accordance with Art. 28 GDPR with every customer; access rights, transmission paths, retention periods as well as technical and organisational measures (TOMs) are documented in the DPA. The multi-tenant architecture of the Rillsoft Integration Server ensures strict separation of the personnel data of different customers.
How does Rillsoft Cloud support workforce planning across multiple sites or subsidiaries?
The Rillsoft Integration Server is multi-tenant and allows separate employee bases within your organisation per site, subsidiary or business unit – with a central management view and fine-grained access control on individual employees and projects. Qualifications relevant for several sites can be maintained jointly; the actual workforce planning then runs locally per tenant. In Rillsoft Cloud you do not need to build your own server for this multi-site operation – the hosted Integration Server with a German server location is designed for multiple tenants from day one.
How does workforce planning in Rillsoft Cloud interact with time tracking?
Workforce planning defines the planned assignment: which employee is scheduled on which project activity with which effort. Time tracking in Rillsoft Cloud captures the actual assignment: working hours booked against projects and tasks – on the desktop or via the browser entry. The Rillsoft Integration Server merges both data streams at the project level, so deviations from the plan, overtime or insufficient utilisation become visible and feed into the next planning cycle.