Lesson 12 - Managing Project Demand

Table of Contents

Use Cases for Managing Project Demand
Creating Demand in Foresight
Using Filters
Editing a Demand
Managing Demand in Bulk
The Difference Between Assignment and Demand Settings
Finding the Right Person to Meet Demand Requirements
Assigning to a Project Without Creating a Demand
Verifying if a Person's Assignment Fully Covers the Demand
Assigning Several People to One Demand
Explaining Demand Capacity
Custom Attributes in Demand
Status of a Demand Filled by Someone on Vacation or Leaving Their Job
Connecting Demand to an Existing Assignment
Manage Your Demand Smarter with AI-Powered Resourcing

Use Cases for Managing Project Demand

Before assigning specific people to tasks, it’s essential to define everyone's precise roles and responsibilities. To define roles effectively, you should consider each staffer’s competencies and experience to figure out which tasks they’re best suited for. This helps you avoid chaos, establish a clear project structure, and optimize resource usage. Information about required roles makes things run more smoothly when you transfer a project from sales teams to resource managers. Planning project demands, and roles ahead allows you to avoid misunderstandings, precisely assign specialists, and identify staff shortages. That’s why we provide you with a demand feature in Foresight Connect. This feature allows you to add required roles to projects without assigning people. 

Creating Demand in Foresight

To add a demand to a project, go to the Projects section and click on your desired project. At the bottom, you will find the Demand section and the Add Demand button. 

Clicking this button will open a pop-up window to choose a role(s) associated with your new demand. Once you have chosen a role(s), click the Create button to save your addition.

Using Filters

One element of this view is the search bar, which allows you to filter the data you need. Read the article to learn more about how filtering in Foresight works.

Editing a Demand

Go to the Demand section and click the Pencil button on the table's right side. You can follow these steps to edit either a brand-new demand or an old demand if its previous requirements have changed.

Managing Demand in Bulk

Use the Bulk Create and Bulk Edit features to save time when planning multiple roles. With just a few clicks, you can add, update, or delete multiple demand entries at once, making it much easier to manage large projects.

If you’re interested in optimizing your workflow when planning for many roles, check out this article:

Lesson 14 - Managing Demand in Bulk: Bulk Edit and Bulk Create

The Difference Between Assignment and Demand Settings

Similar to the settings for an assignment, you can enter data to predict project profitability in the demand settings screen. In demand settings, you can enter dates, utilization details, and bill rate(s). 

In the screenshot below, you will see the biggest difference  between demands and assignments:

As you can see, demands do not allow you to select a type of bill rate. In the forecasting stage, assigning bill rates specific to certain staffers may limit our forecasting and planning capabilities and the demand of one employee. 

Finding the Right Person to Meet Demand Requirements

To find the right person for a given demand, ensure you have completed its requirements correctly. You can create an assignment for a person in two ways: immediately after creating the demand or by clicking the Assign Staffer button.

When looking for the right employee, you can use additional filters that allow you to make an even more accurate choice:

• Availability
• Certificate
• Default Role
• Education
• "Has pending time off"
• Person skill
• Seniority
• Staff Member

Assigning to a Project Without Creating a Demand

You don't need to create a demand if you know who you want to assign to the project. To skip this step, open the project and click the Search for Team Members button under the Team tab.

If you are unsure whether a given person will work on a project, there is an alternative: soft booking. To “soft book” someone on a project in Foresight, you can add an assignment with a Draft or Reserved status. If a given person cannot cover the draft or reserved assignment, you will see a notification about that person's Overbooking.

Verifying if a Person's Assignment Fully Covers the Demand

There may be a situation where a project’s demand will not be filled to 100 percent. If this happens, Foresight will show you this information. You’ll see it in the Demand Calendar tab on the project’s profile. It is presented in a graph with bars filling the demand coverage. The graphic below shows that the Bookkeeper demand has been filled (purple bar), while the rest of the role still requires people to be assigned.

Assigning Several People to One Demand

Bulk scheduling is an option that allows you to assign multiple people to a demand all at once. After clicking the Search for Team Members button, click the Bulk Scheduling button to select several people for one assignment. 

Explaining Demand Capacity

When creating a demand, you also enter time data. The default Demand Capacity is set to eight hours per day, Monday through Friday, for the entire project duration. However, this capacity is reduced to account for any holidays during the week—as long as those holidays aren’t already assigned to a cost center in Foresight. If you want to adjust scheduling to public holidays, set the capacity by Time Frame and click Adjust scheduling to public holidays section. Learn more about Time Frame additional settings: Scheduling Utilization Outside Full Day Time Off and Public Holidays.

Status of a Demand (Filled by Someone on Vacation or Leaving Their Job)

Let’s say we’re planning work for our staffer, Inaaya Warren. The contract we’ve made with a client states that we must meet the demand of 500 total hours of project work.

When planning an Inaaya for a full 500 hours of work, it is essential to remember that this is the maximum number of hours she can work. However, there is a risk that fulfilling this demand may be disrupted due to vacations or departures.

For example, suppose Inaaya Warren takes a 14-day vacation (resulting in her unavailability for that period and an 80-hour shortfall). In that case, we must take appropriate steps to continue meeting our commitments to the client. In such a situation, we’d need to quickly adjust the work schedule to make up for those 80 hours at a different time or with the assistance of other employees.

You can check changes in demand coverage in real-time using the Demand Calendar section.

To fill a demand with another employee, search for that employee by following the same steps for creating a new demand.

It's important to emphasize that monitoring the current state of demand concerning employee availability is key for managing situations like the one described. This allows you to react to any changes or threats to contract fulfillment while maintaining consistency and quality of service.

Custom Attributes in Demand

In the Details tab of the Demand form, you will find Custom Attributes.

These are additional fields configured by your organization's Administrator to capture important project-specific data. Depending on company requirements, these fields can be mandatory or optional.

The availability and type of Custom Attributes are defined at the organization level, meaning they are consistent across all projects. If you are unsure how to fill out a specific field or why certain attributes appear, please contact an Administrator in your organization who manages BigTime Foresight settings for guidance.

Note: If you have Administrator permissions in Foresight and want to configure Custom Attributes for your organization, refer to the following instruction guide to learn more.

Lesson 7 - Managing Custom Attributes in Your Organization

Connecting Demand to an Existing Assignment

The article below explains how to connect a demand to an existing or multiple assignments:

Lesson 4 - Assignments and Demand Matching.

Manage Your Demand Smarter with AI-Powered Resourcing

If you’re looking to streamline your staffing process when handling a high volume of roles, Foresight Connect offers AI-Powered Resourcing to make it easier. With just one click, you can generate intelligent match analyses based on skills, availability, seniority, and profitability — helping you find the right people faster and with less manual effort.

Interested in optimizing your work? Check out this article to learn more:

Lesson 13 - Managing Demand with AI-Powered Resourcing