Visual Planning Review

1. Multi-resource scheduling

User A needs to schedule a task that requires three team members with a set set of skills, a machine, and a lab in Boston for two full days. In Visual Planning, user A can find the right team members, make sure that are all available at the same time and at a driving distance from the lab, make sure that the lab is not already booked that day and that the machine is not being used or under maintenance.

If by mistake user A books a team member that happens to be on vacation that day, he receives an alert saying that person is not available. User A views a cost estimate for the task that includes all team members rate, lab and machine costs, which is then sent to their company’s billing software.

User A can do this in less that three minutes without sending any e-mail, looking at a spreadsheet or making a phone call. All team members and the lab manager receive an automated e-mail where they can click to confirm the booking, and the task shows in their personal calendars.

2. Offsite team members

Team member John works for a service company, but he is always travelling to customers’ sites and don’t often have access to a computer during his workday. John can view all of his work schedule in Visual Planning on his smartphone, and retrieve details of each assignment, including customer details, to-dos and important files. He receives an e-mail for each new assignment or change. He can request a day off after Christmas, which then shows up in green once John’s manager Katie has approved it (from her own phone).

Using Visual Planning, John can record the work and hours completed with each customer at the end of each appointment, write a status report, and have the customer sign off the report on his phone screen. The customer and John’s manager then receive a PDF copy of the signed report.

3. Real time updates

Company ABC is a medium sized construction company with long haul contracting projects. Every day, company ABC holds a status meeting with project managers, directors and VPs in the morning to gather project information, identify delays, issues, prioritize upcoming projects and resolve any emergency. This eats up a lot of time for all participants, especially because most of the information is missing and project managers need to call each worksite to get the latest updates prior to the meeting. With Visual Planning, team members records delays, issues and project status directly from each worksite, so project managers don’t call in the morning anymore.

Visual Planning display that they can show on the TV screen during the meeting, and issue and delays show up in red. Upcoming projects are also entered in the system along with cost estimates, projected schedules and staffing, so VPs know that the company cannot add a new project in the next six months. As the meeting progresses, a user reschedules upcoming projects on the fly to test various scenario and see how it looks if he pushes that big project for another two months, squeeze in this small one before, etc.