NetSuite OpenAir Techniques for Forecasting Utilization and Reporting

Professional service organizations can’t survive without understanding their utilization. Knowing where your teams spent their time and what your resource needs and billings are for upcoming projects is what drives your business.

Of course, each and every professional service organization measures utilization differently. But if you’re using OpenAir, you’ve already got a powerful tool available to get better visibility into this critical metric.

You may already be using some of the OpenAir utilization reporting that comes out of the box. With a few adjustments, however, OpenAir can offer up even more useful and customized data that is highly flexible. Here are a few tips and tricks for getting the most value out of OpenAir’s utilization reporting, with even more information available on our webinar. 

Creating Custom Utilization Equations

As mentioned above, each professional services company defines utilization differently. So, while it’s great that OpenAir offers the ability to view utilization in standard and advanced reports, those metrics may not meet your unique needs. With a few customizations, you can vastly expand how and on what reports you’re able to see and project resource usage.

First, let’s look at where a utilization number comes from. It’s a percentage, and that implies a division of some numbers. The numerator is comprised of actual time worked and a denominator calculated from the expectation of time worked. Custom calculations help you get both the numerator and denominator of that equation.

The denominator is generally based on how your organization views the number of hours expected for your teams. You could set up the denominator based on work base, or the number of work hours per day. This is a broad definition that ignores things like holidays and applies the same number of hours to every resource.

The other option is work schedule. This takes into account company holidays and so forth. If you’re using a custom calculation for this number, you can also filter out things like PTO.

The definition of the numerator for your reports will depend on the direction you’re looking for. If you want to understand what your utilization looked like in the past, you’ll use the information from your timesheets. Customizing from your timesheets will allow you to filter for billable and non-billable time, time spent on sales, and so forth, depending on how you have your time recording configured.

Capacity Planning and Forecasting

But what if you want to look forward? Your denominators – work base or work schedule – can stay the same. Your numerator, though, can be based on things like bookings, assigned hours, task types, and much more. Using custom calculations here, too, will give you the greatest flexibility.

The real value in looking at your utilization going forward is your ability to forecast and do capacity planning based on the data. For instance, if you’re using booked hours as your numerator, you’ll know if you have enough resources to meet project demand or enough work to keep your teams busy.

Using a custom calculation also lets you set target utilization rates per individual. This results in some highly useful reporting since you’ll be comparing apples to apples. 

For example, if your expectation is that consultants in the field are 75% billable, but your QA teams are only expected to be 50% billable, you can set those values up within OpenAir for the people on those teams. Then, the number you’re looking at is the target utilization – a number that is 100% accurate for each person but is variable by role and expectation.

Target utilization reports can be handy for self-reporting as well. If your teams are bonused based on their billable utilization, you can provide them with reporting on their own hours so that they can see where they stand in terms of their incentives.

Using OpenAir for Best-Fit Resource Matching

Seeing your utilization across the organization will let you spot trends. You’ll be better able to understand and manage both under and overutilization.

Combining custom calculations with your skill profile database takes that visibility one step further. Using entity tags and the skill profile database, you’ll have a handle on utilization for specific skill sets and groups. 

This provides a more granular view of your resource utilization and forecasting, and where you might be in trouble. You’ll be able to see trends and how they align with in-demand skills, giving you the opportunity to shift resources or initiate staff augmentation prior to the start of projects. What’s more, you can see where you may need to add resources with certain skills, either through hiring or training opportunities.

Having accurate and customized information about your staff utilization will keep your business running smoothly. Even more than that, though, it can help you plan for the future. If you’re looking for more information on how to customize OpenAir to give you powerful utilization metrics, check out our webinar OpenAir Techniques for Forecasting Utilization and Reporting. If you’d like help setting up these calculations, with scripting, or any other questions about your OpenAir solution, contact us. We’re here to help.