Why capacity planning in Excel falls short and Fortes Milestones makes the difference
Are you a big fan of Excel? That’s understandable. One in eight people worldwide uses Microsoft’s spreadsheet program, and office workers on average spend more than a third of their work time on Excel. Still, Excel – or Google Sheets – is not always the best solution, especially for capacity planning. In this blog, Berry Zwaan, consultant at Fortes Milestones, explains what you’re missing if you’re still working with Excel and why a smart SaaS solution works better.
No access to all master data
Capacity planning is never isolated. Whether you own an accounting firm or any other business, planning is always related to budgets and realized work. Many organizations use Excel for planning, while other business data resides in separate applications. As a result, you don’t have full access to your master data such as projects, employees and budgets – a major drawback.
No overall view
Working with different applications means that you don’t have a complete overview of budgets, work accomplished and its relationship to your schedule. You have to manually juxtapose data, which is time-consuming and error-prone.
Harder to share data
Sharing Excel files can be done, but it is more error-prone, especially with larger teams. A cloud application like Fortes Milestones makes it easy to share planning data securely and error-free with your team.
Overview across multiple business units
Do you have multiple business units or a holding structure? In Excel it is almost impossible to gain a central overview of the capacity of employees working for multiple divisions. A SaaS solution for planning, time registration and invoicing does give you this overview, allowing you to make better decisions about deployment and resources.
Multiple angles of your planning
In Excel you usually only see who performs what work at what time. But often you also want insight into which activities belong to which project. With Fortes Milestones, you can look at your schedule from different angles, providing better insights and analysis.
Visualizing data for better decisions
Making quick, informed decisions is easier with visual dashboards. Excel offers basic graphs, but Power BI provides much more extensive capabilities, such as trends and in-depth analysis. With Fortes Milestones, you make your planning data easily available in Power BI, even across multiple business units.
Ready for the next step?
Do you want complete control over capacity planning, time registration, invoicing and project progress? With Fortes Milestones you will always have an overview, save time and improve cooperation with your team. Contact us and discover how easy it can be.
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