Etteplan's Software and Embedded Solutions (SES) service area provides product development services as well as software and technology solutions for business process digitalisation. The service area employs close to 1,000 specialists and much of the work is project-based, which means that project resourcing is key. Since 2016, resource allocation has been managed with EG Silverbucket.
Matching people and projects is a continuous game of chess
Etteplan's SES service area provides customers with various digitalisation and system integration services. The services help customers to increase business process and manufacturing efficiency, and to create new products for the market.
Director Tomi Hakkarainen leads Etteplan's Managed Services Office with a focus on ensuring fluent project business and continuous services. Managed Services account for over 60% of the company’s business, and their share is steadily increasing in accordance with Etteplan’s strategic direction.
“Our competitive edge comes from our comprehensive service offering, from engineering solutions to technical communications, documentation and data solutions, and all the way to electronics and software development,” Hakkarainen says.
The SES service area alone employs nearly a thousand people across four countries: Finland, Poland, Sweden and Denmark. Since the work is highly project-based even with long-term customers, project resourcing is key.
“We need to know what competence we have and who is available for a given project at a given time. We replaced Excel sheets with EG Silverbucket back in 2016, and since then, the solution has solved the availability challenge for us,” Hakkarainen says.
Visibility, competence management and the big picture
Through its three service areas and around 4,000 employees, Etteplan offers service solutions that boost customers' sustainability, productivity and digital business. Staff’s work management is a major priority, both in terms of business-wise resource use and employee wellbeing.
“We strive to ensure that we can offer a well-balanced workload for each employee and that we know what everyone is working on. For us, EG Silverbucket has been a tool that shows us the big picture, provides visibility and helps us to ensure everyone’s wellbeing at work,” Hakkarainen notes.
In addition to availability and scheduling, an essential part of the EG Silverbucket solution for Etteplan is competence management. The system currently contains tens of thousands of recorded competences that the SES service area staff have categorised under a comprehensive set of structured competence areas. “Having all this information in the software means that we’re able to search for and report competences by different units, countries and competence levels, for example.The database has proven very good and easy to use, and supervisors are also able to create improvement targets for employees. All this facilitates our everyday work.”
“One Etteplan” – headed towards a coverall resourcing solution
Etteplan’s philosophy with resource allocation and competence management has been to maintain openness. In order to maximise the business boosting potential offered by the EG Silverbucket solution and to best support fluent daily work, all SES service area employees have access to the data in EG Silverbucket. Therefore, 100%of the employees and subcontractors in the service area are also EG Silverbucket users.
“I think this speaks for our strategic ‘One Etteplan’ mindset for its own part. We aim to focus increasingly on customer needs and provide comprehensive solutions. Going forward, resource visibility across all our service areas will help us do just that.”
As for his own sphere of work, Hakkarainen sees highly practical benefits in having all resource data available in EG Silverbucket.
“A lot of time and energy is saved when you’re able to do soft booking in advance and map out available resources when discussing potential projects with customers and project managers. With the solution in place, I don’t have to make several phone calls to find out who’s available and when. With 150projects a year, for example, that’s a lot of phone calls saved,” Hakkarainen concludes.
